What are external links and why are they still important

The cottage industry that had grown up around link building collapsed in 2013 following a change made by Google in its search algorithm. Websites that had paid handsome amounts to artificially boost their page rank using external links were penalized. Their traffic shrank, and their page rank slided.

There were a flood of web articles advising webmasters to change strategy. Many must have done so. But this does not mean that external links are no longer relevant. They are still valuable, and every webmaster must value external links connecting to their website.

# What are external links
External links, as the name suggests, are hyperlinks that connect one website to another.

For instance, the webmaster of Domain A values content published on Domain B. He decides that his visitors will benefit if they too visit Domain B. He therefore hyperlinks one or more web pages on his website to content published on Domain B. This is an example of an external link.

However, there are two kinds of external links.

The first is the external link created by webmaster of Domain A when he links his website to Domain B. The webmaster, when he does so, is telling his visitors: “Look, Domain B is a great website.  You will benefit by visiting it.”

The webmaster of Domain B may be unaware of the external link that has started pointing to his domain. It is possible that Domain A is not the only domain on the net that has hyperlinked its web page to Domain B. There are scores of others too. It is this second kind of external links that are extremely valuable. They are useful pointers for web users, and establish the popularity of Domain B in the eyes of search engines.

Google, in particular, had assigned high weight to such websites till it realized that smart operators have turned this into a lucrative business. These operators, who came to be called link sharks, had set up hundreds of websites on the net, which were nothing but business fronts. They would then charge handsome amounts of money to link these sites to those websites who wanted to boost their page rank.

# Why external links are still important
Google did the right thing by delegitimizing the loan sharks. But this does not mean that the value of external links has evaporated. There are still two key reasons why you should value external links pointing to your domain.

# Reason 1
Each external link is a vote cast in your favor. The number of external votes reflect the popularity of your website.

# Reason 2
The external links establish the relevance of your content.  This is what every publisher wants.

So, do not junk external hyperlinks. They are still relevant, and valuable.