Google’s John Mueller: Outbound Links & SEO
Someone on LinkedIn recently asked what the specific amount of links were best for SEO. They wanted clarification on what the exact amount of outbound links were for SEO.
This is the question that was asked:
“I have a question. It’s a common practice among SEOs to believe that adding a total of 2-5 internal links and around 1-3 external links in a 1000-word blog post is beneficial. They also think that adding more links could be harmful to their site, while adding fewer links might not provide much value.
Could you please clarify whether the quantity of links really matters?”
Google’s John Mueller answered:
“Nobody at Google counts the links or the words on your blog posts, and even if they did, I’d still recommend writing for your audience. I don’t know your audience, but I have yet to run across anyone who counts the words before reading a piece of content.”
The Practice of Outbound Links in General.
Mueller did not invalidate the practice of outbound links in general.
Outbound links are useful for these reasons:
- Outbound links bring value to readers of an article.
- Outlinks can validate conclusions that are made within an article
- Outlinks validate citations of research and statements of others that are made in the article.
- Outbound links are a good practice for the Internet ecosystem
Recommends Writing for the Audience
Mueller recommends writing for the audience. The underlying idea there is that if you know what the audience wants then you know what to give them. What the audience wants has nothing to do with the number of “entities” you add to your content or how many outbound links you have on the page.
The Search Engine Journal reported that if that’s your approach to SEO then you may want to evaluate how much of what’s published is for search engines and how much of it is for users because creating content for search engines have always been the likeliest way to produce content that doesn’t catch on and ranks.
So the right answer for most SEO questions is most often found by reframing the question around the people the content is created for.
When it comes to outbound links the question shouldn’t be “how many outbound links is best for SEO?” the question should be “do these outbound links fit the context of what the web page and what a reader would want?”
A good context for adding an outbound link is when something is quoted or cited. For example, if the content mentions scientific research or what someone else said, then that research or the page page documenting what was said should be linked to. That’s what users would want, right?
