There is a lot of discussion out there about placing an authority outbound link on your page but we dive deeper to test. What happens when you place the link on your page as the URL written out vs being clickable? This one is fun!"
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Non-Hyperlinked link to a high authority site outrank a page that doesn't have one?
So the idea is, you have written out www.example.com/example but it is not hyperlinked so you could not click on it and go somewhere. It is just a link sitting on the page. The idea of this is that it has an authority outbound link. The concept of putting a high value link to a high value site on your page – trying to get some context to what your page is about. Going to a .gov, .edu. or maybe a Wikipedia, etc.
This comes from a member of our group who mentioned it. Instead of setting up the link, just write it and he was saying it was working like gangbusters. So, I did a few different variations of the test, trying to check if the issue is it’s a .gov, which is maybe inherently high authority of, if its related to the pieces it is going to – one is about fuel economy, one is that sort of link, etc. In the end we’ve got great results.
The end result is that the non-hypertexted authority outbound link version seems to be working and provides a ranking boost.
After you’ve done some on-page optimization, it would be a really good idea to do a freshness update to your page. This would be a good opportunity for your page to use as a freshness update where you write a small paragraph about something or maybe you could add an image to your site to show Google that you still care about the page and are doing things to it.
Fashion your content around that authority outbound link. Don’t hypertext it. Just put it on and talk about it. Two birds in one stone. Freshness and this trick and get a boost for your page.