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External Links

Business
external-links

External Links is an Agent Skill for business published in the thedaviddias/Front-End-Checklist repository on GitHub: a SKILL.md instruction file an AI agent can load to do this task.

Use when auditing content pages for citation quality, suggesting authoritative sources to link for factual claims, or reviewing whether a page's external link attributes (nofollow, noopener) are correctly set.

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How to use this skill

Bring this guide into your coding agent with a prompt tailored to the tool you use.

  1. Open your project in Codex.
  2. Copy and paste the prompt below.
  3. Review files and risks before approving any action.
Prompt to paste
Inspect the Agent Skill at https://github.com/thedaviddias/Front-End-Checklist/blob/HEAD/skills/external-links/SKILL.md and all supporting files. Report provenance, permissions, scripts, dependencies, and security risks. Propose an exact installation into .agents/skills/external-links, but wait for my approval before writing files or running scripts.

Copying this prompt does not install or run the skill. Review third-party files before use.

Add relevant external links

Outbound links to authoritative sources strengthen the credibility of your content and are considered a positive trust signal by Google. Pages that cite their sources rank better for informational queries than those that make unsupported claims.

Quick Reference

  • Link out to authoritative sources that support your claims — this demonstrates E-E-A-T and improves credibility
  • External links to reputable sites do not hurt your SEO; Google treats them as a trust signal
  • Use rel="noopener noreferrer" on external links; add rel="nofollow" only for untrusted or paid links

Check

For each content page, count the number of external <a href> links pointing to domains other than the current site. Check: (1) Are factual claims backed by links to authoritative sources (government sites, peer-reviewed research, official documentation)? (2) Do all external links have rel="noopener noreferrer" for security? (3) Are paid or sponsored links marked with rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow"?

Fix

  1. Identify factual claims in the content that cite statistics, research, or expert consensus without a source link.
  2. Find the authoritative source (study, official documentation, government data) and add an inline link.
  3. Add rel="noopener noreferrer" to all external links for security.
  4. Add rel="sponsored" to paid or affiliate links; rel="nofollow" to links you cannot vouch for.
  5. Avoid linking to competitor sites for their main commercial pages; prefer linking to neutral third parties. Example: Replace "Studies show 60% of users abandon slow pages" with: "According to Google's web.dev research, 60% of users abandon pages that take over 3 seconds to load."

Explain

Google uses the context of your outbound links as a signal of content quality. Pages that cite reputable external sources are treated as more trustworthy than those making unsupported assertions. Properly attributed external links also demonstrate E-E-A-T by showing you have researched the topic from primary sources.

Code Review

Parse all <a href> elements with external URLs (different domain than the site). Verify each external link has rel="noopener noreferrer". Flag paid/affiliate links missing rel="sponsored". Count external links per page — flag pages with zero external links in long-form content (>500 words) that contains factual claims.

For full implementation details, code examples, and framework-specific guidance, see references/rule.md.

Rule page: https://frontendchecklist.io/en/rules/seo/external-links