In e-commerce, external links, also called outbound links or outbound links, are shortcuts that allow consumers to navigate from your e-commerce blog post to pages on third-party websites.
In other words, unlike backlinks , which are hyperlinks from third-party websites to yours, outbound links act as a bridge from your brand to other brands. But how can this be an advantage? That's what you'll find out next.
ADVANTAGES OF EXTERNAL LINKS IN E-COMMERCE
You invest time and money in content marketing to attract customers to your e-commerce blog and then to your online store. But then someone like me comes along and tells you that you need to include links pointing to other people's websites. Is that right?
Well, there are good reasons for you to make use of external links especially on your blog. In fact, outbound links make it possible to perform actions such as:
- Empower your domain, which according to Moz is something that can happen on Google. That is, external links also generate authority for your site;
- Indicate relevant complementary content, thus making the information more valuable, which improves the consumer experience;
- Expose the origin of the information you have just cited in the content of your blog and in this way avoid fake news;
- Give credit to third-party content when you make use of images, videos, audios, text excerpts and other information from other authors;
- Attract the attention of sites linking to your site and, in this way, perhaps even attract backlinks in return;
- Allow search engines to discover which pages are related to each other and thus improve user experience.
As you can see, external links are not just for taking your precious audience to other blogs and websites. More than that, they allow you to create a network of information and contributions, which in the end improves consumers' experience and at the same time increases the credibility of your brand.
OUTBOUND LINK STRATEGY
Creating an external link strategy isn't rocket science. In practice, if you use WordPress as your blog platform , you can use plugins like Yoast SEO to help you build an outbound link network.
Basically, you should link your content to relevant pages. That way, by avoiding bad sites, search engines will understand that your blog is respectable and will treat you as such. That is, by linking your content to good external sites you gain credibility.
Also, you need to avoid linking your posts to pages and sites that deal with different topics than yours. It is also worth mentioning that including links in registrations and comments do not bring any relevance from an SEO point of view.
When creating links, be sure to use anchor text with a keyword that is important to your business. This allows, among other things, search engines to better understand both pages (the one sending and the one receiving the link) and return more relevant content to consumers.
And last but not least, make use of tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Ahrefs to track clicks on external links, analyze the amount, check for broken links and other factors. Finally, optimize external links and increase the SEO quality of your e-commerce blog.
As soon as you can, click on “ Link Building ” and learn how creating an internal and external linking strategy can increase the power of your e-commerce.
