How to use outbound links in your SEO strategy

Your website establishes your online presence and attracts visitors to explore your content. But people still need reasons to trust your brand. By incorporating authoritative outbound links into your content, you help establish your site’s credibility, which can improve how search engines like Google understand and rank your content.

Learn how to optimize your website with outbound links to improve your content relevancy and make your brand credible.

What are outbound links?

Outbound links, or external links, are hyperlinks that direct visitors from your website to another. These links provide additional value to your content by offering people a way to explore related information or resources beyond your site. Outbound links also help search engines understand your material’s context and relevance — the links show that you’re citing credible sources to support your information.

Say you’re publishing an article on the importance of following cybersecurity best practices. To add credibility and offer readers further insights on the topic, you can include an outbound link to a reputable source, like the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). You might incorporate the link with language like, “For more detailed guidelines on cybersecurity best practices, refer to the NIST’s cybersecurity framework.” This outbound link directs readers to an authoritative external site, providing added context to your content while improving its reliability.

Outbound vs. inbound links

Outbound links are hyperlinks in your content that take readers from your website to external platforms. They should reference reliable sources to inform search engines that your content is well-researched and connected to other relevant information on the web.

Inbound links, or backlinks, are hyperlinks on external websites that point back to your site. Like outbound links, inbound links are crucial for SEO because they tell Google that other websites consider your content valuable. High-quality inbound links from authoritative sites significantly improve your website’s ranking on search engine results pages.

For example, if your article on project management mentions the latest Agile methodologies, you can include an outbound link to reliable brands like ClickUp or HubSpot. On the other hand, a leadership blog post referencing your article is considered a backlink, which helps drive more traffic to your website and improves your site authority.

How do outbound links help SEO?

Here are a few ways that including outbound links in your content can support your SEO strategy:

• Optimize the user experience. When visitors have a positive experience on your site, they stick around longer and return to read more content. Linking to high-quality, authoritative sources gives your audience additional value and resources, which boosts engagement and the user experience. 
• Build credibility and trust. Including reputable outbound links shows that your content is well-researched and accurate. This supports SEO because search engines value content that demonstrates credibility and trustworthiness by linking to reliable, authoritative sources. Trustworthy content also attracts more backlinks from other authoritative sources, enhancing your site’s credibility and visibility in search results.
• Help Google understand your content. Outbound links add valuable context Google uses to correctly index your content. This might help you rank for the right keywords and surpass pages that lack this context. 
• Increase dwell time. Google monitors dwell time — the amount of time a user stays on their chosen link before they return to the search results page (or if they ever do). While Google doesn’t explicitly mention that dwell time affects SERPs, some SEO experts have found a correlation between the two, with longer dwell times leading to higher rankings. Offering accurate and authoritative content that’s backed by reputable outbound links could increase your dwell time, since you’re offering the visitor all the information they need.

Challenges of outbound links

While outbound links help search engines understand your site, they also come with the following potential challenges:

• Broken outbound links. When a website you link to changes its URL structure, removes content, or goes offline, your outbound link becomes broken, leading to a 404 error page. These pages frustrate people and negatively impact your site’s user experience and credibility. Regularly audit and update your outbound links to ensure they’re valid and functional.
• Linking to low-quality websites. Outbound links to low-quality or spam-heavy websites harm your site’s reputation and SEO because search engines assess the quality of the sites you link to. Check that you vet all linked pages and ensure they’re authoritative and relevant to your industry and content.
• Nofollow attribute. A nofollow attribute is an HTML tag added to a link that instructs search engines not to pass link equity to low-quality websites. It prevents SEO value from moving to less trusted or paid links, but overusing it tells search engines that you aren’t confident in the quality of the sites you reference. For the best results, you must balance nofollow links with links to organic, trusted sources.
• Overusing outbound links. While outbound links improve your content’s value, overusing them can overwhelm readers and distract them from the main message. Excessive linking also clutters your content, so try to lightly sprinkle relevant links across the page to improve readability.

5 ways to optimize outbound links

Building an effective linking strategy requires proactive planning. Here are five tips on how to build external links for SEO.

1. Check website quality and link authority

Ensure each external link redirects to an authoritative website with high-quality content. These are typically the websites that appear toward the top of Google’s search results. Links to reputable sources tell search engines that your content is associated with reliable information, improving your site’s perceived authority and trustworthiness.

For example, linking to well-known industry publications, academic journals, and official organization websites can significantly improve your content’s value and brand reputation.

2. Address potential issues with outbound links

Regularly audit your site’s outbound links to ensure they’re functional and relevant. Broken links harm the user experience because people might leave your site and possibly perceive your brand negatively. Use link-checking tools like Ahrefs and ScreamingFrog to identify and fix broken links to keep your content valuable and user-friendly.

3. Maintain relevance and context

Outbound links should be contextually relevant to the content they’re in. By linking to related topics or additional resources that expand your subject matter, you create a seamless user experience for your readers.

For example, writing an article about digital marketing strategies and linking to an in-depth guide on SEO tactics offers further value to readers.

4. Set links to open in new tabs

Structuring external links so that they open in new tabs encourages visitors to interact without taking them away from your site. It lets people explore the external source while still keeping your page open so they don’t simply leave your content in favor of a third-party site.

You can do this by adding the target=“_blank” attribute to your links in HTML. Or with a platform like Webflow, you can set links to open in new tabs using link settings in the Designer — without needing to edit code.

5. Balance internal and outbound links

While outbound links are essential for any SEO strategy, you must also optimize your internal links. Internal links help distribute link equity throughout your site and guide people to other relevant pages within your domain. A balanced link structure ensures your website provides a well-organized experience while improving interaction and upping visit times.

Make your site stand out with Webflow

A proactive approach to link-building boosts your website’s SEO and enhances your reputation as a credible name in your industry — and with Webflow, you don’t need to rely on developers to implement best practices. Webflow’s built-in SEO features let you optimize your site for better visibility and reach.

Start building a standout website with Webflow today.