Importance of external links for SEO, do outbound links affect SEO?

Have you considered outbound link SEO?
Should you add links to external websites?
Will it improve your SEO?

Have you ever thought about why it is so important to get high-quality outbound links from your website, or wondered how to generate these links?

Note: External links and outbound links are the same thing. In this article, I may use the two words interchangeably.

Since we live in the post-Panda era, I offer this article to help you understand the importance of outbound links for SEO .

We’ve already discussed how to create backlinks for your website , which will ultimately help improve your search engine rankings, but at the same time, you should consider an outbound linking strategy to ensure that your blog never loses value.

What are outbound links?

Outbound links are links that point from your website to other domains.

When you link to relevant domains, it not only helps search engines understand your niche but it also helps improve the trust and quality of your website, which plays a vital role in your blog’s SEO.

Outbound links:

Give search engines a clear idea of your blog through relevant links.
Provide the best way to keep in touch/build relationships with bloggers in the same niche.

Benefits of outbound links from an SEO perspective:

Before I describe the general benefits of outbound links, I want to introduce you to the Google-related link operator (which has been deprecated).

Just like other operators in Google search, you can use Google's related links operator to see which links Google considers to be relevant to your website! A good related sites link will list all the important and popular websites in your industry.

FYI, even comment links count as related links and if someone comments on every article published on your blog, he might even see the benefit of being recommended as a related website.

You can search "related:(your domain name).com" in Google to view related website links.

If you check the relevant links of your website and find some spammy links as relevant links, it means you need to start building links from relevant websites to send good signals to search engines.

Now that you have a basic understanding of why outbound links are so important, let’s look at what you should consider when building outbound links.

Link to related pages!

Many users avoid adding links in their content, thinking that it will take away their visitors, but this is not the right approach. When you start linking to relevant websites in your industry, you are basically telling search engines more about your content, which creates a connection between your website and other websites.

Try to link to blogs that have the same topic as your blog. This will help you attract targeted visitors to your blog. Try to link to domains that are already trusted and have good domain authority.

Avoid link farms

Avoid two-way backlinks and when you link to any domain, make sure it is not a part of a private blog network. As per the recent Google Penguin update, Google has shut down all such private blog networks and reduced the value of their links.

Avoid having too many outbound links

Having some inbound links is fine, but too many outbound links can be annoying from a reader’s perspective.

Try to focus more on internal linking (part of Wikipedia's SEO strategy) and only link to a few sites that are relevant to your pages.

Link to fewer blogs and only link to relevant blogs. Some pages link to other similar pages such as "Top 101 Websites" or "20 Forums Worth Watching" and still rank highly despite using multiple outbound links. But in general posts, we should be careful not to link too much for a better reader experience.

Most importantly, make sure your content is useful and pay attention to on-page optimization.

Providing and requesting links

In blogging, using a reciprocity system is good for everyone. If you reference another author's blog post in your blog post, you should provide a link in the post.

You can take it to the next level by making them known to the blogger/website owner you are linking to.

Who should you link to?

There are several strategies you can follow to build links.

My advice is that when you want to give a reference or explanation in your post, but you are not entirely sure where to link (what information to point to as a reference), you can link to a good resource like Wiki. (Yes! From Google POV, Wikipedia is still one of the most trusted domains!)

Here are some suggestions for creating outbound links:

Link to pages that are truly valuable and cover the topic well.
Link to articles that have good page authority or domain authority.
Link to articles that have a high number of social media shares. (But also consider other factors, such as the authenticity of the site)
Linking out to bloggers in your network or niche helps you create a community with other bloggers.

A long-standing strategy we have at ShoutMeLoud is that when we use a word that is useful but readers may not be familiar with the meaning, we link to a good, reliable source, or if we have a post on the topic, we link to that post.

Keeping in mind the bounce rate, always try to open outbound links in a new tab.

Also in this post-Panda world, I’ve noticed that most of the top-ranking pages in Google have at least a few outbound links to related and top-ranking pages, which helps boost their ranking.

Do outbound links affect SEO?

Earning links to your website from other authoritative sources is an important ranking factor that can help you rank higher in search results for keywords and phrases related to your business.

In fact, SEO experts agree that external links are the most important source of ranking power because search engines view them as a third-party vote for your website.

