How Outbound Link Improves Your SEO – External link SEO Benefits

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outbound link seo benefits
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  • Have you ever thought about outbound link SEO?
  • Should You add a link to external sites?
  • Will, it improve your SEO?

Have you considered why it’s important to have quality outbound links from your website or wondered how to produce them?

Note: External links and outbound links are the same. I may be interchangeably using both the words, in this article.

Because we’re working in a post-panda world, I’m offering up this post to help you understand the importance of outbound links for SEO.

We have already talked about how to create backlinks to your website which will eventually help in increasing the search engine ranking, but at the same time, you should consider employing an outbound link strategy to make sure your blog is never devalued.

Outbound links are links that point to some other domain from your site.

When you link out to related domains, it not only helps the search engine to understand your niche, but also helps to increase the trust and quality of your site which plays a vital role in your blog’s SEO.

Outbound links:

  • Give search engines a clear idea about your blog because of relevant links.
  • Offer the best way to be in touch/build relation with bloggers having the same niche.
Outbound Links
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Before I describe the general benefits of outbound links, I’d like to introduce you to the Google related link operator. (This one is depreciated).

Like any other operator in a Google search, you can use Google’s related link operator to see what links are relevant to your site according to Google! A good related site link for your site will list all of the important and popular sites in your niche.

FYI, even a comment link is counted as related links, and if someone is commenting on every post published on your blog, he may even see the benefit of being featured as a related site.

You can search for “related:(your domain name).com” in Google to see related site links.

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If you check related links for your site and find some spammy links as relevant links, that means you need to start building links from relevant sites to give a good signal to search engine.

Read our guide on: Blog Comments: When are they Useful and When are they Harmful?

Now that you have a basic idea of why your outbound links are so important, let’s look at the things you should consider when linking out.

A lot of users avoid adding links to their content thinking it would take away their visitors, which is not the right approach. When you start linking to relevant websites in your niche, you basically tell search engines more about your content and it creates a connection from your website to others.

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

Avoid two-way backlinks, and when you are linking to any domain make sure it is not a part of a private blog network. Following recent Google penguin updates, Google has been taking down all such private blog networks and devaluing their links.

Having some links pointing out is fine, but having too many outbound links can be annoying from the perspective of your readers.

Try to concentrate more on internal linking, (part of Wikipedia’s SEO Strategy), and link out to only to some websites that are relevant to your page.

Link to fewer blogs and only to relevant blogs. There are some pages that link out to, for instance, “The Top 101 Websites” or “20 Forums to Follow” and other similar pages that rank well despite using multiple outbound links.  But in general posts, we want to take care not to link out too much for better reader experience.

Most importantly, make sure your content is useful, and take care of on-page optimization.

In blogging, it is beneficial to everyone to use the give-and-take system. If you have a blog post in which you refer to another author’s blog post, you should provide the link in your post.

You can take it to the next level, by letting the blog/website owner that you have linked to them.

To whom should you link?

There are many strategies that you can follow for linking out.

My suggestion is that when you want to give a reference or explanation in your post but you are not entirely sure where to link out (what information to point to as your reference) link to good resources such as Wiki.  (Yes! Wikipedia is still one of the most trusted domains from Google POV!)

Here are a few suggestions for creating outbound links:

  • Link to pages that actually add value and cover the topic very well.
  • Link to articles having good page authority or domain authority.
  • Link to articles that have got a high number of social media share. (Though do consider other factors like the authenticity of the site)
  • Link to the bloggers in your network or in your niche, helping you to create a community with fellow bloggers.

One strategy we have long employed here at ShoutMeLoud is that when we use words that are useful but their meaning may not be familiar to our readers, we link to a good and reliable source, or if we have a post on that topic, we interlink to that.

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

Also in this post-panda world, I have noticed that most of the top-ranking pages in Google have at least a few outbound links to relevant and high-ranking pages, which helps them to boost their ranking.

What’s your strategy for outbound links, and when do you use nofollow for them?

Also, do you care about anchor text when linking out to any other page?

How to build external links for SEO?

Always focus on linking your content to relevant, trustworthy, and authoritative websites within your niche, allowing your readers to understand more about the topic. A good example is linking to Wikipedia which is considered a credible source for the majority of topics.

How many external links per page?

There is no set number, but you should maintain a balance and avoid excessive external linking, which can distract readers. Focus on seamlessly integrating meaningful, informative external links that improve the reader’s experience and provide value to them.

