Value of Inbound Links to Pages With a lot of Outbound Links

[SparkplugDigital]

Suppose you have a resource page of the Top 50 Awesome Sites in your niche. Since there are about 50 outbound links, then I would think there will be less Page Rank being passed to internal pages from internal links on the resource page.

Since you are getting less PR passed to internal pages, are there other ways the inbound links can be beneficial, such as increasing the diversity of links of your domain?

Sites like SEO Optimise seem to create a lot of Top 30 Resources lists and I have read that they think it is a strong tactic.

[EGOL]

I think that the key here is the quality of your content.

If you have substantive content that is genuinely linkworthy then you should not be afraid to link out to other domains.  However, if you are just tossing up yada yada yada content that nobody cares about then you are not only wasting those links, you are wasting those pages and you are wasting your time.

Now, if you are worried about linkjuice then consider how that page fits in the linkage of your site.  If it has a sitewide link into it then a lot of linkjuice is going to flow in and a lot is going to flow out.  However, if there is only one link from an unimportant page coming in then not nearly as much will flow out.

I personally don't worry about linkjuice.  I just link out as it meets the needs of my content and my visitors.

[joemas99]

I agree with EGOL. He has taught me to consider the value of my content and helped me realize that producing more valuable content is better than most things we think we can do to manipulate the search engines.

[AlanBleiweiss]

I'd also like to flesh out a key thing EGOL said and that Joe touched on.

"personally don't worry about linkjuice.  I just link out as it meets the needs of my content and my visitors."

In my experience, if you are spending any significant amount of time on trying to figure how to pass more or less link juice from a particular area or page of your site, you are more than likely expending energy that could be used much more effectively if it's directed toward developing more content, more inbound links, social mentions, or any number of other high priority tasks.

The return on investment of evaluating link juice distribution in a way like you've described is unbelievably minor at best.  And in fact, unless you have the capacity, time, and energy to do true A/B testing on a dozen or more specific sub-factors related to that link value passing, you wouldn't even come close to being half accurate in your evaluation.

Sure, it's a great exercise, and could be fascinating to write an SEO article about.  But that's really about it.

[butler262]

Very good thread...I see what you're saying about time being used to do other "high priority activities"  vs. controlling link juice, but I've found controlling link juice to be a high priority issue its self. To me, that's kind of like, "Why worry about how many MPG your car gets when you can figure out how to buy more gas".

Again, this is just in my experience, but I have seen remarkable ranking increases through conscious use of link equity. Whether it be with the use of NoFollow (which I know Google has said doesn't work but I believe otherwise), restructuring site architecture, or using Robots.txt, it seems like making the most use of the "juice" (or fuel), would be a worthwhile task.

I'm also still torn about "Top 50" pages that don't generate a a substantial number of links. And to explain why, I'll pose a hypothetical.

Is link juice zero-sum?