While I was reading a Hubspot marketing blog entitled, The State of Content Marketing in 2021 [Stats & Trends to Watch], I was reminded of one of the many reasons why I like Hubspot's blogs. In addition to those no-brainer reasons such as relevancy and quality of the content, I appreciate numerous hyperlinks included in each of their blog posts. This makes it easy for me, the blog readers, to explore other relevant websites.
Some of the websites I visited from this particular blog are beautiful.ai and wistia.com. I had known and visited these websites before but while I was reading the blog, I could visit these websites within the context of the 2021 content marketing trends. In other words, I visited Wistia's website in the context of how video content is getting more attention in 2021. I visited beautiful.ai in the context of how leveraging multimedia (such as interactive slides) is becoming more important to grab the target audience's attention.
Compared to the slightly more effort and time to add relevant hyperlinks in your blog posts, the impact this practice has on your blog visitors' experience is quite significant. It shows that you care about your readers. Your objective with your blog posts is not to talk at them but to share relevant information that can help them. Think about how different your experience would have been if you had to open a new browser to google Wistia, beautiful.ai, and the Hubspot's blog instead of being able to visit those sites right from my blog.
Adding hyperlinks to your blog posts is recommended from the SEO best practice perspective as well. Having links to established and relevant websites helps your website being recognized as a trustful source of information in the content niche that you operate in. In addition, the SEO specialists working for those companies that your blog posts have a link to may notice your website and offer you the same opportunity. Having those established websites linking to your website increases your domain authority which further helps with your website ranking high on search engines and attracting more visitors.