How to add outbound links in a blog without coding (WordPress + Elementor)

If you want to add outbound links in blog posts but the words “do-follow”, “nofollow”, and “open in new tab” make you want to close the tab, this is the guide I wish I’d had when I started. You don’t need to touch code. You don’t need a plugin. You just need to know which button to click and when to bother with nofollow.

I’ll walk through the whole thing for both the WordPress block editor and Elementor, show you the one clean line of HTML that fixes the most common mess, and tell you when a plain link is completely fine.

What is an outbound link, and why does it matter?

An outbound link is any link in your post that sends a reader to a different website. If you’ve ever linked to a recipe you love, a tool you use, or an article you’re referencing, you’ve already added one.

They matter for two reasons. Readers get more value when you point them to genuinely useful sources, and search engines read your outbound links as a signal that your content sits inside a real conversation rather than in a vacuum. Answer engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity notice the same thing — pages that cite and connect to trustworthy sources tend to be treated as more credible. So learning to add outbound links in blog posts cleanly is a small skill with an outsized payoff.

Why does one link sometimes turn into three broken tags?

Here’s the problem that sent me down this rabbit hole in the first place. I was editing a post in Elementor and wanted to link a single phrase to an external recipe. Simple. But when I switched to the HTML view, my anchor text wasn’t wrapped in one link — it was wrapped in three separate <a> tags, one per word.

It looked roughly like this:

<a href="...">Easy</a><a href="...">Vegan</a><a href="...">Fried Rice</a>

This happens when the editor applies the link word by word instead of to the whole selection, usually because of how the text was highlighted or pasted. It’s not dangerous, but it’s messy, it can break formatting, and it makes your HTML harder to maintain.

What’s the no-code fix for duplicate link tags?

<p>Try this <a href="https://example.com/recipe" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Easy Vegan Fried Rice</a>.</p>

That’s the entire fix. No plugin, no script. One link that opens in a new tab, keeps your reader’s session safe, and stays SEO-friendly. Whenever you find stacked <a> tags, the fastest route is to delete the lot and retype a single link rather than trying to surgically remove the extras.

What do target and rel actually mean?

Before you start adding links everywhere, it helps to know what’s inside that tag, because these three attributes cover almost every situation:

• target="_blank" opens the link in a new browser tab, so the reader doesn’t lose your post when they click away.
• rel="nofollow" tells search engines not to pass ranking credit to the linked site. It’s the standard choice for affiliate, sponsored, or promotional links.
• noopener noreferrer closes a small security and privacy gap that appears when you open links in new tabs, especially to sites you don’t control.

You don’t have to memorise these. WordPress and Elementor both add most of them for you through simple toggles, which is exactly what the next sections cover.

How do you add outbound links in blog ?

If you’re on the Gutenberg block editor, here’s the no-code path:

1. Highlight the exact text you want to turn into a link.
2. Click the link icon (🔗) in the toolbar that appears.
3. Paste the destination URL.
4. Turn on “Open in new tab.”
5. If you want nofollow, click the three-dot advanced options or switch to the block’s HTML view and add rel="nofollow" inside the tag.

That’s all it takes. The block editor handles noopener for new-tab links on its own, so you rarely need to think about it. This is the simplest way to add outbound links in blog posts if you’re not using a page builder.

How do you add outbound links in Elementor?

Elementor works a little differently, and it’s where those duplicate tags tend to show up. Here’s the clean method:

1. Use a Text Editor widget for your paragraph.
2. Highlight the anchor text in one clean pass.
3. Click the link icon and paste your URL.
4. Click the gear icon next to the link field to open the extra settings.
5. Turn on “Open in new window.”
6. In the “Rel” field, type: nofollow noopener noreferrer

If you highlight the whole phrase in a single drag before clicking the link icon, you avoid the word-by-word tag problem entirely. And if it still happens, switch to the widget’s HTML view and replace the block with the single clean line from earlier.

What if you’re not using Elementor or the block editor?

You can still add outbound links in blog posts by pasting straight into your editor’s HTML or “Text” mode. Drop in this template and swap the URL and text for your own:

<p>Check out this <a href="https://example.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">helpful resource</a>.</p>

This works in almost any content editor, including older themes and custom setups. It’s the universal fallback when the visual buttons aren’t cooperating.

Do you need nofollow on every outbound link?

No, and over-using it is one of the most common mistakes I see. Reach for nofollow when:

• You’re linking to an affiliate or sponsored product.
• You’re pointing to a site you don’t fully trust.
• The link is promotional in nature.

When you’re simply crediting a genuinely helpful article or a reputable source, a normal do-follow link is completely fine and often better, because it passes a small trust signal to a site that earned it. Adding nofollow to a trustworthy link won’t hurt you, but it isn’t required.

What mistakes should you avoid when adding outbound links?

A few small habits keep your outbound linking clean and safe:

• Forgetting to open external links in a new tab, which quietly sends readers away from your post.
• Leaving stacked or duplicate <a> tags in the HTML instead of one clean link.
• Slapping nofollow on every link out of caution, which flattens a useful ranking signal.
• Linking to spammy or low-quality sites, which reflects on your own credibility even with nofollow.

The goal isn’t to add as many links as possible. It’s to add the right ones, formatted cleanly, so every outbound link earns its place.

One clean link beats three broken ones

The whole myth around blogging is that you need to be part writer, part coder, part marketer before you’re allowed to publish. You don’t. Adding an outbound link is one highlight, one paste, and one toggle. When you understand what target and rel do, you stop guessing and start controlling your own HTML, one small tag at a time. Next time you link out, think about the value the link adds, format it cleanly, and move on — the code was never the hard part.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)