External Link
In one line
An external link is an outbound link from your domain to another — and pointing to credible sources tends to act as a trust signal that supports your own content's authority.
Going deeper
External links are the outbound links from your domain to others. They get less attention than backlinks, but linking accurately to credible sources tends to reinforce your own content's authority and factual standing.
Two recurring decisions: when to apply nofollow or sponsored attributes, and how liberal to be with outbound links on commerce or landing pages. Editorial pages typically benefit from generous, well-chosen citations; conversion pages usually keep them tight to protect the path forward.
Under GEO they take on an extra job. When an AI traces citation provenance, the trustworthy sources you reference become a context signal in their own right — even modest, accurate outbound linking tends to help.
Related terms
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO is the umbrella for everything that builds your domain's authority and trust outside your own site — backlinks, press coverage, brand mentions, citations.
SEODofollow Link
A dofollow link is a regular hyperlink without a nofollow attribute — meaning search engines treat it as a normal authority-passing link by default.
SEOOn-Page SEO
On-page SEO is the work you do inside a page itself — title, headings, body copy, internal links — to align it with search intent and make ranking signals legible to engines.
SEOE-E-A-T
E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) is Google's four-axis lens for content quality — and the same kinds of signals matter when LLMs decide whom to cite.
SEOContent Optimization
Content optimization is the practice of reworking already-published pieces — intent, structure, internal links, freshness — to lift their rankings and the traffic they earn.
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