8 Tips You Need To Level Up Your SEO Strategy With Outbound Links

Digital Marketing Indonesia, Digital Marketing Agency Indonesia

8 Tips You Need To Level Up Your SEO Strategy With Outbound Links

Updated on: 10 September 2021

https://impossible.co.id/seo/

Inbound links or links coming from another site to your site play a vital role in ranking higher in Google. This is a given fact. What a lot of marketers don’t really give much thought though is that outbound links or external links are equally important.

One of the most common misconceptions about outbound links is that they should be avoided because they drive people away from your site. Such a practice is detrimental to your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy because of its negative consequences.

What are outbound links?

Outbound links are links from your site that point to another site, which is quintessential in your digital marketing effort. Outbound links are inbound links for another site. This means that it’s a way for sharing link juices with other sites to gain more inbound links.

So, does this mean that you’re helping competitors rank higher in search engines?

No, because outbound links help people and search engines find relevant and useful content on the internet. These links help you stand out and differentiate you from shady websites around the web. On top of that, they can also help improve organic traffic, which in turn can help increase user engagement and foster relationships with other website owners.

What external links do is bring balance to the overall health of a website. Additionally, it helps establish a site as an authority in the same way that your content becomes more authentic when you reference your sources. This means that external links can strengthen the topic signal to search engines, which makes your page perform better than those without any external link.

Another reason to use outbound links in your content is to build trust. Any information you provide on your site becomes more authoritative and trustworthy because of the links that point to other authority sites.

How to improve SEO strategy with outbound links?

Another compelling reason to use outbound links in your own website is to supply more information about a topic that you can’t address on your own content.

To start using outbound links, here are eight tips you should follow.

1. Carefully choose a page/site to link to

One of the easiest ways to find out whether a website is a good choice to link to is to check its domain authority (DA) score, which is a search engine score that tells how likely a website is to rank in search engine results pages. You can check a site’s DA score by using Link Explorer, Mozbar, or Keyword Explorer.

Generally speaking, a site with a very high DA score means it has lots of high-quality external links. This also means that you must link to sites with higher DA scores to ensure that those sites can pass their link equity, which is the value and authority that a page passes to another page, to you.

Other factors you need to consider when choosing the best page to link to include:

  • Relevance of the page to your content
  • Quality of the content
  • Citation of sources within the content itself
  • Source of data
  • Reputation of the owner of the content/page
  • Credibility of the author
  • Date the page was published/updated

Oftentimes, content writers link to news organizations, university pages, reports published by reputable associations/organizations, and government agencies to ensure the validity and reputation of the source. It’s also best to link to sources that are less than a year old, which indicates that the content is not outdated.

2. Link to lesser-known bloggers/content creators, too

While the more popular sites can give your content a lot of link equity, linking to small-time or newbie bloggers can be a huge help, too. A lot of these bloggers will be more than willing to connect and share some link juice with other sites. However, it’s important that you earn their trust first.

The first thing you need to do is to join popular Facebook groups in your niche. Second, you need to engage with the groups for a few weeks. Take note of the bloggers who are contributing a lot and find out what their blogs are all about. Third, dedicate a few hours of your time engaging with those bloggers, commenting on their blog pages, sharing their content, etc. The goal is to connect with them and earn their trust. Do this for a few months.

Once you’ve established a strong connection with them, those bloggers will start interacting with you. If you have a blog that’s interesting enough, they’ll most likely want to link to you.

3. Collaborate with direct competitors

Sounds like a bold plan?

It is. But you’ll be more than glad you did in the end.

What you need to do is cut an X deal with direct competitors for your other keywords. The first thing you need to do is to send a link from your website to one of their money pages. Then, if they accept it, they will do the same for you.

If you’re scared that Google penalized you because it’s a big no-no for the search engine giant, what you can do is to link to your competitors from your site. Then, they will link to you from their other sites or guest post, or vise versa.

4. Prioritize outreach by guest posting

Earn outbound links by creating contextual backlinks. To do this, first, you need to find the best sites within your niche to guest post to. Once you’ve picked out several sites, reach out to them and discuss your niche and the product you are promoting.

If you’ve guest posted before, you can mention the respectable blogs you’ve been featured in. This helps establish you as a trustworthy and relevant brand worth linking to. Aside from that, you must also mention the topics you want to cover for their blogs. Be sure to make it clear that you’re also open to other suggestions.

5. Do away with the Nofollow tag

Nofollow is a method used to tell search engine bots that a website owner can’t or won’t vouch for a link. For search engines, nofollow links pass PageRank but are not passed to the target site. However, nofollow links are passed into the vacuum, which means that you still won’t get any link equity and miss out on outreach opportunities.

Some sites would try to use the nofollow tag in an attempt to change how the PageRank flowed through their sites. Instead of benefitting from this move, those sites end up excluding pages on their site that had high-quality information, which could have ranked high in Google.

Another reason to do away with the nofollow tag is that it’s a big insult to the blog or site you’re trying to link to. It’s one good way of burning bridges, and not building relationships with other blogs.

6. Minimize the number of outgoing links

Every link you add to a page on your site needs to have a purpose and serve your readers. This is why you need to choose the sites you want to connect with. It’s also prudent to limit the number of outbound links and not do away with linking out.

If you are trying to preserve link equity by not adding outbound links on your site and just add links once the page starts to rank, Google will count it against you because the page isn’t serving the user intent.

Links should be strategically placed throughout the article. This means that it’s not the number of links a page has but the quality of the links.

7. Outbound links should open in new tabs

A lot of users find it frustrating when they click on a link on a site and end up losing the page they were on. If you want to use outbound links effectively, you need to make sure that they open in another tab. This will also improve the user experience on your site, making users want to come back for more.

Ensuring that external links open in new tabs is one way of increasing engaged time, which Google sees as an indication that your site is of high quality. This is also important if you add affiliate links to your pages. You’ll earn affiliate money when users link on external links that lead to affiliate sites.

8. Audit outbound links periodically

It’s important to do an audit on your external links to know which links are broken. Keep in mind that blogs come and go, which means that there’s a huge possibility that some of the links on your pages are no longer working. You need to get rid of them right away because they are bad for your SEO strategy since they leak out authority. What’s worse, they can affect user experience and engagement on your site since you’ll end up sending your readers to dead pages on the web.

Scan for broken links once in a while to ensure there are no dead links. There are several tools you can use to do so, including Online Broken Link Checker (built-in with some CMS) and WordPress’s Broken Link Checker.

Bottom line

Google and other search engines put a lot of value on the websites you associate with. This means that you have to avoid linking to pages with poor user experience and are known for using shady tactics to rank in search engines.

When it comes to using external links to improve your SEO strategy, you need to make sure that you do it properly. Be sure to follow the tips listed above to ensure success.