Outbound Link
A link that sends your visitor to a different website, used to credit a source, add context, or point readers toward further reading.
Analogy Mental model
It is you vouching for someone else — the equivalent of telling a customer that if they want the full story, they should ask that person, who knows it best.
In practice What you actually do
Link to primary sources rather than aggregators, keep the surrounding sentence specific about what the reader will find there, and decide deliberately whether the destination opens in a new tab or replaces your page. That choice depends on whether the link is a citation or a next step.
Where people get burned Pitfalls
Filling a page with links to unrelated commercial sites dilutes topical focus and starts to look like a paid placement scheme. Old-fashioned link sculpting no longer works, but clarity of purpose still counts.
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