10 Proven Benefits of External Links for SEO and User Experience

External linking is an essential element of modern SEO and link-building strategies. It might seem complicated at first, but understanding its applications, meaning, and benefits is relatively straightforward. In this guide, we’ll explore the 10 proven benefits of external links for SEO and user experience. You’ll also learn why building a proper backlink profile should be an unskippable part of your SEO strategy.

What is an Internal Link?

Internal linking directs users to a different page of the same website. In contrast, an external link is a link that directs users to a page outside of your website or domain. Common types of external links include links in guest posts, links to research studies, and affiliate product links.

You may feel uncertain about using external links, since they direct users away from your website. However, external links often provide additional context or information that may interest users. There are two main types of external links:

• Links from your websites to others are called outbound links. These can help you build relationships with other websites and improve user experience.
• Links from other websites to yours are called inbound links or backlinks. These are extremely beneficial for SEO and can increase your website’s organic traffic, rankings, and conversions.

10 Proven Benefits of External Links for SEO and User Experience

External links—whether inbound or outbound—can be immensely useful for SEO. They add value to your content, improve the user experience, and help build credibility and relationships with other authoritative websites.

Cite Your Sources 

Using external links to cite your sources can make your website appear more authoritative. It builds trust, prevents plagiarism issues, and signals to users that you are confident in your information.

Improve User Experience

Adding external links to your content at relevant places helps users find relevant and related topics quicker. Users may find your website helpful in delivering the right resources.

Improve User Engagement

Relevant outbound links can encourage users to engage with your content. Users spend more time on your site to look for resources and additional content that interests them.

Build Website Credibility

Linking to external sources tells search engines that you’re confident in the credibility of your content. This makes your website appear more credible. In the same way, getting backlinks from other credible websites tells search engines that your content is high-quality. If it wasn’t, those websites might have been hesitant to link to you.

Build Website Authority

When your content is high-quality, other sites from your industry or niche will link to it. Getting backlinks makes your site popular in your industry and can even help position it as an industry expert. When your site gets rankings and authority, it reaches more people who may potentially make purchases.

Increase Website Visibility

When other sites link to yours, they expose their audience to your website. Getting backlinks helps you tap into new users and audiences and get a steady stream of referral traffic from external sites, which results in more traffic and conversions.

Enhance Your Website’s Relevance

Often, search engines figure out the context behind your content from the backlinks that link to you. This quickly establishes your niche and how relevant you are in it. If you get external links from prominent websites, search engines may decide that your content is relevant for search queries relating to your industry.

Build Relationships With Other Websites

When you add external links to your content, you may link to websites in the same niche or industry. Giving a website an external link means giving them a backlink. You may be able to establish a relationship with these websites and gain backlinks from them. You could even collaborate by guest posting on each other’s blog.

Build a Strong Backlink Profile

Backlinks are one of Google’s top search ranking factors. When you link to relevant websites in your niche, it may encourage them to link back to your website. Getting relevant external links from credible and authoritative websites strengthens your website’s backlink profile, which boosts your rankings and traffic. 

Improve Your Website’s Ranking

External links (from your websites to others) aren’t a ranking factor. But getting backlinks makes it easier for search engines to find your content and crawl it. Moreover, if these backlinks are from authoritative websites, that tells search engines that your content is high-quality and informative, which improves your SERP ranking.

According to a Backlinko analysis of 11.8M Google results, pages with a strong backlink profile rank significantly higher than those without.

Generate Website Traffic

If other websites add external links to your pages, it tells search engines that your website is credible and authoritative, which helps you secure high SERP rankings and get more people to come across your website and click on it.

Increase Sales and Conversions

More users can find you through prominent positions on the SERP and backlinks from other websites. This allows you to find more customers and increase your rate of conversion.

The Importance of External Links For SEO

While external linking can be risky if you’re careless or engaging in black hat SEO practices, it offers many benefits when done right. Excessive linking and linking to spammy or low-quality sites can earn you penalties from search engines. Also review your links regularly to fix any broken links as quickly as possible.

There are many benefits of external links for SEO and user experience. You improve your website’s credibility and authority, increase trust, boost ranking, and increase traffic and conversions.

The best way to gain high-quality backlinks for your website is through reliable link-building services. With 1,800+ successful clients and 15M+ leads delivered, Apex Infotech can help you build a strong backlink profile that boosts your website’s traffic, credibility, and user experience and helps you secure high SERP rankings. Book an SEO consultation today!

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