What are external website links?

What are external website links?

External Website Links are hyperlinks on one domain that point to a page on a different domain. Search engines treat them as votes of confidence, making them a key signal for ranking authority.

According to Moz, major search engines evaluate external links using several factors: the trustworthiness of the linking domain, the popularity of the linking page, the relevance of content between source and target, and the anchor text used in the link.

Add External Website Links to your SEO performance dashboard to monitor link-building progress alongside other organic metrics.

Why external website links matter for SEO

External links carry more ranking weight than internal links because they represent third-party endorsements. The volume and quality of external links pointing to your site are among the most reliable indicators of domain authority.

Monitoring this metric against competitors is a valuable digital marketing KPI for any company that depends on inbound web traffic to generate business.

External website links benchmarks

There is no universal benchmark for external links — what matters is relative performance within your industry and against direct competitors. Track growth over time and compare your link profile to competing domains using tools like Moz, Ahrefs, or Google Search Console.

A healthy link profile includes:

• A growing number of referring domains over time, not just total links
• Links from relevant, authoritative sources in your industry
• Diverse anchor text that reflects natural linking behaviour

External website links best practices

Moz outlines the following practices for building a strong external link profile:

• Earn links from trusted sources. Links from university homepages, government pages, or established industry publications carry significant trust signals.
• Pursue links from popular pages. A page that many other quality sites link to passes more authority than one with few inbound links.
• Match content relevance. The source page and your target page should share topical relevance. Off-topic links contribute little ranking value.
• Use descriptive anchor text. Anchor text should flow naturally and tell both users and search engines what the linked page is about.

Here is an example of poor versus effective anchor text:

• Poor: The article "Back to SEO Basics: Why Relevant External Links Matter" by Andy Franco on Business 2 Community is a helpful resource for expert opinions on external website links. Click here for the article.

• Better: Andy Franco's article on Business 2 Community is a helpful resource for expert opinions on external website links.

How to monitor external website links

Tracking External Website Links over time helps you measure the impact of link-building efforts and catch any drops in referring domains that might signal lost links.

A Digital Marketing Dashboard lets you monitor this metric alongside traffic, rankings, and other SEO KPIs in one view — giving your team a clear, real-time picture of your site's authority.

External links: top resources

External Links, Moz

Back to SEO Basics: Why Relevant External Links Matter, Andy Franco