External Linking
External linking is the practice of including links to other websites within your content. These links help search engines understand the context of the page, as well as provide a good user experience. External linking to high-quality sources may help boost ‘E-A-T’ (expertise, authority, & trustworthiness) in the ‘eyes’ of search engines and build topical authority for your website.
Below, we’ve compiled key takeaways relating to external linking best practices from Google’s ongoing SEO Office Hours sessions.
For more on optimizing your website’s links for search engines check out our additional resources:
5 Internal Linking Strategies to Boost SEO and Drive Organic Traffic.
Google Processes Links Almost Immediately
John says that new links to new or existing pages are picked up and processed almost immediately.
Multiple Links From a Page to Another Count Once
Multiple links from one page to another are only counted once for PageRank, even if the anchor text is different. He is vague on the impact of the separate anchor text.
External Links do Add Contextual Information But Don’t Improve Quality
External links do provide some additional information about the page, but having links themselves won’t improve the quality of a page.
Limit Links On a Page to 3000
Google webmaster guidelines recommends a maximum of 3000 links on a page, and anything over that are likely to be ignored.
External Links Don’t Affect Rankings
External linking to relevant or useful sites, doesn’t have any impact on search rankings.
No Penalty for Links to Duplicate Content
Linking to sites with duplicate content won’t ‘usually’ result in a penalty.
JavaScript Affliliate Links Should be Nofollowed
Any affiliate links which are added using JavaScript should also be nofollowed.
Title Attribute on Links is Ignored
Google ignores the title attribute in anchor links, but does use alt tags for images inside a link.
Anchor Text is Used for Relevancy
Google does include anchor text for links in to a page for ranking relevancy.
External Links Don’t Affect Rankings
Linking to external websites doesn’t directly affect your own rankings.