Outbound links

Why should you add outbound links?

We believe that the web should be connected, with as few dead ends as possible. By connecting the web, you help search engines and people discover useful content. You can do that by adding relevant outbound links to your page. That’s why Yoast SEO checks if your content has outbound links: links from your site to another.

What does the outbound link check do?

Make sure you include outbound links in your content
Improve the user experience of your content
Contribute to making the web a better place

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Why do I need to add outbound links to my content?

It might seem counter-intuitive to add links to other websites to your content because you’re encouraging your visitors to go check out a different site, but adding relevant outbound links is good SEO practice. Why? Let’s dive in.

Relevant outbound links improve user experience

If you link to an article that you think is relevant and useful for your users, you improve your site’s user experience. You could include a link to an article that discusses a subtopic of what your post is about, without having to go off-topic yourself. Adding an outbound link allows you to move your content forward without having to stop to discuss a subtopic.

You could also include links to the sources that you consulted when writing the page. By adding relevant links, you allow your users to learn even more about the topic!

Outbound links make the web a better place

Outbound links are not just good for your SEO, they are good for SEO in general. If you want to contribute to making the web a better place, you should include outbound links in your pages. By adding relevant links from one site to the next site, we create a web that expands from one related website to another. This helps search engines connect the dots. But it also helps the people around you. By linking to their sites, you can help your friend, neighbor, supplier, customer, and your visitor!

The outbound links check in Yoast SEO

So, by adding relevant outbound links to your content, you help both search engines and your visitors discover useful and interesting websites. To help you with this, the SEO analysis in the Yoast SEO plugin comes with an outbound links check.

This check counts the number of links you’ve added to your post or page. When you haven’t added any outbound links yet, the Yoast SEO plugin will give you a friendly reminder to add outbound links to your page.