An outbound link is a link that points to an external source on another website. For example, say you offer a helpful Resources section on your website that provides links to resources that are not part of your website. These are considered outbound links because they do not point to an information source within your website.
Another way of looking at an outbound link is as an ‘inbound link.’ Don’t get confused. It simply refers to its end point as opposed to its starting point. If an outbound link is coming from an external website but pointing toward your website then it is regarded as an “inbound link’ to you. With comprehensive search engine optimization you want as many relevant, high quality ‘outbound links’ to point as ‘inbound links’ to your corresponding web pages in order to increase the “popularity” of your web pages.
Your web pages are considered “popular,” or rather are “voted” as valuable resources as they relate to the keywords and phrases for which they are optimized, when reputable ‘outbound links’ from highly “popular” outside sources provide ‘inbound links’ that point to your web pages and encourage people to follow them. ‘Link popularity’ is an important element of a search engine’s indexing and ranking algorithm. Inbound links (outbound from an external website and pointing your way) are the way in which your link popularity is enhanced. See ‘Inbound Link,’ ‘Google PageRank™’ and ‘Link Popularity’ for more information.
