According to top SEO marketers, external links are the most important factor in ranking power. Because search engine bots recognise external links as third-party votes – and the most challenging metrics to manipulate – they are deemed as a statement of your authority, and can therefore boost the effectiveness and popularity of your website design.
You might be thinking: Great, so I’ll put in as many external links as possible!
But sadly, SEO is never that easy. While there is no hard or fast rule about how many external links should be present in your content, there are a few guidelines that have been accumulated over the last few years. If you want to succeed in climbing the Google rankings and presenting your content as an authoritative voice in your field, it’s important that you follow these guidelines.
How Many External Links Should You Include?
The answer to this question depends on who you ask, but generally speaking, you should include two external links for a blog length of 500-800 words. This should never be two of the same domains in the same piece of content – otherwise, Google might recognise it as spam.
Around the web, top-ranking articles with 1,000 words or more, generally have three and five external links, while the lowest-ranking articles have none. Domain authority is not a direct ranking factor for Google, but it can be used to predict your ranking on SERP.
This means that, if you never include any external links for domain authority, you are essentially self-sabotaging your chances of ranking highly. That being said, you should always try to stick to that 1-5 figure and refrain from going overboard.
Further Guidelines on External Links
We mentioned just then that you should not go overboard, but again, this is not a hard and fast rule. What should be noted is that Google will not penalise you for an overabundance or lack of external links.
As we mentioned before, the numerical suggestions that you find online – including the ones we’ve just given you – are just suggestions. They may work historically, but that’s not to say they’re 100% authoritative or will result in a penalisation should you fail to follow them.
That being said, they do work to avoid raising any red flags, and whenever you’re formulating an SEO strategy, you should be hyper-aware of what Google sees and what they might consider to be unreliable.
To avoid finding yourself in a negative predicament, it’s always best to simply follow modern SEO trends – such as placing 1-2 authority links per 500-800 word article – and focus mainly on the metrics.
What do we mean by metrics? Well, in 2024, major search engines like Google will determine both the relevance and the value of external links, rather than how many there are in the content. This includes:
- How Trustworthy the Link is
- How Popular the Domain is
- How Relevant the Link is to the Content
- How Relevant the Anchor Text is
- The Variety of External Links
- The Variety of Anchor Texts
- The Relationship Between Your Website and the External Domain
The Main Things to Consider
If you want to succeed in utilising external links for SEO, we’d recommend following these metrics closely and putting your efforts into external link quality rather than quantity. True, you may have goals to reach and numbers to hit, but if you’ve learned anything from this blog, it’s that the number of external links doesn’t have to be part of it.
In many ways, you should be working as if Google was just another internet user. How helpful are your external links? How do they contribute to your article? Do the anchor texts flow with the main body, or do they detract from the content itself? Is everything focused on your homepage, or are you diversifying your keyword strategy across multiple different areas of the site?
If you have come across a part of your blog where you think users will benefit from a citation, then this is where you can insert external links and establish authority. By doing this, you’re simplifying the process and ensuring you’ve provided natural, authoritative value to both users and Google.
As algorithms grow more complex, it becomes increasingly difficult to pin down a decisive SEO strategy. But when it comes to linking, if you follow a simple, UX-orientated rule, it’s likely that this complexity simply doesn’t need to be worked out.
