What is an external link? Boost rankings with quality outbound links

Many people think that adding a lot of External Link to a website weakens the page's SEO strength and ranking. That isn't necessarily true. If you use outbound links strategically and well, your site not only improves SEO, it also builds a strong, quality private blog network (PBN). So what is an external link and what is the effective way to use it? Find out in the article that MONA Media brings you today.

What is an external link?

An external link is also called an outbound link or link out. External links create links from your website to another website.

External link code: <a href=”http://www.external-domain.com/”>Link Anchor Text</a>

• “https://www.external-domain.com/” is the URL of the external destination page you want to point to
• “Link Anchor Text” is a piece of text or a keyword that you place the outbound link in.

These external links have a big effect on page rankings, and on site trust. SEOers doing on-page SEO need to study many external link techniques to optimize the site as well as possible.

Basic purposes of external links

Placing quality outbound links serves three main purposes:

• External links verify information: For this purpose, external links point to accurate, previously established content on websites of reputable organizations.
• Link out to add information: You give information A, which relates to information B. You insert a link in the anchor text pointing to information B on another site. Users can easily expand their search with accurate, necessary information.
• Outbound links explain information: For example, you write about Vinfast cars using engines from well-known manufacturers. You can link in the anchor text to sites about engines from those famous brands.

External link vs. internal link vs. backlink

Besides external links, throughout the whole process of SEO Onpage for your website, you'll also “run” into two other kinds of links Backlink and Internal link. All three link types matter for raising rankings and optimizing search, and each has its own traits. MONA compares them in detail in the table below so you can use each one for the right purpose at the right time: 

Notable benefits of outbound links

Outbound links (external links) directly affect the quality and trustworthiness of a website. As mentioned, this is an important criterion Google uses to rank your site. Used well, outbound links bring you more benefits than rankings alone.

Gives users useful information

One article may not provide enough convincing information. External links help readers understand your knowledge more deeply and widely. This makes the article truly useful to readers, rather than written only for SEO.

Builds credibility with users

The best external links come from reputable sites with genuinely useful content, and they make your arguments more convincing. They also help readers trust you, value your expertise and stay longer. They may even visit your site regularly to find more knowledge.

Improves rankings on search results pages

Google puts the experience of people using its search engine first. One factor in judging that experience is how external links are declared, since they bring genuinely useful information to customers.

Make sure the articles on your website carry quality outbound links that are truly useful to readers. That way both sides benefit:

• With Google, you improve your chances of ranking high.
• With readers, your article is genuinely useful, so they like it, stay, even return many times and take conversion actions.

“Do links to other sites weaken my site?” Almost everyone who does SEO has wondered. In fact, external links aren't bad if you understand how Google sees them. Google likes articles with evidence and reliable sources, and that's exactly what external links are. Watch this video to learn how to use them properly so you don't have to worry about losing your site's strength.

Drawbacks of outbound links

The benefits of external links are beyond dispute, which is why Google values them and why you're here learning about them. But like everything else, using external links to raise your rankings has drawbacks that can affect your site, such as:

• Linking to low-quality pages lowers your site's credibility and leaves readers with a poor impression.
• Linking out to a site that Google has penalized, or to an unrelated site, greatly raises the risk of dropping in rankings.
• Customers who click an outbound link to another site are unlikely to come back.

To avoid these risks, make sure the outbound links you use are reputable, high quality, relevant to what you share, and free of any negative signals from Google.

What makes a good external link?

An external link should meet these criteria:

• High trustworthiness.
• Frequently used by linking pages with high traffic cao.
• The outbound link should be relevant to the content of both the source and target pages.
• Quality, in-depth anchor text, and quality outbound links placed within the links.
• An ideal number of external links.

The role of external links in SEO 

External links play a vital, indispensable role in on-page SEO because a website's quality and credibility show through its external links, specifically:

Shows a page's popularity

Through the number and quality of external links pointing to a page, Google judges that page's popularity and credibility. These links are clear evidence that other sites recognize and share your content.

A website's traffic is usually seen as hard to measure accurately because it depends on many changing factors. External links, by contrast, are public and easy to record, so search engines can clearly determine a site's popularity. When a site gets many external links from reputable pages, it's treated as a trustworthy source of information and has a better chance of showing up in users' results.

Gives viewers relevant content

When you link to sites with relevant, quality content, you build a useful network of knowledge on the Internet. It gives readers more reference material, improves the user experience, and raises their trust and engagement with your site.

For example, if your article is about “external link”, linking to detailed, related articles on the topic helps readers understand more and gives them quality references. On the other hand, linking to unrelated content such as “how to cook sour soup” annoys users and lowers your site's credibility.

Always make sure the external links you use add value and relate to the main content, which optimizes SEO and improves the user experience.

