External link on home page for seo

Google does not rank one page any differently than another page. Each individual page is its own entity, so an external link on the home page is not going to have any more benefit than on any other page. Their algorithm isn't going to say "Wait; this is on the home page; therefore, we need to treat this link differently." Link sculptors, however, may argue that the links to your own internal pages lose a percentage of their "juice" when you link out to another website, whether that link is followed or not.

If you nofollow a link, search engines don't follow it, so any effects a link may have (positive or negative) are ignored by search engines. You are basically telling a search engine, "You can ignore this link; it's not important" when you nofollow it. (That doesn't mean that they don't "see" it and calculate the distribution of page authority to other links differently).

As for whether or not an outbound link has a positive effect on rankings, I'll leave that for others to argue. The evidence that it does or doesn't is purely anecdotal and correlative in my opinion. I think you should be linking out to other sites when it helps people and I wouldn't worry too much about what search engines "think". I'd also strongly urge you to have those external links open in a separate window or tab so that some people do not accidentally lose their way back to your site.

SEO-wise, an outbound link may or may not have big value. Friendship-building wise, linking to a valuable article and:

- tagging the blogger on Twitter, FB and G Plus
- emailing the blogger letting them know you linked in

is a powerful way to befriend blogging big dawgs.

I set myself up to appear on Neil Patel Dot Com, Forbes, Fox News, Virgin, Entrepreneur and John Chow Dot Com using this simple method.

I think yes

Hi Joomir,

In my own experience, an external link on your website should not affect your search engine rankings.

To get better search engine rankings you will want to start building backlinks from other related sites back to your website.

95% should be nofollow.

In my opinion, if you make it nofollow, then there's not going to be any SEO benefit at all. Google will just ignore it. Your visitors however will find it useful IF it's linking to a page that has more info on the topic.


Personally, I do link out to external sites where it fits naturally. I don't worry about what Google thinks. It's my sites and I'll link to what I feel benefits my audience.

Increasingly search engines are looking at the domain value of a site before they begin ranking pages. One outbound link on your homepage wont make a difference here or there - but start polluting it with lots of links, or dodgy links to affiliate products and spammy sites, and your domain value will go down (and it will effect the ranking of your inner pages)/

Exercise cautiion when linking out and dont' start selling links, and you'l be fine.

For a number of reasons. Here are our top four reasons for why outlinks are important...
1) They Increase Relevance
2) They Improve Reputation
3) You Can Boost Value
4) It Encourages Backlinks