Does linking to relevant high authority websites effect your MozTrust or Rank?

[SeanConroy]

Basically what the title says.

I am having a hard time understanding why a compeitor with less linking domains and none of any real quality, they're all membership sites or partnerships, nothing to relevant to the industry. While we have links and articles on us from multiple magazines in our industry. As well as to relevant directories with high domain ranks.

The only thing I noticed is they're linking to their clients website, which are all high authority websites.

So do external links count towards your MozTrust or Rank?

[EGOL]

I don't know how they influence my MozTrust or MozRank.....  and I don't care how they influence those numbers.

What I do care about is....  "Does linking to relevant high authority websites effect my search engine rankings?"

I believe that if you have two identical articles....  One that links to source, supplemental and superior information on other websites.... and One that links to nothing...   the article with the helpful, relevant links is a better information source for the visitor and could be ranked higher by search engines.

So, when I write an article I often link to supplemental, source and superior information on other high quality websites.

I have zero mental problems linking to websites that are superior to mine in some way.

The only thing I noticed is they're linking to their clients website, which are all high authority websites.

When I read this I don't quite understand why these links are being given?  If they are linking because they are relevant and helpful information for the visitor on the page then that is good.

However, if the are linking to them just to link to them then why bother?  I think the linking page and the linked-to page must be highly related to one another and the page receiving the link should have supplemental or superior information.

[SeanConroy]

Thanks for your answer, I also care about my ranking more. Just want to figure out some of the mysteries of these rankings.

What you're saying makes sense with regards to articles and linking, but neither of our sites are blog based websites.

Just curious as to any relevancy to linking to external sites.

[Personnel_Concept]

That's true. And something that not people have given thought about it. I am sure there are still many people who would write a blog to get a link to their site and there are no other external links in that blog because they are worried that link juice might be lost to other sites.

But what you said makes sense and I have seen it works

[Personnel_Concept]

It's a good question. Linking to external high quality .edu or .gov or other good quality sites does influence ranking in most cases. Its good for user (unless its not too much linked) and also looks genuine to Google as Google see that this person is not just linking to its own sites but also multiple sites in similar context makes it easy for user to checkout those useful;l inks from blog itself.

I actually recently wrote a blog on this and yet to be published. But meanwhile you can do search on Hill-top algo and you will get something useful related to your question

[SeanConroy]

Thanks, I agree it can be good for the user, in our case it shows the high calibre of clients we work with, which in turn makes us look good and is completely relevant.

We're a service company, so we don't write blogs at this point. But just having a page explaining projects we've worked on with links to the clients it what works I think.

I will search for you post!