MONA Media has a team of SEO experts with deep expertise who understand the industry and safe SEO rules. We're confident we can give you a SEO services full-scope plan that helps you build a link system, draw quality traffic and may help you increase revenue 300-fold. Please CONTACT US with MONA via hotline 1900 636 648 so our team of experts can support you a detailed SEO quote as quickly as possible.

How to use outbound links to build trust for your website

Using external links skillfully not only builds your site's credibility but also helps improve search rankings. It's an important SEO technique, especially useful for anyone starting out with SEO for beginners. Don't miss the detailed guide MONA has put together below to help you add and manage external links effectively and professionally.

Add external links with dofollow and nofollow tags

Before adding external links to your website, keep two small things in mind: 

• Link to sites with relevant content, and make sure they're reputable and high quality.
• Set rel=”nofollow” where needed.

In HTML, rel is an attribute that defines the nature of each link. There are two attribute values Googlebot can understand and crawl:

• Link rel=”dofollow”: By default, when you insert a link, search engines treat it as a dofollow link, meaning the bot follows the link to collect data. A dofollow link passes SEO strength from your page to the target page.
• Link rel=”nofollow”: When you don't want search bots to follow certain links, you can use the rel=”nofollow” attribute. Googlebot will then ignore the link, which keeps your page safe when it links to a low-quality or penalized site.

You can set rel=”nofollow” on an external link by:

You can also use plugins that insert dofollow and nofollow automatically for easier management.

Things to note when managing external links 

Managing external links is an important part of keeping a site's quality and credibility. These links can come from many sources, such as user comments or paid ads. To make sure external links don't hurt your site, you need to make sure that:

• Outbound links created from user comments 

A comment section increases engagement, but it also risks spam if not controlled. Moderate comments that contain links and add rel=”nofollow” to those links so they don't pass SEO strength.

• Outbound links from paid ads 

Ad links can bring income but can also annoy users. To avoid that, be clear with users that it is advertising content. Make sure ad links also carry rel=”nofollow”.

How to remove an external link from your website

When inserting an outbound link, it's best to add rel=”nofollow” so you don't pass your site's strength to other sites, and to reduce spam.

If you need to remove an outbound link, follow these steps:

• Step 1: Log in to your website's admin area.
• Step 2: Go to the admin page of the page that contains the external link you want to remove.
• Step 3: Hover over the anchor text containing the link you want to remove, then highlight it or click it.
• Step 4: Find the link icon in the editor toolbar and remove it. Alternatively, you can delete the external link directly in the source code (if you know how to code).

Things to note when creating external links

To get high-quality outbound links, keep the following points in mind:

• Use a variety of external links from reputable sources.
• Choose suitable anchor text and vary it across your links.
• Don't point too many links at the same page.
• Put quality before quantity when it comes to external links.
• Only add outbound links that are relevant to your content.
• Check how trustworthy and well known a domain is before you link to it.

8 types of links to avoid as external links

Linking to poor-quality external sites can seriously hurt your website and your SEO results. Check the quality and reliability of every external link carefully.

Remove any of the following 8 types of external link right away:

External links placed in lists

You can put outbound links at the end of an article that contains an embedded list, but not inside the list itself. Embedded lists are meant for direct information and internal navigation.

Links to personal biography pages

Personal biography pages often raise doubts about authenticity. Make sure any biography page you link to is genuinely reputable.

If you can't verify the source of the page, don't cite it. The standard for a biography page used as an external link should be higher than for other articles.

Links to sites that require registration to view information

Avoid adding quality external links to pages that require registration or payment to see the information, because most users won't do it.

The exception is when the main topic of your article is a reference document that must be cited. Even then, make sure the source is authoritative, high-quality and official rather than somebody's blog copy.

Links to non-Vietnamese content

The unwritten rule is not to link out to non-Vietnamese sources. Prefer links to Vietnamese sites so readers can understand them quickly.

In some cases you can still add a simple outbound link to a foreign site, such as:

• The official website has no Vietnamese version, or you want to link to articles in their original language.
• The site offers visual tools such as maps, charts or diagrams that are easy to understand without Vietnamese.
• Multilingual reference materials.

Links to redirect pages

Links to pages that redirect to other URLs are treated as spam and are often used by spammers. Never use outbound links like these, which can easily hurt you.

Media-rich websites

Think carefully before adding outbound links to media-format pages, because they often don't work across different user setups and browsers.

Some media pages rely on platform plugins such as Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight. So keep these points in mind:

• Avoid links to any content that needs special software or a browser add-on to view.
• If a page plays audio automatically when users visit, add a {{plays audio}} note as a courtesy so readers aren't surprised.

Stick to external links in these formats:

• text/html
• text/plain
• application/xhtml+xml
• other xhtml content types

Links to user-submitted video sites

There is no outright ban on YouTube links or other user-submitted video sites, but linking to them has to follow certain rules.

Videos on YouTube and similar sites can't meet all the standards for external links, and they also raise copyright issues. If you use them, check first which extra software readers would need.

