Do external links help SEO? Google's answer

If you want to improve your SEO and Google rankings, you might wonder if external links can help you. External links are links that point from your website to a different website.

According to Google’s John Mueller, external links do not have a direct impact on your rankings, unless they are relevant, natural, and provide additional value to your users. In other words, you should not use external links just for the sake of linking, but only when they make sense and improve your content.

Some studies have suggested that external links do help with rankings, but they are either outdated or not conclusive. Therefore, the best practice currently is to focus on creating quality content that serves the user’s needs and interests, and to use external links only when they enhance the user’s experience and understanding. To summarize, “treat links like content”.

YouTube tests a pop-up window that forces you to watch ads or subscribe to Premium

YouTube is testing a way to prevent users from watching videos without ads. This is a pop-up window that interrupts the video and displays a timer indicating when the next ad will play. Users would have to accept ads on YouTube or subscribe to YouTube Premium in order to remove the pop-up.

YouTube seems to have 2 main reasons for doing this. One is to convince these users to switch to the Premium service, which offers more benefits in addition to removing the ads. The other is to ensure that content creators are compensated for their work and that advertisers have greater reach.

Advertisers will have to be more careful not to over-saturate users, as they may be annoyed by the constant ads, and it may affect their user experience, and end up affecting the performance of campaigns.

Some users might look for other ways to watch YouTube videos without ads, such as extensions to download them, but YouTube says it is also combating these practices. On the other hand, I don't think this practice would be a big concern for advertisers and creators, since downloading the videos seems to be more tedious than simply watching the video with ads.

TikTok launches Direct Post, a new API for publishing content from other platforms

TikTok has launched a new API that makes it easier to publish content from other platforms. With Direct Post, users will be able to edit and upload videos (and soon also photos) to TikTok with a single click, without leaving applications such as Adobe, Twitch, CapCut or SocialPubli.

In addition, content creators will be able to schedule their long-form videos from within their social media management tools. This new feature expands the integration and collaboration possibilities between TikTok and other platforms, giving users more options and flexibility.