Outbound have traditionally been considered a ranking or relevance related factor but those ideas are outdated now that search engines use AI for spam detection and the ranking process. It’s time to consider new ways of thinking about outbound links.
1. A Page Is About Multiple Subtopics
One thing people worry about is whether linking out to pages that aren’t specifically about what the entire page is about is a good practice. The more important thing to think about is if the sentence or paragraph supports an irrelevant outbound link then the bigger problem is that the entire paragraph is off-topic and should be removed. Every outbound link should be relevant to the context where it originates and every context should be relevant within the overall context of the entire page.
A webpage is rarely ever about one topic. It’s usually about one topic and the related subtopics, whatever makes sense for the user.
- Never link out because you think it will make the page more relevant for the topic or subtopic.
- Always link out if it makes sense within the context.
- If the content says that research proves X,Y, and Z then it makes sense to link out to a page about that research so that the user knows this is a fact.
A page that links out to other pages that are on related subtopics is fine.
2. Relevance Is Not Always About Keywords
In the context of outbound links, relevance could be said to be about how closely related a word, sentence, paragraph or webpage is to whatever is being linked to.
A more up to date definition of relevance is how closely the link aligns with the needs or expectations of the reader at the exact moment that an outbound link can satisfy those needs or expectations.
3. Poor Outbound Links May Impact Site Quality
Linking to low quality sites could cause Google to consider the linking site as also low quality. What a site links to may impact the quality of the site. But what’s a low quality site?
Check If The Site Is Created For Search Engines
The most current definition of a low quality site is one that is created to rank for search engines. That can be an affiliate site that’s created to rank for specific keyword phrases without any expertise, or anything to new or unique to add to what is already ranking for the topic.
Typical signs of site created to rank are keyword focused content (instead of reader-focused content), keyword focused titles, keyword focused headings, and virtually all the pages are about keywords with the highest level of query volume and the headings are an exact match for People Also Ask phrases, that kind of thing.
