What are External or Outbound links?
External links also called Outbound links are the links that point from your website to other external websites.
As SEO experts we know that just like regular backlinks, neither all external links are good nor are all of them bad.
We have to create them carefully and this post will help you correct your current external backlinks. It will also make sure that you don’t make the mistakes which many website do.
Are Outbound Links safe for my SEO
Google has since long maintained a clear and positive view for Outbound links. Even back in 2008 it mentioned in its Webmaster Central Blog post, “Outbound links allow us to surf the web — they’re a big reason why the web is so exciting and collaborative. Without outbound links, your site can seem isolated from the community because each page becomes “brochure-ware.” Most sites include outbound links naturally and it shouldn’t be a big concern.”
In another similar post Google mentioned, “consider outbound links as a common sense way to provide more value to your users, not a complicated formula.”
What are you saying? My SEO clearly mentioned that external links are bad for my search engine presence
Many SEOs concluded that either a website shouldn’t link out to other sites as they will harm the PageRank or else every outbound link should be nofollowed.
Contrary to this view there has been a lot of research which proves that websites judiciously linking out to quality pages are more likely to rank in top positions than ones that don’t.
However so, external linking has to be done with extreme caution.
The Rule of Thumb
When it comes to creating external links, the rule of thumb is to create relevant outbound links that will provide your visitors in-depth information about similar topics or offer them unique commentary on existing resources.
As SEO experts we always recommend creating quality outbound links but do ensure that they don’t reduce your site’s credibility.
How to identify the bad external links
Websites link out to other websites so often that linking out just seems to happen naturally. So if you are worried that your outbound links could cause a problem with your SEO, here are some tips and types of links that you should watch out for. Fix them as soon as you find them in your website.
1. Broken links – Broken links, whether external or internal, leaves a very bad impact on your website’s user experience. Broken links are also bad for your SEO as they are a sign of a poorly maintained site.
Fixing them is rather simple all you need to do is correct the linked URL, that’s it. Finding them is the tougher task. So here are some tools that can help you find Broken Links:
- Ahrefs
- Online Broken Link Checker
- Dead Link Checker
- Google Search Console
- Power Mapper
2. Blog Commenting – Blog comments are often spammed by SEOs and other similar users. Comment spammers try to create links back to another website.
Make sure that spam comments aren’t published on any of your posts. If by mistake you aren’t able to check all comments before they are getting published, as a rule of thumb do ensure that you are using the nofollow attribute for blog commenting.
3. User generated content – Article publishing, Guest posting and Forums are common examples of user generated content that are created for the purpose of building backlinks and are also the most trending form of link schemes.
Again make sure that you have a rigorous publishing process that secures you from the spammers and don’t forget to use the nofollow attribute for any backlinks.
4. Embedded content – Sometimes embedded content such as widgets and other resources have links to other sources. Don’t forget to use nofollow in such scenarios.
5. Links to sites with Spammy links – This one is simple don’t link to spammy websites as sooner or later you would be regarded as being a part of their neighborhood.
This can have a huge detrimental impact on your search engine presence as Google takes this very seriously. Make use of the following tools that will help you analyze whether the linked domains are spammy or not:
- Ahrefs
- Link Diagnosis
- Advanced Link Manager
- Backlink Watch
- CognitiveSEO
- Link Research Tool
- Majestic SEO
- Monitor Backlinks
- Open Site Explorer
6. Links to irrelevant sites – When creating external links always stick to the topic which you are covering. If you regularly link to irrelevant sites, again your website will be negatively affected by such links. Not only that it’s equally bad for your user experience.
7. Sponsored Content – Always use the nofollow attribute when you are linking out through paid ads or even if you are a blogger reviewing a product.
8. Site-wide Links – Any site-wide link is an essential element of your link architecture. Always be very careful when it comes to site-wide links that are outbound. While links to Social media profiles, places where you were recently featured or to a sister concern is perfectly normal, site-wide external links that have keyword rich anchor text, is a sponsored ad without being nofollowed or is part of your main navigation, are a clear red signal and should be tackled at the earliest possible.
9. Links to Non authoritative websites – This one is pretty easy, don’t link to non-authoritative websites. But how do you know which sites are Authoritative websites and which ones aren’t. It simple, use one or more of these specialized tools to find external backlinking domains for your website and then sort the domains according to their score in descending order.
Remove external links to those website domains that have low value. Here is a list of some tools that can be helpful in the link analysis process:
- Ahrefs
- Link Diagnosis
- Advanced Link Manager
- Backlink Watch
- CognitiveSEO
- Link Research Tool
- Majestic SEO
- Monitor Backlinks
- Open Site Explorer
We are a global SEO Company and offer all sorts of SEO Services. External Link Analysis is an essential part of our Premium SEO Packages.
We understand the importance of SEO for your marketing and branding. Our Link Analysts are the best and we use the best cutting edge technology to external link analysis.
We strictly follow White Hat SEO methods. If you book any of our Premium SEO packages, we will regularly review your external as well as other backlinks to make sure that you only have the best backlinks for your website.
it is important to try to stay updated as far as new SEO are concerned. The off-page elements of website promotion and SEO are just as important. The majority of issues with SEO is very basic and just takes time to be picked up on search engines. Web design and SEO are two very different disciplines, but a certain degree of collaboration is required. It’s easy to see why effective SEO are now very much in demand. Black hat SEO is techniques used to trick or manipulate search engines for higher rankings. If done properly, the results of your SEO efforts are very impressive. Those who practice what some refer to as “ethical” and “correct” SEO are called White Hat SEO’s. The most important for SEO is to follow the rules and you won’t have anything to worry about.
So true. But the biggest problem of Black Hat SEO is that they aren’t future proof. We have seen enough black hat techniques getting hammered by Google and that’s the real problem. Something that worked yesterday suddenly stops working the next day, which is a much bigger issue, because websites, their complete infrastructure and people behind them depend on the organic traffic which SEOs work hard to achieve.
Parasite backlink SEO works well 🙂