External links or outbound links direct visitors on a webpage to another website on the internet. Contrary to inbound links, outbound links direct your visitors to different websites. Backlinks to your website from another website are referred to as outbound links. Similarly, if your website links to another website, it is also called an outbound link.
Outbound links add more value than internal links because search engines give weight if a third party speaks about you. It increases the authority of your website as they are considered to be more credible sources. Additionally, manipulating external links is much harder. Hence, they are the best indicators for search engines to determine the relevance and popularity of a web page.
Types of Outbound Links
- No-Follow: Do not pass on ranking power to a website
- Do-Follow: Passes ranking power to a website
While each link by default is do-follow but creating a no-follow link needs adding a rel=” no follow” tag.
Do-Follow example: <a href=”http://www.yoursite.com”>Your Website</a>
No-Follow example: <a href=”http://www.yoursite.com rel=“nofollow”>Your Website</a>
Importance of Outbound Links
Outbound links are important for a website and some reasons that substantiate this fact are:
Improves Popularity
Google and other search engines try to list the most relevant results for specific search queries. External links play a crucial role to determine the popularity of a webpage. With more links pointing to a website from other sources, the popularity keeps on improving. Thus, it sends positive signals to the search engines and boosts the rank of a page in search results.
Boosts Relevance
External links help in the increasing relevance of a website. It acts as a positive tool to inform the search engine that the information you have featured is relevant and useful. Additionally, search engines use the anchor text as an indicator of the content featured on the target website or page.
Even the domain name besides the target and source page acts as helpful indicators to the search engines for relevance. As links point to related content, search engines are in a better position to establish knowledge hubs on the Internet. They are used for verifying the importance of a specific website or a page.
Builds Authority
The reputation of your website is immensely affected by better outbound links. Linking to spammy websites reflects a negative impact on your website as well. Clicking on such links and redirecting to a spammy website indicates that your website is connected to a spammy website. This is the reason why link farms or reciprocal link schemes are a bad idea as they can lead to penalties.
Similarly, sites having zero outbound links are not expected to gain much traffic. Such websites often end up appearing in unhelpful or inferior search results. It can negatively impact the rankings of your website in search results. Hence, it’s recommended that you link to relevant and high authority websites as it can boost your reputation and your website will gain more authority.
Enhances Value
Irrespective of the fact that you have a great website, it might not have relevant information that your visitors might be searching for. Linking to other helpful sources increases the value of a website and makes the experience of your visitors more rewarding.
Once visitors know that you publish and link to quality content, they would come again and again to your website. Eventually, as they see you as a more valuable source for specific information on the web, your website’s value is bound to get a boost.
Encourages Others To LinkBack
Linking to credible resources on the web encourages other websites to link to your website too. The practice acts as an indicator to people looking to participate in the natural linking environment.
Is SEO Affected Due To Outbound Links?
Getting backlinks from authority sources for your website can be a detrimental factor for your rankings. They help you to appear higher in search results for important and relevant keywords.
Most SEO experts believe that outbound links are an important source to boost rankings. It happens because search engines view them as third-party votes for a website.
Best Practices Of Outbound Linking
Below we have discussed some important things to consider when integrating outbound linking strategy to your SEO strategy.
Create Descriptive Anchor Text
The underlined text is the anchored text that is highlighted when you hyperlink and create an outbound link to another website. When creating these links, you need to use descriptive keywords as your anchor text. Refrain from using the same keywords repeatedly as it increases the risk of being reported as spam detectors.
Search For Natural Linking Options
Do not create resource pages containing outbound links as they might not appear natural to your readers. You should search for options for including relevant outbound links within your content.
Exceptions To Create No-Follow Links
- Comments
- User-generated content
- Paid links
- Embeds
For increasing your chances to rank higher for important keywords related to your business, you need to integrate the best SEO strategies. Outbound links are an important yet fragile strategy that has to be implemented in the right manner. Improper usage or integration could prove costly to your website.
In case you are searching for an expert to take care of your SEO strategies in Clearwater & Tampa Bay, FL, contact Affordable Dental SEO. They have a team of experienced professionals having the right knowledge to integrate the best SEO strategies for your website.