By Gaurav Sharma
There is a lot of high-quality content on the internet. You likely link to relevant web pages when you write an article. But have you ever wondered how these outbound links can impact the rankings of your website?
Of course, you already know that a better link profile can boost your search engine rankings. But you may be surprised to learn that outbound links can also help drive traffic to your site.
In this post, you will learn about some of the ways in which outbound links can impact your website rankings in the search engines.
1. They Help You Gain More Backlinks
When you use outbound links, they help you to develop and build relationships with other website owners in your industry. So, when you link out to other relevant sources, chances are they will share the content and boost your social signals. It’s also likely that they will link to your site in relevant articles.
This also indicates that you are interested to participate in the web’s natural linking environment. When more websites link to your content, it will help increase your search engine rankings. The higher your ranking, the easier it will be for people to find you.
2. They Improve Your Website’s Reputation
Outbound links can directly impact the reputation of your website. When you include outbound links to relevant sources with a high domain authority, it automatically gives you more credibility. This, in turn, improves your reputation.
However, if you link to spammy websites or web pages, it can negatively affect your website. The moment your audience clicks on the link and are directed to the spammy site, they will associate your website with spammy content.
And you don’t want that, do you?
Usually, people don’t necessarily have the time or patience to leave a site they’re currently on just to search for more information. So, by providing outbound links on your website, you are giving them more relevant information in one place. People can just click on the links and visit the relevant website to gain more information.
In addition to this, if you have zero outbound links on your website, it can also negatively impact your site. A web page with zero outbound links is like a research report without any references. The authoritativeness and credibility of your website and your claims will come into question.
This can then negatively affect your rankings on search engines. So, ensure that you always include links to relevant and high domain authority web pages in your content.
3. They Increase Your Relevance
Search engine algorithms gather a lot of information about your website from how you add outbound links and which websites you link to.
Your outbound links provide information about your industry, your competitors, and the problems you can solve. In fact, the outbound links on your web pages help search engines understand the relevance of your page to certain search queries.
This is crucial to search engines because they aim to supply relevant information to searchers. So, when you link to relevant sources on your website, it helps search engines understand your niche. It also increases your relevance in the niche and helps you gain the trust of your target audience.
When you provide backlinks to high domain authority pages, you also gain the trust of search engines. This helps you prove that you are a reliable and genuine player in your niche.
As a result of this, search engines will be more confident to serve your web pages among the top search results to their users. Consequently, this will improve your search engine rankings.
4. They Boost Your Value
Outbound links can also deeply impact the value and the rankings of your website. Links to relevant and high authority sites will help you stand out from your competitors. They will also instantly boost the value of your website, leading to an increase in your search engine rankings.
When you add relevant and high authority outbound links, it will encourage people to visit your website more frequently. That’s because you will be providing links to the best resources available on that particular topic.
This will also enhance the experience of your site visitors. Once they discover that you link to and publish quality content, they may consider your website as a valuable source of information.
Final Thoughts
Search engines consider outbound links as third-party endorsements of your website. Outbound links are also among the most ingenious methods to boost your search engine rankings. They directly and indirectly affect the rankings of your website in search engine results.
But make sure that you only link to relevant content from high domain authority websites. This will help you increase your reputation and boost the value of your website.
Do you know any other ways that outbound links impact search engine rankings? If so, please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.
Gaurav Sharma is the Co-founder of Attrock, a result driven Digital Marketing Agency. He’s a certified Google Analytics and Adwords specialist who regularly contributes to reputed publications like the Huffington Post, TechCrunch and many more. He leverages his experience and knowledge as a digital marketer to help influencers monetize their efforts and eCommerce and SaaS companies grow their revenues. When he isn’t inspiring his team of devoted individuals to achieve more, he can be found globe trotting, sampling all that the world has to offer. Linkedin; Instagram; Twitter; Facebook
Outbound links stock photo by ManeeshUpadhyay/Shutterstock
