What Are Outbound Links? Why Are Outbound Links Important?
What Are Outbound Links: I have written about inbound links or backlinks in this article which also explains why backlinks are important for Search Engine Optimization. Similarly, Outbound Links too are important. It may not be as important as inbound links, nevertheless, it helps in SEO indirectly. So, in this article, I will tell you what are Outbound Links and how to use them.
What Are Outbound Links?
There are two types of links:
- Internal Links, and
- External Links.
Internal Links are those which points to another page on the same domain or website. External Links, on the other hand, is the link between two different websites or domains.
External Links are again classified into two categories:
- Inbound Links or Backlinks: When other websites link to your website, it is called Backlinks.
- Outbound Links: When your website points to other websites, it is called Outbound Links.
Basically, Outbound Links take users out of your website, to some other websites. Now, why would you do that? Aren’t you supposed to get traffic to your website? Why would you direct visitors to your site to another website? We will see that in the next section.
Why Are Outbound Links Important?
Most of the top ranking blogs, you will see, have Outbound Links. According to this article, adding Outbound Links helps search engines to identify your niche better, i. e. it helps them to identify which category your website belongs to.
This makes perfect sense as the web is basically a network of pages linked to each other and crawlers move from one page to another through links.
There is a second advantage of adding Outbound Links. It helps your website to get discovered by other fellow bloggers and eventually, build relationships. Also, when you are adding Outbound Links, you are basically acknowledging the fact that someone has written a good article. This helps in building trust if seen from the perspective of your visitors. And if you direct visitors to other sites, you are likely to get benefited in the same manner.
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Outbound Links Best Practices
Now that we have established the importance of adding Outbound Links, let us look into the best practices involving them:
- Link to relevant posts. SEO, at the end of the day, is about relevancy. If you want Google to consider your website as relevant, you have to ensure that each and every element on your website is relevant. That includes Outbound Links as well. Since the idea is to tell Google what your blog is all about, you need to link to the relevant articles in your niche. Linking to, say a page about cars, when you write about education, will add no value.
- Link to authoritative websites. It is also recommended you link to relevant pages of authoritative and trusted websites in your niche.
- Do not add too many Outbound Links in a single page. As it is, having too many links in a page annoys readers, giving them an impression that you are desperate.
- Do not use nofollow tags unnecessarily. This is a question of principles. I think it is the right thing to do, to pass your link equity to a website that deserves it. Trust me, you are not going to waste it.
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I hope this article explains everything you wanted to know about what are Outbound Links. If you have any question regarding what are Outbound Links, drop a comment below. I will get back to you at the earliest.