Outbound Links in 2022. Do They Work or Not?

This is how they generally look:

They come in two types:

• Nofollow links (nominally not indexed). We will go over the “nominal” part later.
• Dofollow links (indexed).

Normal (dofollow) links are natural outbound links. They don’t have any kind of attributes. By default, each link is dofollow, and it signals to Google PageRank that bots should follow the target link.

Nofollow links are outbound links that you don’t trust. You need to change their code, adding a tag rel = ”nofollow”. It signals Google PageRank that this link shouldn’t be followed.

You can add various attributes to outbound links, and, by using them, you ask Google to exclude these links when counting PR. Let’s go over each attribute in detail.

In their post from September 10, 2019, Google announced 2 new attributes: ‘sponsored’ and ’ugc’, in addition to ‘nofollow’.

rel = "sponsored" is used to identify advertising, sponsored or other commercial links. By using this attribute, you tell a search engine that this link was posted according to an agreement between both parties.

rel = "ugc" (user-generated content) is used for links in comments, forum posts, etc.

“Why not completely ignore such links, as had been the case with nofollow? Links contain valuable information that can help us improve search, such as how the words within links describe content they point at. Looking at all the links we encounter can also help us better understand unnatural linking patterns. By shifting to a hint model, we no longer lose this important information, while still allowing site owners to indicate that some links shouldn’t be given the weight of a first-party endorsement.”

“Linking to other websites is a great way to provide value to your users. Often times, links help users to find out more, to check out your sources and to better understand how your content is relevant to the questions that they have.”

Danny Sullivan (Google’s public liaison for search) shares his thoughts on the matter:

“I’d think of linking as just part of proper attribution. You’re a journalist. You write a story, you cite your sources. If those sources are online with more info for the reader, that cit[ation] should link to them. That’s just good journalism. It should be standard…”

Source.

Matt Cutts (the former head of search spam at Google):

“I wouldn’t recommend closing comments in an attempt to ‘hoard’ your PageRank. In the same way that Google trusts sites less when they link to spammy sites or bad neighborhoods, parts of our system encourage links to good sites.”

Source.

Google help itself says this:

We’ll review four methods of searching and checking outbound links (a paid software, a free software, a service, and a plugin).

Screaming Frog is a versatile tool that performs a full-scale SEO audit for a site. One of the features of this paid software can also find all outbound links at your site and see what code they return (meaning you can check whether they’re broken or not).

Xenu is a free software for analyzing outbound links. We wrote about working with it in a separate article.

Ahrefs is a paid service for checking both inbound and outbound links. It displays all the information you need (domain rating, link type, the number of links leading to your site and their sources) in one place, which is very convenient.

This is a free plugin for Google Chrome that can analyze outbound links of a site page by page. We wrote more about this extension here. (link here)

Of course they do. But to what extent?

Reboot Online Marketing Ltd. conducted this experiment. They invented two  new made-up words (“Ancludixis” and “Phylandocic”) which Google didn’t have any information about.

Then they created 10 new sites and wrote unique text with the same length and structure for each of them. Both made-up words were mentioned an equal number of times. Five sites added three outbound links to reputable sources. The other five sites didn’t have any outbound links.

The experiment went on for 5 months, and during this time, they monitored sites’ positions in the ranking.

The results after 5 months showed that five sites that linked to other sources ended up higher than the other five sites. This leads to a simple conclusion: when everything else is equal, quality outbound links yield a positive effect.

Three. Joking aside though, use as much as you need. But don’t link to reputable sites “just because”. Some experts think that if some page has too many outbound links (more than 100?!), then this distracts from the content itself. Besides, such a page ends up with lesser PR than a page with only a few links.

Use outbound links when you want to show proof and improve the credibility of your information. For example, online stores can link to sites with user reviews; internet agencies can link to rankings of news media; articles, to reference materials or scientific papers.

On conversion pages, such as shop listings, catalogs, lists of services, etc. In other words, outbound links would not be beneficial when it’s important to make a user stay on your page.

You can. And if your site is a news outlet, then you must. However, if you run a blog, try to give preference to foreign sources.

1. Keep an eye on your outbound links. As time goes by, pages you link to might get deleted, and you should promptly replace broken links with working ones.
2. Link to pages with up-to-date information. For example, if there are two articles about DDoS protection, one from 2005 and one from 2020, then link to the latter.
3. Set up opening links in a new tab. This can be done by using a ‘target’ attribute with the specified parameter ‘_blank’.
   
   
   
4. Don’t link to sites that contain spam and aggressive advertising.
5. Link to various reputable sources on one page. This way you’ll have a collection of the best materials from the net in one place.
6. Try to avoid using nofollow links. In other words, don’t reference content you are not sure about.
7. Use meaningful anchors. They should describe the content a user would see if they follow that link.

In 2021, the content requirements for YMYL pages (content that affects someone’s health, happiness, safety, or  financial stability) became more rigorous. Google, for instance, prefers materials that follow E-A-T guidelines (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). And outbound links to reputable sources are just the way to satisfy these requirements.

Back your thoughts with proof and other opinions. Outbound links form a kind of association: you communicate to search engines that you operate in the same circles as the biggest names in your sphere.

Famous SEO expert Brian Dean also included outbound links in his list of Google’s 200 ranking factors for 2022.

You can add outbound links to different parts of your content:

1. In the middle of a text.

2. As footnotes.

3. After the text.

4. Inside additional blocks.

Outbound links are a part of SEO promotion, and in 2022 their influence has only grown. Now is the time to start actively linking to other sites, keeping our recommendations in mind.

Oh yeah, and feel free to link to this article from your sites.