Outbound Links
-
I have a page on upstrap-pro.com that provides weights of cameras and lenses. The user/buyer of my on-slip camera straps needs to know the weight his camera and lens to determine the proper pad size... large to small. We have put together a long list of the most popular customer cameras. The way it was done (by my daughter) was to also provide a via a link to dpreview.com which is an excellent site for camera information including specifications etc. My personal feeling about this is mixed. I can do it by having it open dpreview.com in a new tab but then the user/customer could still get distracted and go down the rabbit hole. On the other hand dpreview is such a good site that if they are new to photography and don't know about it, they should. I don't get a dime from dpreview. If fact I doubt they would ever link back to me because they do not write about camera straps.
I hear mixed things about outbound links. In this file there are quite a few outbound links to dpreview to keep it consistent. I could do a nofollow on all of them but I read that this is the easy way out. Google is jump ball and I have no clue what Cutts and his merry men are going to decide is cool or not cool.
I'd like some thoughts or options... Thanks... A small part of the file below.
Wideangle prime lens
Canon EF
22.8 oz
645 g
-
Bleed is just slang that means that portion of the PageRank is lost. If a page has multiple outgoing links, the PageRank is divided among them. If some of these links are nofollow, the portion of the PageRank associated with those links is not only not passed on, it is lost. In other words, the PageRank is divided among all outgoing links, both follow and nofollow.
-
That helped....thanks. So the short version is to use them in no follow mode and do not put them in the site map. I might do a generic header with the link to dpreview that allows the to go there if they want but not a link on every single one. Besides, there are other good sites such as Ken Rockwell.
-
This is jargon I do not understand. Bleed...dirt below?
-
Thanks.. so if I understand you this page can't be in the site map .
-
I wouldn't worry too much about losing PageRank. In the old days, SEOs used this technique known as PageRank sculpting, but a few years ago Google changed how they handle nofollow links so that you don't actually save anything by using them.
Nofollow should be used on links you don't trust or can't vouch for, and for paid or non-editorial links. Since these links don't fall into any of these buckets, there shouldn't be an issue.
As far as linking out, the real question here is what would make your visitors most happy? Sometimes a visitor that clicks away and goes down a rabbit hole is happier than one who doesn't find anything interesting on your site, so it's best to weigh all sides.
Best of luck!
-
Right, I was commenting on your use of the word bleed, which refers to the affect on the page with the link, not the page that is linked. I agree, nofollow does not transfer PageRank; it just bleeds to the dirt below. At least, that is my understanding.
Best,
Christopher -
I don't think you are correct. Google isn't the most truthful at times, but straight from the horse's mouth:
How does Google handle nofollowed links?
In general, we don't follow them. This means that Google does not transfer PageRank or anchor text across these links. Essentially, using
nofollow
causes us to drop the target links from our overall graph of the web. However, the target pages may still appear in our index if other sites link to them without usingnofollow
, or if the URLs are submitted to Google in a Sitemap. Also, it's important to note that other search engines may handlenofollow
in slightly different ways.https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/96569?hl=en&ref_topic=2371375
-
It is my understanding that follow and nofollow external links bleed the same page rank.
Best,
Christopher -
I would just go with the no follow if the issue is that you are concerned about bleeding page rank. I don't think it is a big issue either way though.
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
-
Internal no follow links
I have just discovered that the WordPress theme I have been using for some time has no follow internal links on the blog. Simply put each post has an image and text link plus a 'read more'. The Read more is a no-follow which is also on my homepage. The developer is saying duplicate follow links are worse than an internal no follow. What is your opinion on this? Should I spend time removing the no follow?
Technical SEO | | Libra_Photographic0 -
Why are these internal pages not showing any internal links?
If you look at Author profile pages like this one, http://experts.allbusiness.com/author/denise-oberry (THE top contributor on the site with over 82 posts under her belt), or any Author profile page, they show zero internal links or Page Authority. The same goes for most posts for each author on the site. Author pages should show internal links from every post the author has on the site. And specific posts should also have internal links from categories, etc. Yet they show zero. The only posts that show internal links and PA are ones that were either syndicated to the root domain's homepage, or syndicated to Fox Small Business. ZERO internal links. Does anyone know why this is? The root domain does not act this way with Author pages and posts. And I see nothing blocking links or indexing via the robots.txt file or page level nofollow tags. A real head scratcher for this SEO nerd, that I'm sure someone here will have a really simple answer to.
Technical SEO | | MiguelSalcido0 -
Internal Links
In OSE, it is reporting that i don't have any internal links to my homepage. In the header on every page is my logo in the top left hand corner which links back to my homepage. Shouldn't this mean then that every page should link to the home page? Similarly, internal pages which link from my main nav aren't showing up as having any internal links in OSE. Any ideas?
Technical SEO | | Santaur0 -
Link Profile, is the keyword ratio too high?
Hi, Our website (www.NutritionMission.co.uk) has dropped from 6 to 30 in the ranking for our main keyword (Nutritional Therapy). Pulling a spreadsheet off of all the inbound links looks like 41% of anchor text is related to Nutritional Therapy. Is this ratio too high for the new google update? There are also a lot of directory submissions from the SEO people we were paying before. Anyone point me on the right track to get some idea to how to work things out? ie. add more links to ratio of anchor text is lowered etc. Kind Regards, Ian.
Technical SEO | | ianwr0 -
Too Many On Page LInk
The analysis of my site is showing that I have a problem with too many on-page links. Most of this is due to our menu, and wanting users to be able to quickly get to the shopping category they are looking for. We end up with over 200 links in order to get the menu we want. How are other people dealing with a robust menu, but avoiding getting dinged for too many links? One of our pages in question is: http://www.milosport.com/category/2176-snowboards.aspx
Technical SEO | | dantheriver0 -
How not to lose link juice when linking to thousands of PDF guides?
Hi All, I run an e-commerce website with thousands of products.
Technical SEO | | BeytzNet
In each product page I have a link to a PDF guide of that product. Currently we link to it with a "nofollow" <a href="">tag.</a> <a href="">Should we change it to window.open in order not to lose link juice? Thanks</a>0 -
Nofollow internal links
Hi, we have problems with having too many links on page. Our website has a menu with 3 level sub-navigation drop down for categories which we want to maintain, for easy-navigation for the users. http://www.redwrappings.com.au/ After reading this article: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/questions-answers-with-googles-spam-guru, and some other articles, we came up with a solution. We can easily reduce the number of links per page by putting 'nofollow' on our categories links menu dropdown and create a separate 'landing page' that contains links to these categories (and allow 'follow' links for robots). Is it wise to do this? Or any better, easy solution that you can suggest? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Essentia1 -
How to find links to 404 pages?
I know that I used to be able to do this, but I can't seem to remember. One of the sites I am working on has had a lot of pages moving around lately. I am sure some links got lost in the fray that I would like to recover, what is the easiest way to see links going to a domain that are pointing to 404 pages?
Technical SEO | | MarloSchneider0