A quick way to improve SEO for your pages is to add 1 outbound link to a relevant authority.
Within SEO terminology, outbound links point to pages outside your own domain, while external links point to your own pages from beyond your domain.
Over 10 years ago, Matt Cutts as head of Google’s webspam team, said, “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.“
Still, Google won’t officially be straightforward here. Perhaps it’s too easy to manipulate, like user engagement signals.
John Mueller, Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, has denied that outbound links improve SEO. Yet, when approached from the perspective of citing your sources properly, he and others imply it may boost Expertise-Authoritativeness-Trustworthiness (E-A-T).
Here’s how outbound linking may help:
- Clarifies relevancy by associating similar content.
- Shows proper citation of sources for E-A-T.
- Helps users, indirectly helping search engines too, with support for your claims or gives additional, useful information.
- Provides a natural outreach method. Experts within digital marketing check their links often. This may earn a reciprocal link for your own site.
Nonetheless, avoid too many outbound links. This looks spammy and dilutes their value. Add 1 good outbound link to help your users and keyword rankings too!