Site wide no follow links
-
Does it make sense to make all external links on my site no follow?
-
opps, I had a total misunderstanding about it, sorry about that.
-
If you nofollow a link, the PR just evaporates. Google changed this in 2008 or before, according to Matt Cutt's post at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/.
-
I could be wrong, but the way I understand it is that page rank flows from every link on a site, so nofollowing external links would be sculpting the page rank by keeping the link juice internally in the site. Like I said, I could be wrong on it, but that is how I understand it.
-
Lesley,
Page Rank sculpting was for internal links, and the original poster asked about nofollowing external links.
-
Hi Keri
No not really, I have quite a few guest blogs on our blog area. Some of the links maybe a little low quality so I thinking make them all no follow. I am definitely going to make my comments no follow.
-
Keri,
What I am referring to has actually been one of the reasons for an old algorithm change. People used to do a thing called page rank sculpting where they would no follow certain links on a page to keep some of the page's page rank. Google then changed the way that PR was passed so that if you no followed a link, the other followed links would get more link juice.
From my take on it, I would say it is trying to manipulate page rank artificially, which puts you at risk for a penalty. Look at Moz's site for example, you guys no follow forum links, which is standard. But you don't nofollow every link on the site, which would seem unnatural. The social media links at the bottom of the pages are followed, just about every link generated by a paid employee at Moz is followed. That is how it should be too.
If you browse around the web at other big places that deal with SEO, like Kiss, Raven, and other places like that, they do the same thing. I have a feeling it is because there is a risk of an unnaturally high number of nofollow links.
-
Lesley,
I haven't seen that about Google, and would love to hear more. My understanding is that if the link is paid, it should be nofollowed, not that all nofollowed links are paid. Many sites, including Moz, automatically nofollow all links in the comments, yet the links are by no means paid.
To Cocoon,
If you nofollow all outgoing links on your site, you're telling Google you don't trust any of the links that you have. Is that really what you want to do here?
-
I would personally stay away from any site wide rules like that. The hard and fast rule that I think google uses is that is a link is no followed, then it is paid. So you are giving the appearance that all of your external links are paid. Depending on how many you have this could raise a red flag about your site and content.
-
Do you not want the search engine to follow them?
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
-
Lots of links from a Wiki pointing at main site
Hi everyone This may seem a bit obvious but I am getting conflicting answers on this, we have a client that has a wiki that is basically an online manual of their software. They do it like this because the manual is so big and is constantly developing, there are thousands of pages with loads of links that are pointing to various sections of relevance on the main site as well, the majority of these are No Follow but I have noticed that they have a single link on the navigation that is a direct link to their main site that is a follow link, obviously this is a sitewide. Would this be seen as being detrimental to the main site, should I have this set as No Follow as well. Thanks in Advance
Technical SEO | | Andrew_Birkitt0 -
How are these links being displayed?
How does one markup their site to get the small sitelinks to appear in SERP listings as seen in the example image below? jJiQYy3
Technical SEO | | SelectHub0 -
How should we handle re-directory links? Should we remove these links?
We are currently cleaning up bad links that were purchased by a previous SEO agency. We have found links on anonym.to pages that redirect traffic to our site automatically. How should this be handled? Should we remove these links?
Technical SEO | | Lorne_Marr0 -
Should I add 'nofollow' to site wide internal links?
I am trying to improve the internal linking structure on my site and ensure that the most important pages have the most internal links pointing to them (which I believe is the best strategy from Google's perspective!). I have a number of internal links in the page footer going to pages such as 'Terms and Conditions', 'Testimonials', 'About Us' etc. These pages, therefore, have a very large number of links going to them compared with the most important pages on my site. Should I add 'nofollow' to these links?
Technical SEO | | Pete40 -
SEO Disasters - Links to Stories of Site Moves/Rebuilds Gone Bad?
Hello, everyone.. I am looking for some links to stories, articles, what have you describing medium to large complex sites that have moved, changed CMS, changed domains, etc, and ended up in a total SEO disaster. Really appreciate anything the community here has or can find! Thanks!
Technical SEO | | DuPont0 -
Getting 404 error when open the cache link of my site
My site is hazanstadservice.se and when I am trying to open this to check the cache date i got a 404 error from google. I don't know why ? The cache page url is http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:j99uW96RuToJ:www.hazanstadservice.se/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk.
Technical SEO | | Softlogique0 -
Google Links
I am assuming that the list presented by Google Webmaster tools (TRAFFIC | Links To Your Site) is the one that will actually be used by Google for indexing ? There seem to be quite a few links that there that should not be there. ie Assumed NOFOLLOW links. Am I working under an incorrect assumption that all links in webmaster tools are actually followed ?
Technical SEO | | blinkybill0 -
4XX Broken Links
I am attempting to fix the issues SEOmoz found when crawling my site. I have a list of 4XX errors that I am attempting to fix. Basically I know one option is to redirect them to another page, but I would like to have the option to remove the links completely. The only problem is I can not find where the links are located. Does SEOmoz provide where on my site these broken links are? Or do they only provide the url that is linked to?
Technical SEO | | ClaytonKendall0