[Question] Do outbound links help or damage SEO?

Hello,

I have been wondering, let's say I write a blog post about something and point links to a couple of natural sources of my data,
am I helping or damaging the SEO of my site with that?

And should I care if they are follow or nofollow links?


Regards,

4ry4n said:

Hello,

I have been wondering, let's say I write a blog post about something and point links to a couple of natural sources of my data,
am I helping or damaging the SEO of my site with that?

And should I care if they are follow or nofollow links?


Regards,

Click to expand...

No, you're not damaging the SEO strength of your website. I do think it actually has no real effect on how Google ranks your site.

You are not damaging the seo. It is required and this natural to have links pointing to other authority sites.

I don't know for sure. No one does. But if I had to guess Google probably uses them as relevancy indicators. As in to work out when you say apple are you taking about Apple Inc or apple the fruit. So not a direct ranking factor but it would help Google understand your content better.

4ry4n said:

Hello,

I have been wondering, let's say I write a blog post about something and point links to a couple of natural sources of my data,
am I helping or damaging the SEO of my site with that?

And should I care if they are follow or nofollow links?


Regards,

Click to expand...

The first and seo experiment I have read is about how authority outbound helps you to rank.

Here it is
https://www.rebootonline.com/blog/long-term-outgoing-link-experiment/
The case study needs to be redone to see the effect in this time 2022

P. S : I'm becoming old, this is like 6 years ago.

I always include an authority outbound link that is usually the top 3 in SERP ranking for whatever my target keyword is.

Just think, as a user it provides another resource (likely very relevant) and G likes to see users click outbound links read and see the user come back to the original article.

Its probably not mandatory to rank all the time, but I think 95% of the time you will see all the top sites in SERPs for most mid to high comp niche using outbounds strategically.

Castamir said:

The case study needs to be redone to see the effect in this time 2022

P. S : I'm becoming old, this is like 6 years ago.

Click to expand...

A comment from someone on that post.

Johnny • 4 years ago • edited
The ranking as of now 7/13/18 is as follow...
1. outgoing links
2. no outgoing links
3. outgoing links
4. no outgoing links
5. outgoing links
6. no outgoing links
7. no outgoing links
8. outgoing links
9. outgoing links
...and couldn't find #10

tidelow said:

I always include an authority outbound link that is usually the top 3 in SERP ranking for whatever my target keyword is.

Just think, as a user it provides another resource (likely very relevant) and G likes to see users click outbound links read and see the user come back to the original article.

Its probably not mandatory to rank all the time, but I think 95% of the time you will see all the top sites in SERPs for most mid to high comp niche using outbounds strategically.

Click to expand...

May I ask, you do link as normally right without a nofollow tag?

They are just useless links until they gets index , Try getting them index to work well !

Panther28 said:

A comment from someone on that post.

https://disqus.com/by/disqus_asu21Nd9p3/ • https://www.rebootonline.com/blog/long-term-outgoing-link-experiment/#comment-3986441877 • edited
The ranking as of now 7/13/18 is as follow...
1. outgoing links
2. no outgoing links
3. outgoing links
4. no outgoing links
5. outgoing links
6. no outgoing links
7. no outgoing links
8. outgoing links
9. outgoing links
...and couldn't find #10

Click to expand...

This is a very useful find. But. I wonder if other factors have started coming into play hence the change?

4ry4n said:

May I ask, you do link as normally right without a nofollow tag?

Click to expand...

Yes, normally I do without nofollow tag and find an outbound source that isn't in direct competition.

If I am eComm, then I will only point to Informational/News, but sometimes there isn't any choice so I will use nofollow in that case.

Castamir said:

This is a very useful find. But. I wonder if other factors have started coming into play hence the change?

Click to expand...

We can probably rule out...

1. no outgoing links
2. no outgoing links
3. no outgoing links
4. no outgoing links
5. no outgoing links
6. outgoing links
7. outgoing links
8. outgoing links
9. outgoing links
10. outgoing links

Panther28 said:

We can probably rule out...

