What Is An External Link?

An external link is a hyperlink that points from one domain to another. In other words, when you create an external link, you’re directing visitors from your website to another website (or resource) on the internet. External links (also known as outbound links) are different from internal links, which point to web pages within the same domain. External links help users learn more about a specific topic, and search engines determine the most valuable pages on the web about that topic. The ranking algorithms deem websites that receive links from other websites important. Here we will explore What Is an External Link?

Can External Links Hurt or Benefit Your SEO?

External links can benefit SEO by improving the user experience. When you provide useful links to users that help them learn more about a topic, your website can be perceived as a resource or hub, which is beneficial for SEO efforts. Despite what you might read on the Internet, adding external links to reputable websites will not magically improve your rankings. You should link out only when it makes sense and it’s beneficial to your users.

Best SEO Practices for External Links

You should follow several best practices when adding external links to your website to protect your SEO reputation and maintain a high-quality website. The most important are:

1. Avoid Link Schemes

Link schemes are strategies employed by black-hat SEOs designed to manipulate a site’s ranking in search results. These include buying or selling links, excessive link exchanges (you link to my website, and I link to yours), and guest posting in exchange for links. When you get emails asking you to place links on your website, participate in a link exchange, or publish a guest post that contains external links, you should deny such requests and mark those emails as spam.

2. Use No follow Links Appropriately

When you want to link to an external website you don’t fully trust, you should use the no follow link attribute. No follow links tell search engines not to pass any link value to the linked site. Use the no follow attribute for ads, sponsored content, affiliate marketing links, and user-generated content (for example, links in the comments section). This practice helps you avoid penalties from search engines while providing valuable resources to your readers.

Here is an example of a nofollow link:

3. Optimize Your Anchor Text

Anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink. It should be relevant to the linked page’s content and provide context for both users and search engines. Avoid generic phrases like “click here” and use descriptive keywords matching the linked page’s content.

Here is an example of an optimized anchor text on an external link.

4. Regularly Check for Broken Links

Broken links can harm your site’s user experience and SEO. A broken link is when a hyperlink leads to a page that no longer exists or has been moved without a redirect.

This results in a “404 Not Found” error.

The screenshot below is from Semrush’s link report, which makes it easy to find broken links (internal or external).

5. Link to High-Quality, Relevant Sites

This is the most critical SEO practice for external links. External links should add value to your content by linking to authoritative, relevant sources. This improves the credibility of your content and helps search engines understand your site’s topic and relevance. On the other hand, linking to a random blog with no credentials on the same topic makes no sense and can diminish your content’s credibility. In general, avoid linking to low-quality or spammy sites, which can negatively impact your SEO.

6. Open External Links in a New Tab

This is not super important, but a good practice to follow. When adding external links to your content, set the links to “open in a new tab”. This way, the link will open in a new browser tab, keeping your website open and increasing the chances of users returning to it. It is also beneficial for users by allowing them to explore additional resources without navigating away from your site.

You can do this by adding the target=”_blank” attribute to the hyperlink, as shown below.