7 Tips for Making Outbound Links Work for Your Blog

Thursday, March 31st, 2022

This article is about outbound links and how they can help you to generate traffic for your own site.

Outbound links are a great way for you to include content from other sites on your own, while also including some related keywords that might drive more traffic back to your site. The key is just making sure that the outbound links are relevant and appropriate-and not spammy! I will give 10 tips on making these types of links work for you with an example or two of each tip with accompanying screenshots. So let’s get started!

1. Why outbound links are important
2. How to create an outbound link
3. What not to do when creating an outbound link
4. How to get outbound links on other sites for your content
5. When should you use a nofollow tag on an outbound link?
6. How many outbound links do I need on my blog posts?
7. How to do outreach for outbound links
8. Don’t include outbound links in every single blog post – what to do instead

 

Why Outbound Links Are Important

An “outbound link” is a link from your content on one site to a piece of content on another site. Outbound links are important for three main reasons:

1. SEO – because outbound links help expand the amount of content that you have related to a specific topic, and also helps spread some of your web presence across different domains.
2. Traffic – because outbound links can act as a ‘gateway’ to related content on other sites, and may generate both direct traffic back to your site as well as some indirect traffic through search engines.
3. User Experience – because if you are including relevant outbound links in your blog posts, you are giving your readers more useful content to read.

 

How To Create An Outbound Link

There are three main types of outbound links that you will use on your blog posts-outbound links without a nofollow tag, normal outbound links with a nofollow tag, and image outbound links. Here is how you can include these different types:

Type #1: Outbound Links Without a Nofollow Tag

For internal pages on your site, you can create outbound links without using the nofollow tag. This means that if someone clicks on your outbound link, they will get to the other site and search engines may follow the link and count it as an inbound link for both sites.

Type #2: Outbound Links With a Nofollow Tag

For external pages on other sites, you will want to use the nofollow tag in your outbound links, so that search engines know not to count these as inbound links for either site. This is very important when you are creating blog posts with outbound links, as you don’t want to risk a penalty from Google for ‘unnatural links.’

Type #3: Image Outbound Links

For images that contain outbound links, you will usually use the nofollow tag. The reason is that if someone clicks on an image and not on your text, Google may interpret this as a simple website link and might not follow it.

 

What Not To Do When Creating An Outbound Link

When you are creating outbound links, there are several things that you need to avoid:

1. Getting too spammy – using outbound links can be a great way to spread your web presence across different sites and share the great content that is out there. However, if you are creating outbound links on every single blog post that might not be too natural-and could even look like spam! Instead, make sure that the outbound links are relevant and appropriate to the rest of your content.
2. Creating all external links with a nofollow tag – avoiding building up unnatural links is important, but if you are creating all of your outbound links with a nofollow tag, even on internal pages on your own site, this could be considered ‘unnatural’ as well.
3. Not using the right anchor text – when you create an outbound link, always try to use some related keywords in your anchor text. This will help to give Google some context for what your target page is about ,and may ultimately lead to the page ranking better in search results.

 

How To Get Outbound Links On Other Sites For Your Content

The best way to get outbound links on other high quality, relevant websites with good domain authority is usually through outreach . You can use outreach to connect with other bloggers in your niche that might be interested in sharing some of your content too-and can offer them a link back to their site. Outreach is an important part of the blogging world, but it has to be done correctly or you could end up burning bridges and hurting your reputation.

 

When should you use a nofollow tag on an outbound link?

Search engine spam is a severe violation of the Google Webmaster Guidelines. If you are creating blog posts with lots of outbound links, you need to make sure that the outbound links are all appropriate and relevant to your content. Create outbound links that are relevant to your article topic, or otherwise they may be considered spammy. If they are not relevant, you should use a nofollow tag so that search engines know not to count these links as inbound links for your site.

How many outbound links do I need on my blog posts?

While there is no definitive answer to this question, it can be considered best practice to include one outbound link in your blog posts. If you are including lots of outbound links in your blog post, try to include them at the end rather than all throughout the content-and only use the ones that are relevant and helpful for your article topic.

 

How to do outreach for outbound links

For outbound links on other websites, you will want to start outreach or try to guest blog on other sites. This is the best way to start getting outbound links on high-quality, relevant websites with good domain authority.

If you are approached by another blogger that wants you to include a link back on your site, make sure that it is a relevant outbound link to your site. If it is, you should not have a problem including the link back on your blog post. However, if someone who does not have a good reputation in the blogging world reaches out to you and requests an outbound link for their site, you should probably keep looking for another high-quality blog or website.

 

Don’t include outbound links in every single blog post – what to do instead

An example is when you include multiple outbound links in blog posts that are not related to your site. This could be seen as spammy and make webmasters wary of linking back to your site. On the other hand, you should use one outbound link in each blog post related to your blog content and make sure that it is relevant and appropriate.

 

In conclusion…

Outbound links are a great way to generate traffic, but it’s important that they are relevant and appropriate. It’s a great alternative way to obtain traffic without spending money to buy organic search traffic.

Including outbound links when you’re providing value is an important part of sharing your knowledge with readers. For example, if you mention a certain product and link to buy it on Amazon, that isn’t spammy because it will help the reader buy something they were interested in.

Filed under: Tips & Tricks

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