Do you get confused between “outbound link”, “backlink”, “external link” and “link anchor”? Or do you know what external links are, but aren’t sure how to define them and place them on your web pages? The integration of these outbound links is very important for Google, which analyzes the sources linked to your website. How do you know if an external link is good for your website? Putting a link here and a link there isn’t enough for SEO. Several criteria are evaluated by search engine robots when you add a link to a page. In this article, we’ll help you to better understand Google’s expectations regarding external links and how to define effective links.
What is an external link?
By definition, an external link (also known as an outgoing link) is a page link pointing to a page external to the domain, i.e. another website. For example, this link on attribute values is such a link. It points to a page on developers.google.com that explains how to add an attribute to your outbound links. But before you can talk about attribute values, you need to understand the role of these links. External links are most often used to cite a source, illustrate a point, detail a subject or give an example, as in the Google link above. Thanks to these links, your website is linked to other sites on the web. This allows :
- The Google bot continues to explore the web
- To remain natural, because a site that doesn’t make any outbound links isn’t natural.
- Google’s algorithms to better understand the site’s theme
- Add value to the content by offering the user the opportunity to delve deeper into the subject or to continue reading
- Network with other website owners and increase the likelihood that the random surfer will return to your site
- And thus generate inbound links
Netlinking is all about backlinks, i.e. links pointing to a page on your own site. They’re an even more influential factor in your SEO, since they’re a vote of confidence from other websites. However, you can’t see them on any of your pages, and you don’t decide (directly, anyway) whether to include them.
Why are external links important for Google?
Understand that outbound links are not the most important SEO criterion. They are, however, very useful in enhancing the value of your content. And Google takes them into account. By adding relevant outbound links, you provide users with the resources they need, and point all search engines to credible sources. This has an impact on Google’s Quality Score. In fact, outbound links reinforce the relevance signals of your web pages as a whole. They add meaning and depth to your content, which is bound to appeal to readers looking for information. That’s why it’s so important to think carefully about outbound links as part of a website SEO strategy. (In our opinion, they’re indispensable!).
“The creation of links to other sites is a great way to provide value to users. Often, links help users find more, verify your sources and better understand how your content is relevant to the questions they have.” – John Mueller, Google employee
How to make a good SEO external link?
From experience, we know that it’s better to bank on a few quality outbound links than a large number of non-SEO optimized outbound links. If your web page contains too many, Google’s algorithm may consider your content to be at risk and blacklist it. For good SEO, therefore, you need to use external links sparingly. Think about it: an outgoing link is considered relevant if it :
- Use appropriate anchor text to tell Google what your page is about and where it’s going.
- Points to a page related to the subject (and useful, of course)
- Points to a website page with a good Authority Score
- Points to a page on a site that doesn’t belong to you (managed by the same IP address, for example)
- Points to a page with few backlinks
- Obviously, points to a working page (no 404 error, for example)
- In the case of a link image: contains a logical Alt tag (properly describes the image)
Please note that there are two types of inbound/outbound links: “no follow” links and “do follow” links. Links with the nofollow attribute are not followed by indexing robots. An
outgoing “no follow” link is defined by a code such as: <
a
rel=”nofollow” href=”https://doingenia.com/blog”>Blog de Do Ingenia<
/a
>
This is the advantage of the “rel” attribute values mentioned above. For example, you can use the rel no follow attribute to keep only quality outbound links. Although it’s even better to remove these links, since Google takes them all into account.
Preconceived ideas about external links
Waste of time, neutral impact on SEO, difficulty in analyzing their impact… We regularly hear a lot of ideas about outbound links. Let’s focus on the ones that raise the most questions.
“Putting outbound links lowers my PageRank”.
This is the biggest misconception about outbound links. Many webmasters and site publishers believe that outbound links cause them to lose popularity. But the opposite is true. Have you ever heard of the famous “reciprocal links” banned by Google? If Google doesn’t tolerate them, it’s because they are highly effective in multiplying the page rank of two pages. To find out more, we leave you with Sylvain Peyronnet, the best expert in the field.
“I don’t need to optimize outbound links if I have a backlinks strategy.”
That’s what our customers often think when we talk to them about netlinking strategy. But it’s completely false. In a test published by the Reboot website, it was proven that sites offering quality outbound links are more likely to achieve top positions in search engine results. Backlinks aren’t enough.
“You need to add a lot of quality external links to reference a page well.”
That’s not true. The more outbound links you have, the more likely it is that a link will be lost among all the others. Quality or not. To understand the value of your external link, Google prefers it to be isolated. So select only a few outbound links relevant to your page. They will be all the more evaluated by the search engine robots.
“I can use a single link anchor to position myself on a theme”.
Also false. The anchor, which designates the visible text of the link, must contain keywords related to the destination page. If your links are defined by the same anchor, then you’re not indicating any difference between the pages pointed to. Google’s Penguin algorithm filter penalizes this kind of practice. It prefers links to be placed “more naturally”.