Authority Links and Outlinks: A Complete Guide (2021)

What is Authority Link?

Authority Links are links that can be acquired from highly authoritative websites – a type of website that ranks high due to its well-written and informative content, links to valuable internal and external resources, a number of quality comments, validation from other media sources, ease of navigation, and fast page loading speed.

To understand what an authority link is, let me share an example. 

Suppose, you are at a party and a highly respectable person is talking about. His talks about you will heighten your prestige because he is already a respected person and many people trust him. In contrast, if the person who is talking about you is vague, his talks will malign your image. You will not like your name to be used by him as a reference.

This is the case with authority links. In the online world, when you acquire a link from an authoritative website, that link will be an authority link, and people will trust you and respect what you say and do.

An authority site could be government institutions, educational websites, large corporations, etc. Getting links from such websites brings ranking power to your website. 

Why should you use authority links?

Authority links play a very significant role to play when it comes to link building. 

1) Trust and Credibility 

 One of the many benefits of an authority link is reputation. When you have a number of backlinks from a high authority website, you will build trust and credibility. People will rely on your business. 

2) Branding

The more your business is referred to online, the more popular your business will be. Thus, more people will see your products and services. 

3) Increase Visitors 

Well-earned authority links increase targeted visitors to your own website.

4) Generate Value 

The more your business has backlinks from trusted websites, the more valuable your business will have. 

5) Increase DA 

High authority backlinks increase the Domain Authority (DA) of your website. DA is a search engine ranking score (the score ranges from one to 100) developed by Moz. The DA score indicates the likelihood of your website ranking on SERPs. 

6) Good for SEO Rankings 

Authority links are great for SEO Rankings. Also, they increase web traffic and referral traffic. 

7) Get your content indexed faster 

Authority links will ensure your content is indexed faster. It also ensures search engines will find it, spider it, and index it faster.

8) Build relationships  

When you source out related links to your website, this will lead to building business relationships.

Outlink

An outlink or outbound link is an external link from your website to another site. An outlink for you is an inbound link for another website. This link has a positive impact on your website ranking. This is the reason many webmasters add outbound links to their digital marketing service strategy. 

In general, the link is added for reference to statistics, facts, studies, research with a view to add more credibility to your content. However, external links can also be added if images or quotes have been taken from other sources and credit needs to be given. 

Outlinks are of two types: ‘Dofollow Links’ and ‘Nofollow Links.’

1) Dofollow Links 

When you add a link to content, the link is by default a ‘Dofollow link.’ Search engines follow links while crawling any website. Only give a ‘dofollow link’ to the website (of which link you are adding to your site) in case you want to give credit to that website. 

Dofollow links look like:

<a href=”http://www.example.com”>digital marketing</a>

2) Nofollow links 

Nofollow link means search engines will not follow the link you have added to your content. For a Nofollow link, the link needs to be coded with a ‘rel=nofollow’ tag. 

Nofollow links look like this:

<a href=”http://www.example.com rel=“nofollow”>digital marketing</a>

When you add a link to your content, it is good to add the ‘nofollow’ tag to that link. If you do not do, the link will remain ‘dofollow’ which will direct Google crawler to spammy sites. 

If it happens, the search engine will consider your site less credible and negatively impact your trust factor. Moreover, adding nofollow links to certain links will maintain crawl prioritization and allow Google to crawl the pages that you want to crawl.

Why should you use an Outlink?

Adding outlink to relevant websites is good for SEO.  Find below why using outbound links is important for your digital marketing service.

1) It Encourages Backlinks 

Using backlinks helps establish a network with other websites, bloggers, companies, and journalists. Endorsing their work will encourage them to do it in return. Linking your website on a regular basis to a trustworthy website increases your credibility and trust. When you write quality content, these websites will tend to link back to your websites. It is advisable to include statistics and valuable industry resources to your site or have something worth linking to. This is an effective tactic to get backlinks. 

2) Heightens popularity  

Google typically shows users the most relevant results for their search queries. Outbound links are a great metric to ascertain the popularity of a given web page. The more links your website has, the more popularity in that domain. Ultimately, this sends positive signals to Google and helps your search page rank in SERPs. This means, more people will click and visit your page. 

3) Value for readers 

If your outlink directs visitors to other important sources, it will set a high value to them. Thus, they will come to your website again. Therefore, it is important to provide people with value and create more engaging and easy-to-understand content. People will definitely recommend your site to others and they themselves will revisit it. 

4) Increase relevance 

Do you know Google learns everything from every aspect of your site – for instance, how and whom you link. By adding links to trusted sources, you increase the chances of the relevance of your own content. Thus, it becomes easy for Google to understand which industry you are associated with, thereby boosting the relevance of your content within the same industry. 

5) Enhances credibility 

Linking your site to a site with high domain authority (DA) within your industry will boost credibility and reputation for both readers and search engines. Consequently, it will increase SEO rankings. According to a study done by Robot, linking to high DA-websites has an active relationship with improvement in rankings. So, use outbound links to reliable resources or relevant facts and statics. This lends credibility and reveals that your content is correct and up to date.