In junior high, there were cliques — we all remember this. While you were in grade school, the cliques were there too, just not as pronounced as in junior high. In high school, everyone knew his roll and his clique. Just when you thought you were outta school, these fantastic games aren’t over!

Google knows your role, Google knows your clique — so you had better believe they’ll enforce it.

At this point, you might be crying to the Gods, “What does it all mean?!?!”

Never fear my friends; I’ll clue you in to the big G’s devious machinations consider SEO.

The Google Machine, like all good yard aides in junior high, likes to know what to expect out of groups. Yard aides liked to know that the stoners would hang out by the kickball fence, the jocks would hang out by the gym, the nerds would be by the library and the ‘cool’ kids were by the cafeteria. This way, if ever there was any indiscretion, they would know exactly where to look depending on the problem.

Google is the same way, it wants to know where to look. This is why if you run a website talking about football, you should link to other football sites. Run a site that talks politics? Link to other politicos!

Many people are afraid of linking out from their site because they’ll give away their precious, precious link juice. Come on people! Didn’t you learn anything in kindergarten? Sharing is good.

Link out to your clique, make some friends and then the Google Machine will know where you put you in searches.

Here’s the thing: Most people don’t want to link out from their website because they’re worried that it’s going to steal their link juice. They’re paranoid that they’re going to lose their precious juice. Oh, my precious. (Yes, obvious Lord of the Rings reference here.) Funny thing with this is that if you don’t link out, how are people going to know about you?

Seriously, are they going to happen upon you from Google randomly? Not bloody likely if you’ve just put up your site…thanks sandbox, you’re the best! You need to link out to sites to get noticed and get on the radar of Google (other search engines too, but Google’s the big beast on the block).

However, you should still be selective with who you link to, don’t just link to anyone. When you’re linking out, you should link to authoritative resource sites — meaning sites beneficial to your users. SEO is, fundamentally, all about the user experience.

Just like how a good report will cite its sources, if you know something will benefit your readers, link out to it! Once you do this, the people who you’ve linked to will see your link, visit your site and see what you’re doing. Worst-case scenario from that is that this person does nothing, no big deal; at least you got another viewer that day. Best-case scenario, this new viewer likes what you’re doing, becomes a loyal reader and maybe even link back to you.

That, my friends, is what link love is all about — you gotta give it to get it.