You can read that post here: http://www.mastersitemanager.com/882/seo-monitor-outbound-link-tracking/

Now when we released this feature we strongly suggested how important this little number could be. Not know how many outbound links your site has is a disaster waiting to happen. And why paying attention to the Outbound Link Tracking feature of our SEO monitoring software is so important.

In a nutshell – If you see the number of outbound links on your site jump dramatically, (upwards of 200-300 over night) check the source code of your site ASAP!

It’s likely that a hacker has managed to get in and plant links to his porno / casino / sex drugs web sites.

What happens in cases like this is that at first Google will depress your rankings because your site is linking to “Bad Neighborhoods”.

Then after a period of time (Google won’t say how much – but we are thinking 60-90 days based on what we’ve seen) if you don’t correct the issue, Google will just de-index your site altogether. Ouch!

Here’s an example how bad the problem is with blogs like Word Press.

If this happens to you, it is correctable but it’s a huge pain in the you know what as you’ll have to go in an modify the WP database table. Restoring the blog/site from a backup won’t fix the problem in most cases.

But we found a very good explanation on how to clean your blog “IF” you’ve been hacked. Here’s another great WP hack prevention resource.

Now why would I say your account has been hacked?  Good question…. The answer will surprise you.

We recently did a maintenance  survey of the sites using MasterSiteManager.com for their SEO rank tracking and monitoring. And what we found was shocking even to us!

Almost 1 in 50 client sites that we monitor on MasterSiteManager shows that they have  over 200 outbound links on them (in other words – they got hacked).  1 in 50! Wow!

But that’s also a pretty good indication of how wide spread and prevalent the issue is on blogs all over.

So I urge you to login in to your MasterSiteManager account right now and check the outbound links for each of your sites.  After all, you can’t fix a problem you don’t know you have.

Knowing EXACTLY how many outbound links your site has isn’t just about SEO, and funneling page rank anymore.

When hackers break into your site they are far more likely to hide links on home page to game the search engines than do much of anything else like messing with your homepage, planting a Trojan or crashing your server/site.

If you’re not constantly checking the HTML code of your home page you will have no idea that you’re a victim of link spam.

To make matters worse if you don’t catch it soon enough, there is a VERY GOOD possibility that Google will ban you from their search results for linking into hundreds of “Bad Neighborhoods”.

Sure you can fix it (if you find it that is) and reapply for readmission into Google, but what a huge pain and waste of time.

The good news is hackers are pretty greedy and if they’ve taken the time to break into your site, they usually don’t just post 1 or 2 links – they post hundreds!

But now (in addition to all the other great stuff it does) Master Site Manager SEO monitoring software tracks the number of outbound links coming from each of your sites – and in effect, giving you an ‘early warning” that you’ve been hacked!

For example, if you see the number of outbound links on your site jump to 200 or 300, check your site ASAP -  it’s likely that a hacker has managed to get in and plant links to his porno / casino / sex drugs web sites.

Here’s an example how bad the problem is with blogs like wordpress:

http://www.backup-technology.com/hundreds-of-uk-government-school-university-websites-hacked/

The second reason we added “Outbound link tracking” to Master Site Manager is as an assistance tool for building your own link network.

If you have a site with a high number of outbound links on it you need to remember that each of these links will have less power than if it had only 3 or 4 outbound links.

You may want to work at lowering the number of outbound links on the site (or at least your home pages) so that its links to your “money” site have more power in them.

Now there is nothing else you need do in order to add “Outbound Link Tracking your account. Master Site Manager will automatically track this for you just like it does for all your other SEO Tracking Stats.