No outbound links

Internal links are when a link leads from one page of a website to another page within the same site.

We use this to create an internal linking system. 

The value of internal linking

A well-executed link scheme makes any resource more valuable to its users, therefore, helping behavioral factors, such as Bounce Rate and Average Time on Site. This then increases the chances of users purchasing a product or service. As the user can find their desired products faster, by clicking on valuable and useful links.

Links leading to these pages are then indexed by the search robots. This means they are then included in the search engine database.

The number of internal links per page indicates how important that page is within the site. The more links that lead to the page, the more important the page.

Using internal links can improve the position of a page within your site. However, this should always be done naturally. Too many internal links could be viewed as spam, and then adversely affect your website's ranking.

It is vital to use an adequate number of links to your landing pages, this shows the search engines that these are important pages. It also allows quicker indexing of the pages and improves behavioral factors, e.g. click-through rate.

What happens if the page has no internal outbound links

The absence of internal outgoing links (e.g. linking out to another page within your site) means that you either have no navigation menu on the page, or it is closed from indexing. These are often printable versions of a page or other service pages. 

Many technical pages that are open for indexing don't contain information that is of use to the user. This isn't useful to your site as;

1. It prevents or slows down the indexing of helpful content. 
2. It's a negative signal to Google when ranking the site. 

For this reason, we always recommend closing such pages from being indexed. 

"No outbound" report

This report shows any pages that don't have outgoing internal links.

How to fix the issue

A page with no outbound links is bad news for usability because it means the user is unable to move away from that page. It means there is no internal outbound link to any other page within your site, whether that be in a footer, navbar, etc. Typically, we only see this when we open a printable version of a page.

It also prevents proper indexing of your site by the search robots, if a crawler reaches a page with no outbound links, it makes it more difficult to then access the next page.

To fix this you can either:

1. Put outbound links on the page to other relevant content, or in the navbar, footer, etc.
2. Close the page from indexing if outbound links aren't needed. This will stop the crawlers from wasting crawl budget on the page.