Outbound links. Is this really SEO?

You can read more about the importance of outbound links in SEO in the following articles:
https://yoast.com/outbound-links/
https://yoast.com/academy/all-around-seo-training/outbound-links/

Furthermore, having an outbound link is one part of having a backlink, which is incredibly important in SEO terms. You can learn more about this here: https://yoast.com/link-building-from-a-holistic-seo-perspective/

Thanks for the response. So I read the links you gave me. I am not any clearer on whether they are ACTUALLY important to SEO or it is just something that Yoast developers FEEL is important. The main reason for this confusion is this paragrap[h here.

“At Yoast, we feel that every page should include an outbound link. If you don’t add one, you’ll see a red bullet. We feel so strongly about this because our mission is SEO for everyone. We very much believe in creating equal chances for everyone in the connected web. Websites need to connect to each other to be found, by search engines and users. So help each other out a little, and help us connect the dots of the web. It’ll make it easier for search engines to find websites, but also gain insight in how pages relate to each other. We can build a better web, together.

This is why the Yoast SEO plugin checks for outbound links: we need your help to structure the web. We want interesting websites to rank in Google. We obviously won’t force you, but we do very much appreciate your help. So outbound links definitely matter for SEO. For SEO in general though, not just your website’s.”

Listen, there is one thing that makes me furious. And this is, when professionals make decisions based on there “FEELINGS” rather than Facts. Something either IS important to search engines or it is not. How a person feels about something has no bearing. So I am very sensitive to phrases like, “We feel this is the way it should be.” or “We think you should do this because this is what we like.” That style of phraseology has no place in a professional conversation.

Not trying to be rude, but I don’t give a flying flip what Yoast FEELS, or that Yoast desires for webmasters to sit around a campfire singing “Let’s get together, Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! We’ll help each other out!” . I want to know what search engines want to see in a website. Yoast is supposed to be a tool that helps webmasters know what “Search Engines” want, not what Yoast developers FEEL.

Now, maybe Outbound links are important to search engines and I am just being off-put by the way Yoast is choosing to word their advice. Yoast is trying to word things for a modern millennial market that is all about “FEELINGS” and concepts like community collaboration. That is fine, and I understand that, but it makes it very hard for an objective Facts and Figures guy like me to understand what you are saying when your writing is comprised entirely of Subjective phraseology.

Hi,

John Mueller, who works for Google, addressed this question here in a Google Hangout back in 2016: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-says-outbound-links-are-not-a-ranking-factor-21545.html.

In it he says “…links from your site to other people’s sites isn’t specifically a ranking factor. But it can bring value to your content and that in turn can be relevant for us in search”

It is that last sentence we are attempting to convey in our documentation. It can help in a generalized way by helping Google find content. As it can help, we output a notification asking you to add an outbound link.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by Pcosta88.

“…links from your site to other people’s sites isn’t specifically a ranking factor. But it can bring value to your content and that in turn can be relevant for us in search”

The above quote is what I call the “Butterfly Effect” argument. The Butterfly Effect argument is this, “If a butterfly flaps its wings in Russia, it may cause a rainstorm in New York.” There used to be a video back in the 90s where someone theorized how this might occur. The idea is based on the theory of interconnectivity, which is, “Everything, even tiny things, affects other things, sometimes in big ways.” The problem is, it is just a theory and there is no way to prove that a butterfly flapping its wings in Russia caused a rainstorm in New York.

This is what the person is saying in the above statement. He is saying, It is not SEO, but we feel that it improves the internet overall, and by proxy, it might be good for your site (even though we have no way to test or prove the effect it has on your site).”

I am not saying that it is not good to have external links. I have lots of external links on my site. But to make it a major point of SEO, and demand it on every single page, when it is actually not SEO by any provable measure, is not a professional move.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by victorb70.

The Yoast SEO analysis lists things to help your site improve; not only for SEO but for the people visiting, reading, and interacting with your site content.

That being said, outbound links are not required to get a green score as long as you hit enough other checks. So if the content doesn’t have a natural point where you can add an outbound link; don’t add one just for the green bullet. You can ignore checks that don’t apply to your site’s content as not every check will apply to every type of content.