Outbound Links: Why Using Them Benefits Your SEO Efforts

By: Chris Everett January 16, 2013

Historically speaking, search engine optimization (SEO) companies have spent countless hours building inbound links for their clients to help them develop higher natural search rankings.

It’s no secret that link building has forever been (and remains today) an essential strategy for achieving higher rankings, but one aspect about linking that often goes overlooked is the SEO value of linking to outside sources from your own website.

It’s a natural tendency for SEOs (and companies that do their own SEO in-house) to focus 100 percent on self-serving inbound and internal (cross-linking) linking, but the truth of the matter is it’s beneficial to include outbound links to other sites for a variety of reasons that benefit your SEO strategy.

Here are some things you’ll want to consider when thinking about whether to use outbound links in your web content:

Outbound Links Provide Further Resources for Site Visitors

No matter what your company would like to think, there are certainly other knowledgeable and reputable voices within your industry that could further educate your site visitors on subjects posted about on your site.

If you give readers the information they’re looking for on your site, and then further that by providing links to websites that support or supplement your content to enhance the visitor’s experience, you’ve gained a follower who will be a repeat visitor to your site. It’s also far more likely that the user will share your content socially, which has a significant impact on how well your content ranks organically.

It Boosts Your Credibility With Visitors (and Google!)

As mentioned above, providing your site visitors with outbound links to other resources has an impact on their user experience and your site’s credibility with them.

Moreover, outbound links to reputable, high-quality resources are also crawled and factored in by Google to determine the overall value (and rankings) for your web pages. The more legit you are, the more legit you appear to Google, and the better off you’re going to be organically speaking.

Be Mindful of Where You’re Linking To

The Internet is truly a living, evolving landscape. Things change – ALL the time. So if you’re providing outbound links to build more credibility for your organic SEO efforts, you’ll definitely want to check up on those links from time to time to see if they’re still relevant.

Check and make sure the web page you’ve provided a link to is still operational and still has the same topical content that made you link to it in the first place. Also be mindful about the reputation that the website you’ve linked to has. Make sure they’re not facing any penalties from the search engines, and that they aren’t linking to adult or gambling websites, as that can negatively impact the credibility you’re trying to build for your site.

Outbound linking is a powerful on many levels from improving the value of your website for users and helping them to get the information they’re searching for, but also has a direct impact on how well your site is valued (and ranked) by the search engines.

Chris Everett
Founder-In-Chief
A 15-year veteran in the digital marketing field, Chris Everett founded Captivate in 2009. Since then, he's used his deep SEO knowledge and understanding of multi-channel digital campaigns to develop Captivate's award-winning Search First® approach.

Read More

Leave a Reply

Share this

Related Articles

Agencies for Reproductive Rights
Captivate Becomes a Charter Member of Agencies for Reproductive Rights
Atlanta's Captivate joins Agencies for Reproductive Rights, a coalition of 30+ marketing agencies that stand up for a woman's right to choose.
Read More
How To Optimize Images To Improve Product Page SEO
How To Optimize Images To Improve Product Page SEO
For any e-commerce business competing in organic search results, optimizing images correctly is essential to generating unique, ready-to-buy, in-market traffic.
Read More
Ten-Step Technical SEO Checklist
Ten-Step Technical SEO Checklist
As Google continues to improve its search algorithm, technical SEO has seen the greatest change over the shortest period of time. Make sure your site is up to date.
Read More
Google Ads Same-Meaning Close Variants Now Applied to All Match Types
Google Ads Same-Meaning Close Variants Now Applied to All Match Types
Google Ads now extends same-meaning close variants to both phrase match and broad match modifiers; learn how to adapt your strategy here.
Read More
Link Building 101: How to Evaluate the Quality of Backlinks
Backlinks 101: Differentiating Between “Good” and “Bad” Links
Backlinks are one of the most important aspects of SEO and determining content rank, yet are often one of SEO's most overlooked and misunderstood components.
Read More
How Medical Practices Can Stay Compliant with Google Ads
How Medical Practices Can Stay Compliant with Google Ads
If you're using Google Ads for a medical practice, you may have seen your ads disapproved or your account banned due to a lack of awareness towards Google’s policies.
Read More
SEO Content Strategy: 5 Steps to Growing Traffic & Links Organically
SEO Content Strategy: 5 Steps to Growing Traffic & Links Organically
Whether for local businesses, online brands, business consultants or service providers, it’s no secret that content marketing is an extremely powerful tool for SEO.
Read More
How to Optimize PDFs for SEO
How to Optimize PDFs for SEO
In this process of optimizing PDFs for SEO, the core of our "optimization” ensures each document is keyword relevant and consistently aligned in all the right places.
Read More
Local SEO: Citations & Backlinks (And Why Your Business Needs Them)
Local SEO: Citations & Backlinks (And Why Your Business Needs Them)
Local SEO presents a unique challenge to even the most savvy marketers, considering several off-site factors to determine organic, local, and Google Maps rankings.
Read More
How to Get Products to Appear in Google Image Search
How to Get Products to Appear in Google Image Search
Related product images have started appearing in Google Image Search results, and they're not really ads. Discover how to effectively position your products.
Read More
Local SEO Near Me Optimization
How to Leverage “Near Me” Optimization for Local SEO
Origins of “Near Me” Searches for Local SEO In early January of 2017, Dan Leibson of Local SEO Guide put together a paradigm-shifting piece called “Near Me” Local SEO Ranking Factors. In his article, Leibson highlighted the upward trend in “near me” search queries. He pointed out specific examples of this profound trend like “restaurants near me,” “banks […]
Read More
SEO-Driven Online Reputation Management Strategies
SEO-Driven Online Reputation Management Strategies
From landlords investigating potential tenants to businesses evaluating prospective vendors, Google search engine results can define an entity’s online reputation.
Read More
Leverage Barnacle SEO to Bolster Your Local SEO Strategy
Leverage Barnacle SEO to Bolster Your Local SEO Strategy
Many local SEO strategies are available to the common search marketer, including barnacle SEO. Leverage this strategy to put your business in front of nearby clients.
Read More
Outbound Links: Why Using Them Benefits Your SEO Efforts
Logical Internal Link Building for SEO Benefits
Internal linking or cross linking of pages within your own website presents an excellent SEO strategy, keeping visitors on-site and connecting them to additional content.
Read More