Linking Out: Good for SEO?



In this first episode of Ask Google Webmasters, John Mueller explains if linking to other websites helps or hurts SEO and what to watch out for if linking out. The question has come from @xtechie.

Documentation connected to this episode:
Information about rel=”nofollow” → https://goo.gle/2LY13Qz
Link schemes → https://goo.gle/2YTQLER

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39 thoughts on “Linking Out: Good for SEO?”

  1. Hi Mr. Muller, What if a website has only 1 article and the article is 100000000x better than all her competitors, will that article rank 1 without any backlinks? Then the owner will produce another article the same way, then another, then another, then one day hell get some traffic, then hell have money from mediavine, adsense, ezoic, affiliates, after that hell get some backlinks, then hell try to create a brand on that topic, can i start from zero? Also can i experiment what types rank best? Different search requires different style design.. Should i be more focused on website design? What if i collect public discussions on my post? I think search engine check articles manually..

  2. This is still a very important question and always will be for SEO. It is important that any links you use are of high quality and will offer the user added value to the content they are looking at. Establishing links that are both authoritative and relevant in line with requirements of latest search algorithms is necessary.

  3. Why in the world does Google rank so many sites that have nothing but tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands unrelated back links. These sites are everywhere!

    The often rank overnight!

  4. I now work for a data publisher with more than 5 millions pages. We have lots of outbound links from the site. Is it best to just "nofollow" all these external links? I vaguely remember an instance when another news site was penalised for too many "follow" outbound links and I'm concerned. Thanks

  5. From his explaination what i get that a good links for seo are those that help viewers to find more informations or resources. And those links which are for advertisement or partnership should be nonfollow – meaning not as good as links that pointed out to relevant contents. So if you put advertisment link as a follow link that is not good for seo.

  6. If you think about your users…
    priorities:
    1. Linking them to relevant content YOU HOST. You will control everything, content quality, updates to that content, performance…
    vs
    2. Linking them to third party relevant content you don't host. You can't control performance or updates.
    vs
    3. Not linking them anything of value. Your uses will not enjoy your page.

    First of all, users will not care too much if that link is thirdparty or not if they can just go back to your site using the back button but sure its not the perfect thing to do.

    Google still uses links as a metric. it's not a strong metric like before but they really need you to put follow links in your pages or else they will consider all links (follow or nofollow) as equal. Having said that, even if linking to a thirdparty hurts you a bit in DARK EDGY SEO ALGORITHM METRIC you will get a push from the USER EXPERIENCE ALGORITHM METRIC. Also, those users will be happier and may leave links to your site, or just come back tomorrow.

    You are overthinking SEO. Think about users for longterm. Hosting all the content by yourself is a longterm goal but making users happy is your PRIMARY goal.

  7. Looks like linking to other websites like the SEO experts do is a great way to help you rank. I wonder would this even include phrases such as SEO Chester or SEO Warrington as an example.

  8. TRANSLATION FROM GOOGLITSCH TO ENGLISH: Yes, it helps as you provide a valuable service to your readers furnishing them to a website with recognizable content and provides the recipient with link equity. Avoid "dofollow" attribute if you are paid or it it is link exchange as these practices are prohibited.

  9. Looking forward to future videos that will help us, the viewers to better understand how to better our online visibility in Google SERPs. My personal take from this video was that "linking out" is good for SEO after considering whether a no-follow should be used, and several other considerations. i.e. whether the link points to "secure content" is one example. Thank's for your share…

  10. A great video doesn't explain why Google is not doing anything about webspam in the carpet cleaning niche in Australia or other niches. If you google this long-tail keyword "blood carpet cleaning deagon " I know it is not a very competitive keyword. One company has around seven of there sites on the front page. They are all different sites but it doesn't take much investigation to see that they are the same company. They all have the same MO they use a few articles and then use them on hundreds of pages on the site only changing the suburb. The point I'm making is this company makes Google look like a fool. Saying build good content then Google doesn't do anything about that bad content.

  11. Answered, but not answered. Does it help SEO?

    Sure, bad links don't help, and linking to relevant content is helpful to the user, but does it specifically help SEO Ranking?

    Do outbound links help the ranking of a page specifically? That question doesn't seem to have been answered.

  12. Did Google react to the fact that many relevant links are set "nofollow" automatically by CMS like WordPress (since version 4.7.4) when authors decide to open the link in a new tab (target="_blank")? I mean, Google should be able to qualify the quality of the link by metrics like placement of the link (side bar or inside article), the quality of reference on its own, etc.

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