I had an article ranking on page 1 in Google.
Recently, I watched a video from Edward Sturm about improving SEO by adding outbound links to authoritative sources. It made sense, so I went back and updated the article.
Before, I had references to medical studies, but they were just mentioned in text, not clickable. I changed that and added proper outbound links (dofollow) to reputable sites like WebMD and NHS.
The content itself didn’t change. Same structure, same intent, same information. The only real difference was making those references clickable and more “legit”.
Four days later, the article dropped from page 1 to page 2, around position 16.
I’m honestly trying to understand what happened.
Did adding those links somehow dilute the page’s focus? Did it shift the perceived intent from practical to more academic? Or was it just a re-evaluation after Google recrawled the page?
What’s interesting is that before, with no active links, it was ranking just fine. After improving the references and pointing to high-authority sources, it dropped.
This seems to go against the usual advice that linking out to trusted sources helps with credibility and SEO.
Curious if anyone else has experienced something similar after adding outbound links.
Right now it just feels like I improved the article and got a worse result.
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from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/xthjkBU
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