But do outbound links from your own site affect SEO?

A recent study conducted by marketing firm Reboot showed that a web page’s outbound links are positively correlated with its ranking in search results. Reboot posits that Google can determine the authority of a web page or website based on where it links to.

To conduct the experiment, the company created 10 new websites, each targeting the same keywords. However, only half of the websites included links to high-authority sources. All of the websites contained similar content and tag structure, but were different enough to avoid duplicate content penalties.

Reboot then monitored and recorded the keyword search results for five months. Every page that included outbound links ranked higher than pages without outbound links, and Reboot concluded that relevant outbound links pointing to authoritative websites have a positive impact on search rankings.

Although Reboot took as many uncontrolled variables into account as possible, there are still some questions that remain unanswered. For example, do linking to higher authority sources improve rankings more than linking to lower authority sources? What about follow links and nofollow links?

While there are still some questions that remain unanswered, this research seems to indicate that including outbound links to high-authority sites can help your SEO efforts. At the very least, it won’t hurt your SEO, so if you’re hesitant about linking to other sites, take these results into consideration.

Outbound Linking Best Practices

Next, we’ll cover some outbound linking tips that can help your website make the most of your SEO strategy.

Use descriptive anchor text

Anchor text is the underlined, highlighted text that you can click on to link to another page.

When creating outbound links, you should use descriptive keywords in your anchor text. You don’t want to use the same keywords every time, or you’ll run the risk of triggering spam detectors.

However, you need to use clear text to describe the topic or keywords that the target page contains. This will improve the usability for users and search engines.

Find Natural Link Opportunities

It’s generally not a good idea to create a resource page with a lot of outbound links because these links don’t come naturally to readers.

Instead, look for opportunities to include relevant outbound links directly in your content. For example, if you’re writing an article about a specific marketing tool, why not include a link to it? This is helpful to users and can help support your page.

You can naturally add outbound links on your web pages to explain technical references and provide additional perspectives. In addition, you can also link to authoritative resources that contain more useful information on a specific topic or help further illustrate a certain point.

You can also add links to statistics and studies that support your article.

Google began penalizing sites that contained unnatural or irrelevant outbound links. Google considered unnatural links to be an attempt to artificially boost the rankings of other sites, and therefore took “manual spam action” against the offending sites.

Webmasters are asked to remove suspicious links or add a nofollow tag to each link.

Avoid too many outbound links

While outbound links are certainly valuable, too many of them can be off-putting to your website visitors.

If you are adding external links to your web pages, you need to make sure they are helpful and relevant to your readers.

Adding links to your copy is basically telling the reader, "Hey! Stop reading and click here!"

Therefore, you need to be careful not to include too many outbound links that distract your readers and drive people away from your site.

When should you make outbound links nofollow?

Now, let’s look at when it’s appropriate to use nofollow links.

Generally speaking, you should use nofollow links if you don't want to pass ranking power (also known as link juice) to the page or site that the link is directed to. With nofollow links, you instruct search engines not to count links pointing to your page as "votes" for other pages or sites. In other words, the nofollow tag prevents credit from being passed to other sites that are linked to from your site.

Here are a few examples of when nofollow links are appropriate.

Comment

If you allow people to post comments on your site, you can expect them to drop links. This means they will add links to your site in order to gain link juice.

However, you may not want to endorse their website. Using the nofollow attribute, you can prevent search engines from following the link and passing value to the commenter's website.

User Generated Content

Likewise, if you allow people to contribute content to your site, they can include links to their sites in order to get link juice from your site. You can use nofollow links to prevent your site from passing credit to other sites that you don’t necessarily want to endorse.

Paid Links

Your website may have links to partner sites or sponsored content.

If you want to avoid passing credit through links that people buy on your site, simply use nofollow links. This will help you avoid looking suspicious in front of Google and can prevent you from getting an unnecessary penalty.

Embed

If you add widgets or infographics to your website from other sources, but don’t necessarily want to promote that content, you can make the links no-follow.

Basically, you use nofollow links when you are linking to other websites and want to avoid endorsing them.

If you found the information in this article useful, be sure to share it with your fellow bloggers and friends via LinkedIn and Twitter.

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