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Kate Chasten

How many external do-follow links should I have in my blogs?

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The other day I read an article on the main causes stopping websites to rank for SEO. Apparently, the authors had analyzed 1000 websites for this study. ( I wish I'd saved the link). What shocked me was that the second or maybe third reason for websites not ranking was, according to the authors, that there were only one or two do-follow links in most of the blogs on these websites!! I always thought one external do-follow link is enough! And many people don't even allow that because it takes away their link juice. Now, I wonder how many external do-follow links I should have in my blogs. Could anyone guide me on this?

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Andrew Cook
Remember in school how your teacher always made you reference 2 sources? that's what they're basing it off of. you can rank with 0 inbound links, 0 outbound links, and 0 internal links. #1 even. all you need is to have better content than #2. outbound linking is like citing sources, in a way.
Kate Chasten
@backseosoftware Thanks. But I've come across many high-quality blogs that have ranked way lower than low-quality ones. I just can't see how "quality" alone can have the most affect.
Andrew Cook
@kate_chasten quality people linking to you. quality internal linking. quality outbound linking. it's not about how many, it's about the quality.
Paul Richardson
Search engines look for evidence that you are talking about a subject that you know well. So one thing they look for is links to relevant sources about the subject. If you are taking about Ferrari, it would be good to have links to the Ferrari website, dealers, racing circuits, clubs, museums, events, YouTube channels, etc. Don't worry about the number of outbound links on each page. On a website, some of your pages will have few links, some will have many.
Kate Chasten
@paul_richardson Thanks for the advice. I just can't get it out of my head why they said there must be more than two do-follow links in every blog post.
Paul Richardson
@kate_chasten I wouldn't worry about that. Just make sure your overall blog contains good content. I recommend using the Screaming Frog software (it's free for up to 500 pages) to check the SEO and overall health of your website.
Vinnie Tran
@paul_richardson any the differences between Ahref and Screaming Fog?
Paul Richardson
@vinnie_tran Yes. I use both. Screaming Frog for reviewing my website, AHREF for a wider scope of functionality.
Erkin Bek
As far as I know and even not long ago took a course on SEO it was written on the contrary that rank all one do-follow. For example, from one site leads to you several do-follow, and from another just one. Both of them will have the same weight (of course if these sites have the same Domain Ranking). So I think that the author may be wrong.
Qudsia Ali
Hey there! The number of external do-follow links you should have in your blogs depends on a few factors, such as the quality of the links, the relevance of the content, and the overall SEO strategy for your blog. However, a good rule of thumb is to include one to two external do-follow links per 500 words of content. When choosing external links, make sure they are high-quality and relevant to your topic.
Kate Chasten
@qudsia_ali Thanks for the tip, I've done that several times and my content was rich and it ranked well but a colleague of mine would complain that by including 6 do-follow links ( my blog was +2500 words) I had damaged my website's "DA".