Search Engine Optimisation Web Log (BLOG)
Editor: Matt Paines

| This News Blog is dedicated to bringing news, information and innovations targeting the Search Engine Optimisation industry.

BBC slammed over outbound links

The BBC is in the firing line yet again. Only this time it's SEOs, who are sticking their knives into the corporation's outbound link policy.
 
The BBC's drive to replace search engine friendly links with 302 redirects has been branded as selfish and greedy.
 
It has a powerful presence on the web, so getting an external link from its site is invaluable to a website's SEO. But external websites that have worked hard to deserve an outbound link from one of the most respected sites on the web are losing out on any SEO benefits.
 
This is because the BBC's deployment of redirect scripts, which has now been extended to its news pages, means that those links are unlikely to score well in Google's ranking algorithm.
 
However, several industry experts have been quick to defend the BBC, which is required by the BBC Trust to use some form of technology to monitor the popularity of external links.
 
They argue that without the measures companies could steal a march on their competitors by getting valuable Google juice from a state-funded institution that is supposed to be impartial.

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