Linking to high-quality, relevant external sources is a good practice that can build trust with your users and demonstrate that your content is well-researched. However, it’s a matter of balance. A page with a high number of external outlinks can be a red flag for search engines, as it can dilute the PageRank of the page and, in some cases, appear spammy. Auditing these pages is a crucial step in managing your site’s authority and ensuring you’re not leaking too much link equity.

Think of your page’s PageRank as a bucket of water. Every link on the page—both internal and external—is a hole that the water flows out of. While you want to direct that water to your own internal pages, sending some to valuable external resources is good. But if you have too many holes leading to external sites, you risk draining the bucket and leaving less authority for your own site. For a broader look at linking, see our guide on the links category.

An illustration of a page with an excessive number of arrows pointing outwards, symbolizing high external outlinks.

Quality Over Quantity: The Golden Rule of External Linking

There is no magic number for how many external links are “too many.” The context and quality are what matter most. As Google’s SEO Starter Guide implies, the key is to link wisely. A well-curated resource page with 50 links to authoritative sites is far more valuable than a blog post with 5 links to low-quality, irrelevant sites.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Auditing Your External Outlinks

The goal is to ensure that every external link on your site serves a genuine purpose and provides value to the user. For a deep dive into this topic, this guide from Ahrefs on external links is an excellent resource.

  1. Crawl Your Site: Use an SEO audit tool like Creeper to get a complete list of all your internal pages.
  2. Identify High-Outlink Pages: Sort your list of pages by the number of external outlinks to quickly find the ones that need review.
  3. Manually Review the Pages: For each page with a high number of outlinks, ask yourself: Is this a high-quality resource page? Is every link relevant and necessary for the user? Are the links pointing to reputable websites?
  4. Prune and Consolidate: Remove any links that are unnecessary, irrelevant, or point to low-quality sites. If you have many links to the same domain, consider linking to a single, comprehensive resource instead.

For more on this topic, see our guide on on-page SEO.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there an exact number of external links that is ‘too many’?

No, there is no magic number. A high-quality resource page with 100 useful, relevant links is far better than a thin blog post with 10 spammy, irrelevant links. The key is whether the links provide genuine value to the user. However, as a general guideline, most content pages should have a limited number of highly relevant external links.

What are `noopener` and `noreferrer`?

`rel=”noopener”` is a security feature that prevents the new page from being able to access the `window.opener` property, which can be a security risk. `rel=”noreferrer”` prevents the browser from sending the HTTP referer header to the new page. It’s a best practice to use both on all external links that open in a new tab (`target=”_blank”`).

How can I find pages with a high number of external links?

The most effective way is to use a website crawler like Creeper. It will scan your entire site and can generate a report of all your pages, which you can then sort by the number of external outlinks to quickly identify the pages that need to be reviewed.

Is your site leaking too much authority? Start your Creeper audit today to find and review pages with high external outlinks.