Don't pile up too many sources behind a single point

If your article makes several points, don't give one point far more supporting links than the others. Keep the number of external-link sources balanced across points, so no point is treated unfairly.

The best tools for checking external links on your website

Checking the external links on your website is an essential part of SEO optimization. Here are two leading tools for checking external links: 

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of the SEO tools is one of the most powerful and popular tools, letting you analyze your website's external links in detail. To check external links with Ahrefs, follow these steps:

Step 1 – Open Ahrefs: First, log in to your Ahrefs account. If you don't have one yet, you can sign up to use it.

Step 2 – Enter the website URL to check: In the search bar on the main screen, enter the address of the website whose external links you want to check.

Step 3 – Select “Linked domains”: In the left-hand menu, scroll down and select “Linked domains” to see the list of domains your website links to.

Step 4 – Review the external links: The results show the domains your website links to, with details such as the authority score (DR), the number of outbound links pointing to each domain, and the dofollow/nofollow attribute.

Step 5 – Look at each link in detail: Click the down arrow next to each domain in the Links from target column to see the pages that contain external links, the specific links and their anchor text.

Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is a versatile SEO tool that crawls your whole website and gives detailed reports on external links. To check, follow these steps:

Step 1 – Enter your website in Screaming Frog: Open Screaming Frog, enter the website address or link whose external links you want to check in the search field, then click “Start”.

Step 2 – View the crawl results: After you click “Start”, Screaming Frog starts crawling the whole website and shows the results in a table.

Step 3 – Check the external links: Click the External tab to see all of the website's external links. You'll see details for each link, including the URL of the page containing it and the URL of the target page.

Step 4 – Export the report: To download the list of external links, click “Export” and save the report to your computer, so you can review and manage your external links easily.

Top 5 trusted outbound link sources for SEO

Outbound links are an important SEO strategy that builds your website's authority and trustworthiness. Don't miss the five reputable outbound link sources below when looking for the right ones:

Government websites

Government websites are regarded as the most official and reliable sources of information. Linking to them not only builds credibility but can also improve your site's SEO ranking. Reliable, up-to-date government sites in Vietnam include:

• Government Web Portal 
• Government Inspectorate
• Commission for the Management of State Capital at Enterprises 
• Government Online Newspaper 

Non-profit organization websites

Well-known non-profits with national or international reach are very reputable sources for outbound links. Users tend to trust these sites because of their socially beneficial activities and goals. Examples of non-profit websites in Vietnam:

• Social volunteer organization
• Education volunteer organization
• Non-profit of Vietnamese students in the United States

Education websites (.edu)

Education sites with a .edu domain are seen as reliable, reputable sources. Linking to them can improve your SEO ranking and bring more traffic to your site. Typical reputable education sites in Vietnam include:

• Hanoi Department of Education and Training web portal
• Department of International Cooperation, Ministry of Education and Training
• Ministry of Education and Training

Keep in mind that not every .edu site has quality content. Check that the site's content is trustworthy before you link to it.

Websites of respected individuals in their industry or niche

Linking to the personal websites of respected industry figures is also an effective SEO strategy. These sites are usually run by well-known experts, and readers trust their content. For MONA, some reputable personal websites in marketing worth looking at are:

• Matt Cutts: The person who developed the first version of Google SafeSearch.
• Philip Kotler: The father of modern marketing and a leading expert in strategic marketing.

Industry-leading websites

Industry-leading websites are always the most accurate and detailed sources of information. Linking to them helps readers trust your content and improves Google's view of your site's reliability. Some of these sites offer in-depth, trustworthy knowledge that gives users more useful and accurate information.

Done properly, building external (outbound) links is an essential step that makes Google see your website as natural and highly reputable. Planning an outlink strategy isn't easy, though, especially for beginners. But don't worry, Entity Backlink Social SEO service of MONA Media is here to help you build up TRUST for your website as effectively as possible.

Entity Backlink Social SEO service MONA's clients will help you:

• Build a sustainable link building strategy.
• Improve keyword rankings.
• It increases your website's trust.
• Increase traffic to your website.

Act now and SIGN UP for the service to take your website to a new level!

Contact information:

• Address: 1073/23 Cach Mang Thang Tam, Tan Son Nhat Ward, Ho Chi Minh City
• Hotline: 1900 636 648
• Email: info@themona.global

FAQ

1- What are external backlinks?

External backlinks, also called inbound links, are links from another website pointing to yours. They are completely different from external links (outbound links).

2- What does an external link in a blog mean?

An external link in a blog is a link to another site, added to support the points made in a knowledge article.

That wraps up this article on What an external link is, and how to link out to build trust and rankings for your website. External links are an important part of your website SEO strategy, so don't skip building a quality set of them. We hope the information MONA shared here helps you add outbound links in a sensible, well-optimized way.

-> See also: What is PageRank? Why PageRank matters in SEO