By: Dominic Jones    Related: Boost your site's profile with inbound links

RECENTLY, I stumbled upon a 22-page brochure published by Thomson Financial offering advice to companies on how best to use the Web in their investor relations programs. For a marketing piece, the booklet is good, but one thing in it really caught my attention for the superficial thinking it betrays.

According to the booklet, one of the 10 best practices for IR websites is that companies should not link users away from their IR websites. This, according to Thomson, is because you run the risk they won't come back to your site and that they will find inaccurate or misleading information.

Thomson Financial says you want to "retain control of our message." If people stay on your site, "you have the opportunity to learn more about your investors for example: what are they accessing and downloading, who's signing up for e-mail alerts or listening to your webcast."

While the folks at Thomson Financial dish out some good tips, their advice in this particular case is simplistic and should not go unchallenged. Furthermore, their warning against outbound links is self-serving because Thomson has a vested interest in companies not linking to third-party resources.

However, the real problem is that the many companies that likely will follow Thomson's advice will be doing both themselves and investors a disservice.

These guidelines discuss the pros and cons of linking away from your site, provide examples of companies which use outbound links to good effect, and explain how to write and format effective links to external content.

More