## What Is an External Link? An **external link** is a hyperlink that points from one website to another, also called an outbound link. This simply means, if another website to you, considered an **external link** to your site. Also, if you to another website, it's also considered an **external link**. ## Why Are External Links Important? **External links** are important because they [hugely impact ranking power](/blog/google-algorithm-updates). **If a website has a good selection of high-quality external links from reliable and popular sources, this will boost their credibility and authority.** This in turn will see the website rank higher in [SERPs](https://growhackscale.com/marketing-glossary/serp) and higher ranking means better [page visibility](http://growhackscale.com/marketing-glossary/search-visibility-seo), an increased chance of users clicking, more traffic, and a [higher conversion rate](https://growhackscale.com/marketing-glossary/website-conversion-rate-metric). Basically, good external links can transform your site’s potential.
## How to Optimise Your External Links?
While **external links** can massively boost the performance of your website, there are a few best practices you must follow in order to make the most out your links.
- Make sure any external links you use are relevant to your own content
- Ensure that the link you attach doesn’t link to a dodgy site
- Make sure you use [anchor text](http://growhackscale.com/marketing-glossary/anchor-text) that is simple, short and easy to read
- Keep things fresh and constantly update your links
- When linking out to another website, ensure that it opens in a new tab
- Don’t overdo it, external links should be integrated naturally. Don’t bombard your visitors with too many links, this isn’t great for [UX (User Experience)](http://growhackscale.com/marketing-glossary/user-experience-ux)
## Things to Watch out For
While there are some best practices to stick to, there are also some things you need to avoid.
### 1. Do Not Buy Links
This may be tempting but in the long run it won’t benefit you. In fact, you’ll find yourself hit with a [Google Penalty](https://growhackscale.com/marketing-glossary/google-penalty) in the form of the [Penguin update](https://growhackscale.com/marketing-glossary/penguin-update), and this can ruin a website, and will see you plummet in the rankings.
### 2. Don’t Use Link Farms
These go hand-in-hand with buying links, and Google does not look fondly upon them. Using them will see your website [deindexed](http://growhackscale.com/marketing-glossary/indexing-seo). Just don’t do it.
### 3. Don’t Partake in Incestuous Linking
Creating a network that only links back on itself is another sure fire way to land your website in trouble. Again, this will see you winding up with a Google penalty, or even worse, completely deindexed – and that’s hard to come back from.
## What Are Some Ways to Build External Links?
There are quite a few ways that you can build up your network of **external links**.
- Try to build up rapport with other websites that have similar content to your own and integrate their links into your content. However, don’t spam companies, this is not an effective strategy, and will actually them turn off
- Write a guest post on a website with similar content, and provide a link to it on your website
- Provide a testimonial on a website, describing your experience with a brand or product. This is a great way to secure a new external link
### How Can We Help?
Need help formulating a plan to build relationships that will benefit your link building strategy? We can help you with that.
Contact us to organise a free strategy session to get you on track. If you like what gets done then we can pair you with one of our highly recommended teams to implement your personalised plan.
