Helping establish a websites credibility

A common phrase that parents have been saying to their children for years is that “you are the average of the 5 people you hang out with the most.” When you think about it, that holds true throughout life. Whether it is the 5 kids on the playground, the 5 fellow college students, the 5 people at your job that you hang out with the most, they play a huge role in determining who you are. The same logic can be applied to your website and digital marketing in a way. The “people we hang out with the most ” in the realm on a website can be looked at through the external links on a site. These external links are the “hanging out” or the cyber bridges that connect our websites to other valuable resources. Understanding the importance of external links can impact your website’s credibility, user experience, and search engine ranking. 

What Are External Links?

External links, sometimes called outbound links, are hyperlinks that point from your website to another site. External links, similar to internal links, help to guide your visitors to additional resources elsewhere on the web. This connection or link (literally) from site to site enriches your website content and also provides vital signals to search engines that your site is part of a larger, informative network.

Boosts Your Website’s Credibility

When your website has links to other reputable and credible websites it can greatly enhance your website’s credibility. When your website references a well-known and authoritative website, you’re essentially confirming or vouching for the accuracy and reliability of the information you provide on your own website.

For example, if your blog post cites studies from respected industry sources or data from industry-leading blogs, it helps show that your website is well-researched and trustworthy. This can improve your site’s reputation both with users and search engines.

Improves Your SEO Rankings

Search engines like Google can view external links as endorsements. When you link to high-quality, relevant content, it signals to search engines that you are providing valuable information, which can improve your ranking. Search engine algorithms consider external links as one of the many factors in determining the quality and authority score of your site. By linking to respected and authoritative sources, you can enhance your site’s authority and potentially boost your position in search results.

This is really where the “average of the five people you hang out with” logic comes into play. If you website is linking to only other respected and authoritative websites, your average improves. If you are linking to spammy sites or less authoritative ones, your average declines. 

Provides Additional Value to Readers

A great website is all about providing great value and information to your users. External links can provide another option to share more value with your users. By linking to other authoritative and respected resources, you can offer more comprehensive coverage of a topic. Doing this can help guide the users to further reading that complements the content on your website. This not only enhances the user experience but also shows that you care about providing in-depth and useful information.

Be careful, though, with which sites you are linking to. There may be a time and a place to link to a competitor’s website, but that should be done sparingly. Instead, focus on industry websites or known sources of information. Linking to https://www.wikipedia.org/ is good idea as it is a well respected website.

Builds Relationships with Other Websites

Linking to other websites can help build relationships with other content creators. When you link to a site, you are acknowledging their work and potentially opening the door to future collaboration. This networking can lead to opportunities such as guest blogging, joint ventures, and reciprocal backlinks, which can further boost your SEO and traffic. Establishing these connections is a valuable part of a comprehensive online strategy.

If you keep track of the links you are sending to another site, you can then approach that site about receiving backlinks as well. If the other site is more authoritative than yours, that backlink can provide a potentially much needed backlink to help boost your site much higher in search engine rankings. 

Diversifies Your Link Profile

One thing to be careful with is to not link to the same site over and over again. Going back to the idea of the average of 5 people, if a website is only linking to two other websites, that average won’t be a great reflection of what the website content really is. Instead spread the links out to a number of different industry websites that are well respected and valued. 

The external links should also be spread throughout the pages of your website, and not just lumped together in one page. By spreading them out to multiple pages, you can help improve the credibility of more pages and also expand the number of other websites you are linking to. 

Common Mistakes to Avoid

As mentioned, there are a few issues to be sure to watch for when building your websites external linking standards. The two biggest issues to watch for are poor websites to link to and broken links. 

One of the worst types of websites you could link to is a link farm. These sites are very low quality and typically very spammy sites. Linking to these can destroy your credibility with users and search engines. These sites will have links to countless other websites, some good and some bad, but the site itself will not have a high authority ranking. If you are looking at linking to a site and question if it is a link farm, it likely is and that link should not be placed on your website. 

The other common issue that can happen is broken links. Broken links are simply HTML hyperlinks that go to a page that doesn’t exist anymore. When users and search are sent to sites or pages that don’t exist anymore, it can lower your overall credibility. Even if you are linking to only highly authoritative sites, that doesn’t mean they won’t change link structures or remove an article or webpage at some point. This is one of the reason it is so vital to run a broken link checker as part of your monthly website maintenance plan. 

A powerful tool for website credibility

External links provide a powerful tool for enhancing your website’s credibility, improving search engine rankings, and sharing additional value to your readers. By understanding external links, why they’re important, and the common mistakes to avoid, you can make the most of external links and see a positive impact on your site’s performance. It’s all about linking to the other websites that make up the “average of the 5 people you hang out with the most.”