TO NOFOLLOW OR NOT
-
Hey Everyone...
Just got a quick question I haven't really ever found a straight answer to. I have a sports blog. Part of the blog is writing my own articles and the other part is putting together posts that have a collection of links to other good articles. An example post link is below.
http://frogfanreport.com/tcu-news/frog-fan-tcu-news-links-1612/
The question is whether I should be setting these posts as NOFOLLOW?
During football season I have a link collection post daily but during the off-season i may post every couple of days.
zach
-
Nofollow sites that you don't trust. Some people will also nofollow links to direct competitors, which is understandable. Nofollow can and arguably should be used for user-generated content that you can't monitor regularly, such as blog comments, etc.
Don't use it for quality content that your readers would find valuable. Alan is correct that nofollowing links will not give more "link juice" to your own site, so you have little to gain.
-
No argument. I don't disagree. I said that putting nofollow on a resource page would help pass less page rank and probably help your rankings initially. But a great resource page that people will want to link to because it is useful always has the ability to rank no matter if it contains follow or nofollow links. As I said in my first response, I prefer to always give follows on my links because I feel if I think they're good enough to link to then they deserve the credit. Apologies if I didn't make that more clear in my first response.
-
Hi Chase, a page with nothing more than outgoing links to high quality sites, all with cohesive relevance, will rank and rank well. I use this type of "resource page" all the time. An example here: http://golf-newz.com/world-golf-stats
That page has ranked for months with nothing more than outgoing links (the links you see at the bottom). Only recently I added the stats drop downs and frankly, they actually negatively affected my ranking. The page was ranking better with nothing more than outgoing links.
I don't mean to start an argument but, well chosen outbound links, with tight relevance work and I have found them to work in numerous industries.
I do see people saying that they don't but, they do.
-
Only no follow if you think that pages your linking to are of very low quality and may damage your reputation. No follows will not save you any link juice, they just don’t give it to the linked page.
You may want to add a description for each links, that will help your rankings, rather than a no-follow -
n my opinion, your page was more of resource page that you needed to rank highly then I would say it would be smart to put nofollows on the page. But, I don't typically subscribe to this. My feeling is that if you feel a site is worth linking to, then the right thing to do is give them the credit they deserve. But, with pages like yours where they are basically just links with no content, you'll not be ranking anyways for them -- these pages seem to be more for returning visitors who are interested in what you consistently have to say. I'd give follow links on your pages, especially since they seem to be to high quality sites like ESPN.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Should I nofollow/noindex the outgoing links in a news aggregator website?
We have a news aggregator site that has 2 types of pages: First Type:
Technical SEO | | undaranfahujakia
Category pages like economic, sports or political news and we intend to do SEO on these category pages to get organic traffic. These pages have pagination and show the latest and most viewed news on the corresponding category. Second Type:
News headlines from other sites are displayed on the category pages. The user will be directed to that news page on the main site by clicking on a link. These links are outgoing links and we redirect them by JavaScript (not 301).
In fact these are our websites articles that just have titles (linked to destination) and meta descriptions (reads from news RSS). Question:
Should we have to nofollow/noindex the second type of links? In fact, since the crawl budget of websites is limited, isn't it better to spend this budget on the pages we have invested in (first type)?0 -
Should I nofollow/noindex the outgoing links in a news aggregator website?
We have a news aggregator site that has 2 types of pages: First Type:
Technical SEO | | undaranfahujakia
Category pages like economic, sports or political news and we intend to do SEO on these category pages to get organic traffic. These pages have pagination and show the latest and most viewed news on the corresponding category. Second Type:
News headlines from other sites are displayed on the category pages. The user will be directed to that news page on the main site by clicking on a link. These links are outgoing links and we redirect them by JavaScript (not 301).
In fact these are our websites articles that just have titles (linked to destination) and meta descriptions (reads from news RSS). Question:
Should we have to nofollow/noindex the second type of links? In fact, since the crawl budget of websites is limited, isn't it better to spend this budget on the pages we have invested in (first type)?0 -
Half of my site is private for members only, should I use the Nofollow on these pages?
I'm trying to increase more traffic to my website. However half of my website is for members only and you have to be logged in to see content on those pages. I'm confused on whether I should use "nofollow" on these pages or not.
Technical SEO | | DelcoUSA0 -
When/where is it better to NOFOLLOW
Hello, I have been away from SEO for a while and boy, how things changed... I have a question/concern about implementing nofollows... Should I nofollow repeated internal links?
Technical SEO | | WIDE16
Should I nofollow internal links at all?
