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How many outbound links is too man for a blog post?
Posted by on July 20, 2020 at 11:24 amHi guys,
I’ve got the following question:
1) I am writing reviews for a nichey site. For instance, let’s say, it’s about cryptocurrencies.
2) I’ve just delivered the article (2000 words, very good subheadings structure, lots of totally unique screenshot images, useful information, good writing style). It includes around 5 internal links to other reviews which are placed naturally and which are useful. It also has 11 external links to other websites (the linked-to sites are some of the major info-sites in the crypto industry (like neilpatel in seo)).
3) The customer has just written to me and said the following:
***a.*** our site is super-nichey and “we don’t offer a lot of value to users” (which I strongly disagree
with since we are growing in our rankings very fast), so we should be careful with posting
external links.***b.*** you have way too many outbound links from the single post. This might/will result in the fact
that the search engine will treat the site as a “links farm” because the site has many outbound
links to “very unrelated sites”.4) My idea was that I should place the outbound links whenever I see a good oppotunity to do that. And I was not placing links to unrelated sites but those within our domain. 5 out of the 11 links were linking to the project’s social media, reddit thread and their FAQ page at their site… But I need to heed my customer’s feedback and adjust.
5) That’s how I got to the question – “how many external links it too many” for a 2000-word review article about a cryptocurrency (for instance, IOTA)”? I would be super-grateful if you could help me out with this question!
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8 Replies
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Put as many links as makes sense for a human reading the article. I had articles with 100s of external links rank very well.
However, if a site has a certain style (long form text with only 1 or 2 external links) an outlier article with 20 external links might look weird even to a human reader. Avoid that.
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You simply track user behaviour on the page.
Are many visitors leaving your site and not returning?
Are the links actually necessary to provide value to your visitors?
Are you linking to other sites simply for the sake of it (when you could provide a summary on your own page)
There are NO rules, just what works best for the specific page.
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I think external links to other sites’ blog posts have no issues, if done naturally.
But, using backlinks of too many other sites directly is bad practice.
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There’s a reason that all the big editorial sites hoard page rank. External links ultimately let page rank flow out of pages. I don’t give a shit what Google says in terms of user experience and providing helpful resources. Imo they say a lot of things that side step some of the nuances and weak points and their algorithm. For example, they don’t know how, or maybe it’s not possible idk, to build a decent search engine without taking backlinks into account.
My general advisement to writers is to not link to any page externally from an article that would be a competitor for any related keywords for that article. If you’re writing an article about how to make an egg and mayonnaise sandwich, don’t leak to anything that’s related to making an egg and mayonnaise sandwich.
You’re writing that article to be the authority on that topic. only link out to related things that you don’t care about ranking for, ever. Examples include: when was mayonnaise invented, what came first the chicken or the egg, where is the most grain grown in the world?
I think it’s good to have a handful of these links to appear natural, but also important to audit the shit out of them to make sure that they’re not linking to anything that’s going to compete for keywords.
TL; DR external links are absolutely helpful for reader experience but they also absolutely decrease the page rank of a URL. IMO, use them sparingly and only link to external resources that couldn’t possibly rank for the keywords you’re targeting with your article.
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A search engine is unlikely to consider 11 external links a link farm! But like u/Jeff-in-Bournemouth said, are you linking out for the sake of it?
So it’s the clients site and if they want less external links, then I would take some out. I think the ranking benefits of a visitor sticking around the page far out weigh those of having many external links.
Ultimately no one can give you a decent opinion without seeing the page, and as you don’t own it I doubt you’ll want to link it here!
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I’m not really sure where you’re coming up with the idea of me wanting you to be limited in your salary? Maybe that was meant to be as a joke?
Also, my advice to anyone working for a client is to do two things in this order; provide advisement and make sure the client knows what your opinion is of the best way to move forward, and then do whatever the hell the client wants you to do with a smile on your face.
Does putting in external links to an article make it lose page rank? Absolutely
Our external links in articles good for user experience when placed well? Absolutely
Do you need to take a hard line and do one or the other 100% of the time? Absolutely not.
The art is in the balance.
My advisement is as such
When writing a new article that you intend to be an authority piece on a subject, there’s bound to be parts of that article where you want to link out to another resource To provide elaboration on a certain topic. For new websites, our websites with lower budgets, I’d say go ahead and link out to an authority source. But, keep a rolling to-do list of that link and the topic that it links to such that, when budget provides, you can create that source on your website and then change out that link for an internal one.
So the idea is that The vast majority of external links can eventually be swapped over to internal links pointing to the resources on your own website.
Bottom line though, if you’re writing for someone else, don’t get into an argument or you’re liable to get fired. Advise on best practices to the best of your knowledge and then do whatever a client asks for.
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The real question is how many is too woman!
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As far as the external links provide valuable information related to the blog post then there is no harm in using no. of links however links should not be irrelevant just for the SEO purpose.
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