Affiliate Marketing - What are external links and why do they matter?

External links are hyperlinks that point to any domain that isn’t on the original domain, aka if you’re writing an article on your own blog and you’re linking to another website (for whatever reason) this is known as an external link.

But why do external links matter for Affiliate Marketing or even for SEO as a whole? 

Well, if you want answers about external linking, I’ve got them for you! I’m going to cover everything you need to know about external links in this very blog post so be sure to stick around. 

This information on external links in blogs is going to be useful if you’re a casual blogger, a keen affiliate marketer or an SEO buff like me.

What are external links

Although I’ve just gone over what is an outbound link, let’s cover it again;

External links or outbound links as they are sometimes known, are hyperlinks which point from an original domain to another.

Generally, the purpose of adding an outbound link to a blog post is to keep the user experience enjoyable - you’ll want to hyperlink to a piece of information which is vital to the topic you’re discussing.

Of course, there are other benefits as to why external links in blogs are useful to you; from the point of view of them being in your own posts, and other people adding external links (backlinking) to you.

Types of External links

As I've touched on, there are two types of external links in SEO - inbound links and outbound links.

They are fairly easy to wrap your head around, so let’s discuss these types of SEO links.

Inbound Links

Inbound links, backlinks and inlinks - they are all basically the same thing: another website/domain is linking directly to your blog as it deems you as a useful source of information.

In SEO terms, they are the most difficult SEO links to acquire (which makes them as valuable as the Mona Lisa because it is so rare) and because of this search engine Google uses them as their key indicator as to whether or not your post is worthy of their SERPs.

Outbounds Links

As the name would suggest, an outbound link is the reverse of an inbound link; you have links on your website which are pointing to other websites.

These outbound links to websites can be one of two things; nofollow links and dofollow links.

NoFollow Links

If you have links on a page which are set to ‘no follow’, when the bots come crawl the page, you’re essentially telling them not to associate your website with the one you’re text linking to.

Because of this, nofollow links provide little to no SEO linking juice to the target page - which means in layman's terms it’s not a very useful link, in comparison to do follow links.

The same would obviously happen when the bots crawl a website who is linking to you.

If this all sounds a little confusing, then not to worry, I have written a whole article dedicated to nofollow links.

Follow/DoFollow Links

These types of links will also be crawled by the search engine but will pass on their SEO value to the target - otherwise known as link juice, as previously mentioned.

Making this type of outbound link the most valuable, but of course the hardest to acquire.

Now, not all follow links are created equal when it comes to site linking, but that’s not something I’m going to talk about right now. Although if you’re interested, I have a complete article on do-follow links.

External links example

Now you understand what an external link is when you’re linking blogs, I want to give you an example of external linking in HTML which you can use when you want to link one page to another.

If put following raw external link HTML on your website, you would be giving an external link back to this very website:

Go ahead…try adding the above external link code into your own website!

Of course, you can change the external link code fairly easily by simply changing the website you’re linking to as well as the anchor HTML.

If you’re a WordPress user, here is an outbound link example for reference which will help you figure how to post link from your own website:

So, whether you’re running a HTML site, or you’re posting form WordPress, these external links examples will come in handy when you want to put links on a page that point to your favourite content on the web.

Benefits of External Links

If you’re new to affiliate marketing or to SEO as a whole, it can be difficult to understand why you should even care about external links in the first place.

External links are not just there to flesh your website out or there to add to the user experience, there are a few more benefits when you’re adding them to your own website and when you get links from others.

Why you should care about receiving external links

You’ll hear a lot of buzz online about how important SEO external links (backlinks) backlinks are for your website, but why is this the case?

Let’s find out…

You’ll get link juice

Link juice, link juice, link juice.

I’ve mentioned it a few times already, and you’re probably sick of seeing the word by now, but it is a really important aspect of SEO you need to understand if you want to run a successful blog.

When someone gives you an external link, aka backlink, assuming it’s a ‘dofollow link’, they will be passing on SEO juice which will help to raise your profile in the eyes of the search engine and make your life far easier when it comes to ranking on this same search engine.

Backlinking and link building goes a lot deeper than just getting SEO link juice from any website, since you need a range of external links and internal links, but that’s something I’ll talk about on this blog another time.

More eyes on your content

When someone starts linking to articles in blogs on their website, you have the opportunity to get new users reading your content; which helps to

• Increase traffic
• Perhaps make you some extra sales (if you’re an Affiliate Marketer like me)
• Turn these readers into long time fans

Do I really need to say anything more than this?

Assuming they aren’t linking to you because your website is awful, just getting an external link (even if it's a no follow) can still bring you many benefits.

Why giving external links is important

Putting external links in your content is just as useful as receiving them, for a couple of reasons:

• It makes your content look natural (you build out your link profile)
• You offer a better user experience than if you weren't featuring any
• You get to link to blogs you love

Linking to other blogs on your blog is great for these reasons above, sure you’re not getting anything really in terms of SEO value, but it just makes your website look a lot more legit in the eyes of Google and offers a way better user experience all around.

