An outbound link is formed when you place a link on your site that points to another site or resource. These can prove a useful tool, providing readers with some additional information or further reading after they have considered the material in an article, without having to fully research or write further content covering those topics.
The target of an outbound link receives credit in the eyes of search engines for that link – sometimes called ‘link juice’. Whilst in the past many marketers would avoid linking to any resources as a result of passing on this ‘link juice’ it has become accepted that some extremely high quality sites (authority sites) just by virtue of always looking to provide excellent information for their users will often link to useful resources. These sites do not rank poorly in the organic search results as a consequence – in fact many indications show they rank better because of their role as an authority site.
Care does need to be taken not to be seen to be linking to unfavourable parts of the Internet. Links to banned sites, link farms or sites operating in less reputable niches (such as pornography) should generally be avoided or treated with caution. An excessive habit of having links on your sites to poor quality parts of the World Wide Web will likely lead to some loss of the perceived value of your site from a search engineer’s perspective.