Do Outbound Links Help SEO? (What Linking Out Does for You)
Not directly. Google has never said linking out lifts your rankings. It does say links to relevant pages on other sites make a page more useful. Link out when it helps the reader, and tag paid or untrusted links.
No attribute needed: ordinary links to sources you trust.
Tag: paid links (sponsored), comments (ugc), sites you don't trust (nofollow).
In 88 published articles that linked to MentionAgent users, the median article carried 3 other external links. A quarter carried none; 22 carried more than 10.
How they were tagged: 566 of 719 followed, 121 nofollow, 32 sponsored.
Pages fetched 8 October 2026. Method at the end.
What Google says about outbound links
An outbound (or external) link points from your page to another site. Google's SEO starter guide covers them under "Link to relevant resources":
- "Links are a great way to connect your users and search engines to other parts of your site, or relevant pages on other sites."
- Links "can also add value by connecting users (and Google) to another resource that corroborates what you're writing about."
- They "can provide more context on a topic, both for users and search engines, which may help demonstrate your knowledge on a topic."
Note the wording: "may help demonstrate your knowledge", not "rank higher". Link out because the source helps the reader, not as a ranking tactic.
When outbound links can hurt
| Situation | What Google says | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Linking to a site you don't trust | Starter guide: add "a nofollow or similar annotation"; it "helps avoid potential negative consequences in your rankings in Google Search." | Tag it nofollow, or don't link |
| A paid link | Spam policies: "Text advertisements or text links that don't block ranking credit" are link spam. | Tag it sponsored |
| Trading links at volume | Spam policies: "Excessive link exchanges ("Link to me and I'll link to you") or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking." | Only link where the page earns it |
| A link someone required | Spam policies: "Requiring a link as part of a Terms of Service, contract, or similar arrangement without allowing a third-party content owner the choice of qualifying the outbound link." | Keep the right to tag it |
Linking to a competitor or a large site is not on either list.
Should outbound links be nofollow?
Not by default. Google's guide to qualifying outbound links says an ordinary link needs no attribute: "you don't need to add a rel attribute." Use sponsored for paid placements, ugc for user content such as comments, and nofollow for sources you don't trust. What each tag does for the site receiving the link is in do nofollow links help SEO.
The 88 articles below mostly linked without tags: of 719 links to sites other than our user's, 566 had no ranking tag. 65 articles linked to someone besides our user; 25 tagged at least one of those links and 11 tagged all of them. To check any page, use MentionAgent's free nofollow link checker.
How many external links should a blog post have?
Google gives no number. Add a link where a source backs up a claim or saves the reader a search; skip it when it doesn't. For a sense of what is normal, we counted the external links in the body of 88 published articles on 84 domains (all of them pages that had linked to a MentionAgent user), leaving out that user's link:
| Other external links in the article body | Articles |
|---|---|
| None | 23 |
| 1 to 3 | 24 |
| 4 to 10 | 19 |
| 11 to 20 | 17 |
| More than 20 | 5 |
| Median | 3 (about 1.7 per 1,000 words) |
The high end is mostly lists: by their URLs, 15 of the 22 articles with more than 10 links were tool lists or "best of" roundups, which link to each product they cover. The highest was 159, on a list of free SEO tools.
Linking out in a link exchange
In an exchange, your half is an outbound link. Google's line is "excessive" exchanges and partner pages built only for cross-linking, so apply the same test as any outbound link: is it relevant to what you wrote, and would a reader want it? 55 of the 88 articles above were two-way exchanges (the placement checker also found the return link), and their median was the same 3 other links. For which requests to accept, see how to respond to link exchange requests and our link exchange guide.
Getting other sites to link to you
Every link you earn is someone else's outbound link, so pitch what Google's guide says a good one is: a resource "that corroborates what you're writing about." That usually means a specific page that backs up a point in their article, not your homepage. See relevant backlinks, link outreach and white hat link building. Paying to make a link followed turns it into a paid link; buying backlinks covers that risk.
Get the links other sites are glad to give
MentionAgent finds relevant blogs, pitches the page that fits each article, follows up, and checks the live link on the publisher's page. From $99/mo.
Start Getting Mentioned On AutopilotMethod
- Pages. Every page where MentionAgent's placement checker saw a user's link live between 26 September and 8 October 2026 (MentionAgent's own sales outreach excluded), fetched on 8 October 2026. All but one loaded.
- Article body. The first element with at least 800 characters of text among: schema.org articleBody, common content classes (entry-content, post-content and similar), article, main. Navigation, sidebars, footers, forms, comments, share buttons, related posts and tables of contents removed. 88 pages had such a body containing our user's link; the rest are excluded.
- Counts. External = a different domain from the page's own. Links to our user's domain are left out. A link counts as tagged if its rel contains sponsored, ugc or nofollow.
- Limits. These are pages that agreed to link to a MentionAgent user, so they lean toward list articles. Links added by script after load are not seen.
Frequently asked questions
Do outbound links help SEO?
They help the page more than they help rankings directly. Google's SEO starter guide says links to relevant pages on other sites add value and may help demonstrate your knowledge of a topic. Google has not said that linking out raises your rankings by itself.
Can outbound links hurt SEO?
Some can. Google's starter guide says to add nofollow when you link to content you can't trust, to avoid negative consequences in your rankings. Its spam policies also list untagged paid links, excessive link exchanges and links required by contract as link spam.
How many external links should a blog post have?
Google gives no number. Link wherever a source helps the reader. In 88 published articles that linked to MentionAgent users, the median article carried 3 other external links, about 1.7 per 1,000 words, and a quarter carried none.
Should outbound links be nofollow?
Not by default. Google says an ordinary link needs no rel attribute. Use sponsored for paid placements, ugc for comments and forum posts, and nofollow for sources you don't trust or don't want associated with your site.
Are external links the same as outbound links?
Yes, when people talk about links on their own page. An outbound or external link points from your site to a different site. The same link is an inbound link, or backlink, for the site it points to.