Google was recently granted a new patent on November 16th that outlines a system designed to grade the resources that a page links out to. This means that in the future the quality of your content will be determined by all the factors you're currently familiar with (uniqueness, freshness, keywords, social signals, author rank, etc) AND the quality of resources you link out to.

In this department, less is always more. With any good resource you want to have a few solid outgoing links pointing to additional resources on your site or to an authority in your industry. A piece of content with 20 outgoing links to affiliate sites will not rank as well as one with a few links to sites with authority that are a benefit to the visitor.

You need to treat this patent as a glimpse into the future of Google's algorithm. Be careful who you link out to and when given the choice go with the site that has more authority and more social interaction. At first this may seem like a bit of a stretch, but before long the reachability of the resources your content links out to will be a serious Google ranking factor.

Brought to you by the experts at SearchEngineNews.com who have had their finger on the pulse of the SEO industry for 16 years. Reading every mainstream blog, talking with industry insiders and separating what works from what doesn't - ALL so you don't have to. Learn more and qualify for a FREE copy of our award winning SEO Book today!