What if a page has too many internal links between top navigation with drop down menus, left column and footer links? OR Should I only use nofollows for outbound links? I am pretty confused and would love some clarification... Thank you very much, Koki0 -
How do I add "noindex" or "nofollow" to a link in Wordpress
It's been a while since I've SEOed a Wordpress site. How do I add "nofollow" or "noindex" to specific links? I highlight the anchor text in the text editor, I click the "link" button. I could have sworn that there used to be an option in the dialogue box that pops up.
Technical SEO | | CsmBill0 -
Using Rel Nofollow on Duplicate Pages
Hi there, I have a rather large site that has duplicate content on many pages due to how it's being spidered by google. I was hoping I could set the internal link to this page as "nofollow." My question is that I have hundreds of other sites with backlinks to these duplicate content pages.. will this affect me negatively if I tell google not to index the duplicated pages?
Technical SEO | | trialminecraftserverfinder0 -
Navigating The New Rules - Clarification on NoFollow Usage
I posted some of this elsewhere but would like feedback from some of SEOMoz community. An author. Lets say she has a book out on Relationship Advice.
Technical SEO | | CarlosFernandes
Lets say her book was even called Relationship Help, Advice and Tips. She promotes it for years on her website and implements an affiliate program to get wider reach. Affiliates link to it by the name of the book. One day she even gets a mention or two on a few Yahoo editorial type pages that reviewed said book. A few other very big name websites also link to her and even link to her (without her asking) to her domain no less and make the link say simply Relationship Advice. The links were in the body of the pages. Again, these were unsolicited reviews that she did not even ask for. In the old world - that was ok - in as much as unharmful to her site. In the new world she's toast. She has taken down the book pages she worked 7 years to build up. I don't even think that will help. People linked to her website and put "relationship Advice" in the links because that's what she gave and was an expert at. She didn't ask for those links.
2) A large well known web directory that many have heard of - choose to charge for inclusion into their directory. BUT - you can get a free link if you include some code on your website. A reciprocation that is well known. I have read many many articles and posts by many people over the years on this - and as far as I can tell that reciprocation model for free submission was OK. As long as directories didn't have search functions that served search results that were biased to paid link submissions they seemed to be ok. In terms of the free submission - I read a post way back by Matt that said as long as the directory wasn't asking for the reciprocal link in addition to charging for the submission - that was OK. So, scoot forward to 2012. Said directory has hundreds of thousands of links to it - due tot he reciprocal code that was on many of the free links. The code on the websites that got free links obviously promotes the directory by putting the main keyword in the link. ie "Web Directory". In this new world - is this OK ? That's what they do. They are after all a web directory? The company in scenario 2 with hundreds of thousands of links all saying virtually the same phrase - with the vast majority of the backlinks being from generated reciprocal links for free advertisers in its directory - they are doing FINE. Not hurt at all. The small business owner / author in scenario 1 - who had unsolicited natural links coming to her with anchor text detailing something she did and was an expert at - has gone from the SERPS. Should the company in Scenario 2 - that COULD DO something about the anchor text in the reciprocal links back to their website - now change the recip code so that it just says their brand name instead of "web directory" ? Should the author - if she ever regains from this hell - now have some kind of policy clearly stated on her website - that if any person is ever to link to her website ever again - they MUST only link to it with her name in the anchor text - and never link up words she is an authority on? How can she prevent that? So now is it up to the advertiser or the publisher to ensure we are all safe? If small business person Billy Bob inquires about a paid link on a website and the publisher dosn't tell him that the link may hurt his site and he does not not request a NOFOLLOW on it (because he is just a clueless business owner) - are they (the publishing website) liable for Billy Bob's site tanking if it does? Or is it the advertiser's job to be aware of all said issues - because I know the vast majority of Billy Bob's wouldn't be. How long has everyone got to "get in line"? There are many in the search community offering paid links on their websites in "Sponsored Links" sections - without the use of NOFOLLOWS and i don't see any devaluing of their advertisers websites. If rules are rules let everyone play them. Getting sick of the hypocrisy. I aim to get to Journeyman though just so I can get a DOFOLLOW link on this site 🙂 Incentives eh! Carlos1 -
Secondary Menu - nofollow or other strategy?
We have a "secondary main menu" on a site that displays some popular pages of the site. They are in the main navigation of the site as subpages but we wanted to highlight them on every page of the site through this secondary menu. so this secondary menu is the same on every page of the site. So we have the main menu on the top of the site, subpages on the left and this secondary menu below the subpages (in a blue box so they stand out). Is this secondary menu confusing for the structure of the site or negative at all (in relation to robots, not UX)? Should we nofollow these links in the secondary menu? thanks for replies!
Technical SEO | | Motava0