Which, in the long run, is actually going to be quite valuable to you.

So make sure you’re text linking and image linking wherever you need to, whether that's adding hyperlinks in HTML or using outbound links on WordPress, as I’ve shown you how to do previously.

External link best practices

So, you now know what are outbound links as well as why these links in a website might be useful to you.

Let's talk about implementation; some of the things you should be doing and the things to avoid when external linking; external linking best practices:

• Make sure your page is trustworthy: Receiving links from sources that already have trust is one great way to ensure that your site gets seen in the same light - and of course this works vise versa.
• Link to popular pages: If you’re linking to a page that already trustworthy websites with links are linking too, then this will again paint you in a similar light.
• Try not to link to competitors: If they are; tread carefully, sending outbound links in SEO terms could mean you’re telling Google that you think their site is better than yours.
• Ensure the external content is relevant to you: Adding a link to a blog that has no relevance to you looks spammy and unnatural and will do damage to your overall SEO site links profile - so make sure you’re only adding links to pages that are informative and feature relevant content.
• Don’t link SEO content more than 3 times per page: At the end of the day, you want YOUR content ranked on the SERPs and If you’re sending too many links out on a page, you’re telling Google “Yep, this content is better”. Which is going to be detrimental to you.
• And of course, use anchor text when website linking: Don’t just have a naked link on the page, make it look waaaay more natural with some nice anchor text which helps to maintain the flow of the writing but to also describe what the purpose of said link is.
  • A bad example of anchor text usage: If you’re looking for Wall Art Affiliate Programs to sign up to, then sign up here if that is something you’re going to be interested in. Here is the link!
  • A good example of SEO anchor links: These helpful wall art affiliate programs are all you need to get started in this niche!

So if you’re sending links to pages or a link to a blog, then be sure to follow these best practices when doing so!

Should Outbound Links be nofollow?

Now, we know that outbound links will naturally give out SEO juice, which in a lot of cases can be detrimental to the overall SEO site links profile despite it being good for user experience.

This is because it can look like you’re linking to better content and thus telling Google, “This site is better than mine, even I say so.”

Which of course, isn't the case, is it?

But since our discussion about external links seo nofollow nofollow and dofollow, we know using nofollow on our hyperlinks allows us to still link to a piece of content without specifically telling Google we vouch for it.

Which leaves one question to remain, should SEO external links/SEO outbound links be set to no-follow?

Yes - in my opinion, you should absolutely set outbound links to nofollow, especially if they’re a competitor site.

Ideally, you wouldn't be linking to competitors anyway but sometimes you just have to.

Even if you’re linking to something relevant for the discussion on a page, it might not be relevant for the overall makeup of your website, and this is also when the no follows attribute should be used.

How to create external links

Setting up links for websites is fairly easy, I’m going to show you how to do link blogging depending on if you want to link external links in html or you’re using the backend of WordPress like me - so stick around to find out how to create outbound links!

How to create external links in HTML

If you’ve ever touched HTML before, you’ll know there is an piece of code which allow you to add a HTML link to any piece of text on the website:

<a href="https://www.affiliatingfromhome.com/"> Link To My Home Page</a>

Using the HTML links example above, you could add it to your own code and you would be external linking in html to this very website.

Of course, you can change this html link a to however you like!

With your link, all you need to do is copy and paste it wherever you need it within your own HTML file and BOOM, that's how to add links to websites.

How to create external links in WordPress

If you’re wondering how to do external linking for SEO purposes on your blog, and you’re working on the backend of WordPress, then let me tell you how to add links in a blog. 

Compared to HTML linking (which is already fairly easy), understanding how to create a link to a website in WordPress is super easy.

Open up an old post, or create a new one and go to any line of text.

All you need to do is highlight the text, and you’ll see a little paperclip icon - click on that and you can add any link to your website!

Boom, you’ve just created an outbound link in WordPress!

How to remove External Links

You’ve created and added your external links, but now it might be time to remove them, for one reason or another.

How To Remove External links in HTML

If you’re wondering how to remove external links in html, you’re in the right place.

Simply, go to the line of code where you’ve already done external linking in html, and just remove it from within your text editor and then you’re done - yes, it’s as easy as that to remove links !

Don’t forget to replace the text you might have removed once you took away the “a href” link.

How To Remove External links in WordPress

To remove external links in WordPress you have one of two options, depending on your goals.

Go to a post that has a hyperlink in it you wish to remove and:

• Remove the text completely, which will remove the link attached to it.
• Right click the hyperlinked text, and remove the link from there.

Conclusion

External links are important for any website, whether you blog about your life or you’re in this for the money like I am in with Affiliate Marketing.

But like with everything in SEO, it takes time to fully understand and get things right, even something as simple as external linking to other websites takes practice to get just right so you can get all the benefits which I’ve mentioned.

With all this being said, you are more than equipped with the information on how to properly add external links to your website - so what are you waiting for? Get linking!

Perhaps you could link back to this blog as a thank you for helping you out… ; - )

The following blog post What are external links and why do they matter? is republished from https://www.affiliatingfromhome.com/

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