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

Here are a few hand-picked guides for you to read next:

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

73 thoughts on “How Outbound Link Improves Your SEO – External link SEO Benefits”

  1. varyhelp

    I don’t know too much about outbound link-building, but it is really important for SEO. It’s very good and in-depth article about the outbound link that helps me a lot. But when you build links to the other website keep an eye on the relevancy, quality and beware about the link spamming.

  2. Muhammad Imran

    Hi, That is really a great post about outbound links. It helps me a lot to understand, How we connect with other blogs.
    Thanks

    1. Harris

      Really nice post. But do you use the same keyword that you are ranking for in the outbound link?

  3. Usman Ahmad

    Very nice information, I never thought that outbound links are that important. I usually add 2,3 links and with ref nofollow. Don’t now if thats a good practice.

  4. Actgeek

    I use to find it difficult to include outbound links in my post because i was afraid it might increase my bounce rate. But after reading this article, i understand it better. Thanks Ruchi

  5. Nishargo Nigar

    Great post. I knew outbound links are important. But after reading the post, I got many answers of my question.
    Thanks!

  6. Qweetle

    Great post, i was in a real dilemma about whether to go for outbound links are not as it will lead to loss of my visitors, but after reading this i realize the importance of it. I have one question for you, Is it necessary to outbound only relative domains or i can just outbound to any like wiki, its not a niche so can this be useful?

  7. Varun Sharma

    It is very heppfull blog for my SEO strategy. I was really very confused about the outbound links. My plug in asking me to add outbound links but some fellow’s saying no for that. But your blog helped me clearing my doubts about it. I am commenting on this on your suggestion that your comment on a relevant blog with your website link help in your reliability.

  8. Kimberly Esparza

    Outbound links indicate that you are at least citing your sources as any good researcher would do, eespecially if you are intending to produce quality content for your website. You must have sources.

  9. Greg Kapitan

    Thank you for posting this great article! I have included outbound links in my website that link to the heavier hitters in credible resources. It validates what you are saying when you have the most credible references in hot links with anchor text.

    Greg Kapitan

  10. Soumya Roy

    Relevancy is the most important thing to check before linking to an external domain page apart from their DA, PA and content quality.
    Apart from Related operator, we can use Inurl operator with keywords to find relevant external blog posts on a topic.
    Outbound linking is always a good strategy for building trust, community and relationships. Always recommended.
    Nice read @Harsh

  11. Akshay Hallur

    Great post.
    I didn’t know about related operator. Moreover it surprised me to see Labnol as related blog to SML.

    Coming to the mainstream,
    Matt Cutts said that having outbound links less than 100 is natural.
    As long as the sites that you are linking to are great blogs, then it should not hurt you. No matter whether it is dofollow or nofollow.
    Many of the blog aggregation sites like AllTop have more than 100 links. But it will now be a problem, because they aggregated, and are of high quality.

    Content curation is not bad as long as it does not hurt user experience.

    Cheers,
    Akshay Hallur.

  12. Rajat

    I totally agree with this. Giving outbound links is a good way to connect to website and blogs of similar niche. It gives a fair idea to search engines that what your article is all about. In addition to that you also get more visitors to your site.

  13. Pramesh

    How good are outbound links in terms of getting more clicks and increasing adsense earning?

  14. Jonny

    Great read. 99% of all link advice is about backlinks & inbound links. Me me me attitude. Thank you.

  15. Nancy

    Can somebody please tell me how websites like Pinterest and Wanelo manage their SEO. They are sending thousand external links to other related websites.
    Does google like these type of websites?

  16. yesblogger

    I think outbound links also encourage people at the receiving end to link back at you.

  17. Mohit

    I believe there is no formula on how many links but yes I feel that 2-5 inbound links and 2-5 links for outbound links for a page of 500-1000 words is a good idea.

  18. Emploi Au Maroc

    what I know is the outbound links must be very FEW.
    if you have many you will give a bad impression for SEO

    😀

  19. Lahiru

    Out bound links always good idea to stimulate search engines . Those out bound linking pages should need high Page authority or should be of high quality to get better results.great post and thanks for sharing

  20. Muhammad Qasim

    I always ingnored the importance of outbound links
    Nice tips Ruchi. Will consider all these points you’ve mentioned from now onwards 🙂

    1. NpXp

      It’s all about taking and never giving out when its necessary lol.

      This is the reason why bloggers fail to give out few valuable outbound links to others 😉

      I always give out credits and links on my blog wherever it is necessary 😉

      1. Ayush Chandra

        Agree with you on this post. But i have a little different question. Will we give priority to built outbound links below to our internal on-page links? Is it correct to built an quality outbound link (same link) again and again on different articles when needed?

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