1. no outgoing links
2. no outgoing links
3. no outgoing links
4. no outgoing links
5. no outgoing links
6. outgoing links
7. outgoing links
8. outgoing links
9. outgoing links
10. outgoing links

Click to expand...

LOL, yes now we can rule it out.

I think Google can't mistreat your web page for outbound links. Unless it's a link farm

outbound links to high authority sites can help your SEO efforts.

tidelow said:

I always include an authority outbound link that is usually the top 3 in SERP ranking for whatever my target keyword is.

Just think, as a user it provides another resource (likely very relevant) and G likes to see users click outbound links read and see the user come back to the original article.

Its probably not mandatory to rank all the time, but I think 95% of the time you will see all the top sites in SERPs for most mid to high comp niche using outbounds strategically.

Click to expand...

Isn’t that essentially making a guest post for the sites you’re linking to? I mean if the site you’re linking to wanted to buy a guest post, they would submit an article on the their main keyword and link from it to their site.

Authority sites are probably not buying guest posts. But if they did, isn’t this what they would do?

warriorsam53 said:

Isn’t that essentially making a guest post for the sites you’re linking to? I mean if the site you’re linking to wanted to buy a guest post, they would submit an article on the their main keyword and link from it to their site.

Authority sites are probably not buying guest posts. But if they did, isn’t this what they would do?

Click to expand...

Yeah, when you put it that way it sounds strange. There is more to my outbound link selection and I have found G rewards new content better with them than not.

My tests have been on local seo websites, splogs, GMBs (add the url of the top organic SERP for your target keyword, gives boost for new GMBs and replace a few weeks later), using sponsored news articles as parasites (blasting +1k links per day).

From all my testing, having outbound links which expand on my content/topic, include the right SEO entities, and is not a direct competitor (selling same product) is a positive signal to G.

How do you use outbound links in your content?

tidelow said:

Yeah, when you put it that way it sounds strange. There is more to my outbound link selection and I have found G rewards new content better with them than not.

My tests have been on local seo websites, splogs, GMBs (add the url of the top organic SERP for your target keyword, gives boost for new GMBs and replace a few weeks later), using sponsored news articles as parasites (blasting +1k links per day).

From all my testing, having outbound links which expand on my content/topic, include the right SEO entities, and is not a direct competitor (selling same product) is a positive signal to G.

How do you use outbound links in your content?

Click to expand...

I usually don’t add any external links except affiliate links. But since you’ve had good results, I’ll try adding a couple to links to some pages and see if it improves the ranking.

Thanks a lot.

4ry4n said:

Hello,

I have been wondering, let's say I write a blog post about something and point links to a couple of natural sources of my data,
am I helping or damaging the SEO of my site with that?

And should I care if they are follow or nofollow links?


Regards,

Click to expand...

in almost all of my single variable testing and also pages on my money site that are ranked at the top, having an outbound link to a authorative page, has helped with my ranking. I mark most of them as no-follow. less important pages on my money site, I have the outbound links as do-follow.

4ry4n said:

Hello,

I have been wondering, let's say I write a blog post about something and point links to a couple of natural sources of my data,
am I helping or damaging the SEO of my site with that?

And should I care if they are follow or nofollow links?


Regards,

Click to expand...

A recent study conducted by marketing firm Reboot showed a positive correlation between a page’s outbound links and its rankings in search results. Reboot hypothesized that Google can determine the authority of a page or website based on the sources it links to.

For the experiment, the firm created 10 new websites, each targeting the same keyword. However, only half of the websites included links to high authority sources. All the sites contained similar content and tag structure, though it was different enough to avoid duplicate content penalties.

Reboot then monitored and recorded keyword search results over a five-month period. Each of the pages that contained outbound links ranked higher than pages with no outbound links, and Reboot concluded that relevant, outgoing links to authority websites positively impact search rankings.

Though Reboot took as many uncontrolled variables as possible, there are still some unanswered questions. For example, does linking to higher authority sources boost rankings more than linking to a lower authority source? What about follow vs. nofollow links?

While there are still some unanswered questions, this study seems to show that including outbound links to high authority sites can help your SEO efforts. At the very least, it won’t hurt your SEO, so if you’re hesitant to link out to other sites, just consider these results.