Click a link, land on a different website, and you just followed an external link.

An external link is any link on your site that points somewhere you do not own. A study you cited, a tool you recommended, a video that explains the thing better than you could. The opposite is an internal link, which keeps the reader on your own site.

External Links Explained: How They Benefit Your Blog - YouTube thumbnail

Here is where most advice goes wrong, so it is worth being blunt about it. Linking out does not improve your rankings. Google’s John Mueller has been asked this repeatedly over the years and the answer has not changed: outbound links are not specifically a ranking factor. Asked in 2023 what happens when you add one, he said, “Nothing happens. Why should it?”

So why bother?

Because a claim with a source behind it is a different kind of claim. When you write that something increased conversions by 30%, the link is what separates you from every other blog asserting the same number with nothing underneath it. Readers can check. Most will not, and it still matters that they could.

There is a practical payoff too. Sourcing your claims well is part of what makes a page quotable, and pages that get quoted get cited, including by AI systems that lean heavily on whether an answer can be traced back to something. That is a slower and less direct benefit than a ranking bump. It is also more durable.

  1. Link to the actual source, not to someone describing it. If a statistic came from a study, link the study. Linking a blog post that mentions the study is how a number ends up three citations away from anything real.
  2. Make the anchor text describe the destination. “Click here” tells nobody anything. Naming the thing helps readers decide whether the trip is worth it, and helps screen readers announce it usefully.
  3. Stop avoiding competitors on principle. This is the piece of folklore worth dropping. If outbound links are not a ranking factor, linking a competitor does not hand them your rankings. When a rival genuinely has the best explanation, dodging it is obvious to readers and makes you look like you are hiding something. Link it.
  4. Use nofollow for what it is meant for. Paid placements, affiliate links, and anything user-submitted. Not as a way to punish a source you would rather not credit.
  5. Think twice before forcing a new tab. It is common practice, and it also takes a decision away from the reader and breaks the back button. If you do it, do it consistently rather than at random.
  6. Recheck your links now and then. Sites move, redirect, and die. An old post full of dead links reads as abandoned, whatever the writing is like.

The Short Version

External links will not lift your rankings. They make your writing checkable, which is the thing that earns trust from readers and gets you cited by everyone else.

Link to the best source you can find, describe it honestly in the anchor text, and do not skip one because it belongs to a competitor. If you are still working out how to stand out in a busy niche, being the writer who actually shows their sources is a real advantage.