Relevant outbound links to high quality websites can improve your website’s relevance.
Some people are hesitant to link to other websites… Afraid they will send traffic away, damage their rankings, or cause confusion.
But let those fears go— because outbound links are a great thing for your website!
Let’s take a look at a few reasons why outbound links can be beneficial for your website.
Build authority and become a trusted voice for great advice
No matter how big of a website you create, you’ll never cover every topic possible— it cannot be done! However, you can provide your visitors with a wealth of information (and become an authority on the topic!) by sharing your sources and sharing other places online where people can learn more.
Think about it this way… If a friend recommends a new restaurant to, then you try it and love it— you’ll be thankful to your friend for sharing that with them. You might even call them back to tell them about your experience and thank them for the great recommendation.
Best of all, when your friend recommends something new again, you’ll trust them!
Wouldn’t it be great if your website visitors trusted you like that?
Give links to get links
Getting backlinks to your website is an important ranking factor in SEO. But where do all those links come from?
Your much more likely to get links if you are the kind of person that also gives links. Remember the golden rule? Treat people how you want to be treated…
By linking to someone’s website they just might be thankful enough to find a way to link to you too!
User research
One neat thing about creating external links is the data you can extract from it. When you link to a great resource, you can track how many people on your website click that link. A link that gets a lot of clicks might be worthy of creating similar content on your own website, since you’ve already proven your audience is interested!
This is a nice way to test the waters and see what your audience is interested in before having to invest the time to create all the content yourself.