What are internal, inbound and outbound links
Key Takeaways
Inbound and outbound links, as well as internal links, are common SEO terms which people tend to confuse. Here is a thorough explanation of the difference between internal, inbound and outbound links, and the best SEO practices how and when to use which type of links.
Internal links
Internal links are links which point to another content within the same domain. This means the domain of a page with an internal link and target domain are the same.
There are two types of internal links:
- regular internal links – pointing from one page to another page within the same domain
- anchor links – pointing to a specific place on the same page
The purpose of internal linking is to offer your visitors more content they might be interested in and keep them on your website longer. From the SEO perspective, internal links help in establishing website architecture and spread ranking power throughout the website.
When creating internal links it is recommended to keep the link path relative and to use an anchor text.
An example of a link with relative path and anchor text:
<a href="/blog/sample-image.jpg">Sample image</a>
An example of a link with absolute path without anchor text:
<a href="http://www.mywebsite.com/blog/sample-image.jpg"></a>
Keeping links’ path relative benefits you in 2 ways:
- domain name change – for example, if you switch from HTTP to HTTPS, using relative instead of absolute paths, will save you going through and changing all internal links on your website
- performance and speed – when a visitor clicks on a link with a relative path, your site will be able to respond and serve the target page much faster
SEO advice: Use internal links primarily for readers, not for search engines; link to the relevant content which provides value to the reader.
The difference between inbound and outbound links
Inbound links
Inbound links are all URLs which lead to your website and are placed on external sources. In other words, those are links pointing to your website from other websites, social media pages, forums etc.
Inbound links, or commonly referred as backlinks, are one of the most important SEO factors. Websites that rank high in SERP have hundreds and thousands of backlinks. However, many backlinks can help your ratings only if most links come from trustworthy and relevant pages. Irrelevant and spammy links can hurt your SEO and even deindex your website.
SEO advice: When it comes to link building bear “quality over quantity” in mind. Use the best techniques to increase the number of backlinks.
Outbound links
Unlike inbound links, outbound links send visitors away from your website.
Outbound links, or sometimes called external links, are all links on your website pointing to other websites.
Outbound links have positive effects on SEO but only if you tend to link to high authority pages with relevant content. Whereas outbound links pass some of your SEO juice to the target page, you should use them sparingly.
SEO advice: Use outbound links 1-3 times per article, and only if the target source content is relevant and useful to the readers.
Dofollow and Nofollow links
Dofollow and nofollow are HTML link attributes whose purpose is to tell search engines if they should or shouldn’t follow the link, and in SEO terms, to transfer or not some of your SEO link juice.
By default, all links are dofollow. If you want to make a link nofollow, you have to do it manually.
Google asks all paid links to have the nofollow attribute, and usually, by default, links in comments, on forums and all user-submitted links, e.g. on Wikipedia, are nofollow.
SEO advice: Use dofollow links if you link to a trustworthy website with quality, relevant content. Use nofollow links whenever you link to a spammy website for any reason.
