Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis
      Moz Pro

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. If I nofollow outbound external links to minimize link juice loss > is it a good/bad thing?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    If I nofollow outbound external links to minimize link juice loss > is it a good/bad thing?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    6
    9
    9564
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Rich_Coffman
      Rich_Coffman last edited by

      OK, imagine you have a blog, and you want to make each blog post authoritative so you link out to authority relevant websites for reference. In this case it is two external links per blog post, one to an authority website for reference and one to flickr for photo credit. And one internal link to another part of the website like the buy-now page or a related internal blog post.

      Now tell me if this is a good or bad idea. What if you nofollow the external links and leave the internal link untouched so all internal links are dofollow. The thinking is this minimizes loss of link juice from external links and keeps it flowing through internal links to pages within the website.

      Would it be a good idea to lay off the nofollow tag and leave all as do follow? or would this be a good way to link out to authority sites but keep the link juice internal?

      Your thoughts are welcome. Thanks.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Andy.Drinkwater
        Andy.Drinkwater @KeriMorgret last edited by

        Just a little more info from Google here as well on how Pagerank Sculpting no longer works...

        http://www.thesempost.com/google-pagerank-sculpting-still-doesnt-work/

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • KeriMorgret
          KeriMorgret last edited by

          I'm with inbound.org, and second what ThompsonPaul says. This email was about not indexing profiles that are incomplete and have thin content, and doesn't have anything to do with outbound links.

          My take on links I make out from my own website:

          • Nofollow affiliate links
          • Nofollow links I don't trust -- but I generally won't link to things I don't trust, or would just make it so there's a space in the URL or it otherwise doesn't link
          • Leave most every link followed. It's my site, I'm going to link out to sites I trust. If I have comments, those will be nofollow, as I'm not the author and not endorsing where the comments are linking.

          Good info from Matt Cutts here about how nofollow hasn't been used to 'conserve' link equity in some time. https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/

          Andy.Drinkwater 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Rich_Coffman
            Rich_Coffman last edited by

            thank you good sir.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • ThompsonPaul
              ThompsonPaul last edited by

              As I mention in my other comment, Sandi, no-following links doesn't preserve "SEO juice" at all. That hasn't been the case in many years.

              And what Inbound is doing is completely different. They are No-Indexing entire pages that had so little content on them that they had no value, were wasting the site's crawl budget and looked like thin/duplicate content to the search engines. Nothing to do with the links on them at all. (This is actually a best practice for any site, but especially directory-type sites.)

              P.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • ThompsonPaul
                ThompsonPaul last edited by

                No-following links has ABSOLUTELY ZERO EFFECT on preserving "link juice" of a page, Rich. This used to be the case six years ago when no-follow for links was first introduced, but it was being abused so badly that search engines changed this behaviour. (This used to be referred to as PageRank sculpting)

                Further to Andy's and Dmytro's comments - Google is clear there are only three circumstances when no-follow should be used:

                1. you have a commercial relationship with the page you're linking too (paid links, but also many guest post scenarios for example)
                2. you didn't create the link and therefore can't trust it (e.g. user comments or other user generated content)
                3. you are linking to an unreliable site (to demonstrate a bad example,for instance)
                4. (and a bonus fourth) links to administrative-type pages that wouldn't be of any use to a search visitor like a privacy/terms of service or login page).

                There's also been considerable discussion that Google in particular considers no-following of all external links a sign of unnatural manipulation that could damage page authority.

                So... conceptually a good idea at one time, but no longer valid and potentially harmful.

                Hope that helps?

                Paul

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                • Rich_Coffman
                  Rich_Coffman @Andy.Drinkwater last edited by

                  Thanks Andy!

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • Andy.Drinkwater
                    Andy.Drinkwater last edited by

                    Hi Rich,

                    Don't nofollow for the sake of it. If a link is paid for, then yes, you should nofollow this, but that is probably one of the very few occasions i would suggest you do it.

                    Perhaps if you have written a blog post and then were asked to inject a link into it, then I would be tempted to nofollow that, but I wouldn't do it to try and retain link juice - that isn't really a tactic these days.

                    Google wants to see you link to sites externally, as long as it is called for - this will help show your authority as well.

                    -Andy

                    Rich_Coffman 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • solvid
                      solvid last edited by

                      Hi,

                      I don't necessarily agree that too many outbound links can harm your own SEO. In fact, Matt Cutts has tons of outbound links on his blog, so as long as links are relevant from a user perspective there shouldn't be any issues.

                      Back to the follow/nofollow, if you are linking out to trusted and relevant sources, I don't see any reason to nofollow the links. On the other hand, if you have user generated content, I would nofollow external links, because you won't always know where are they linking out.

                      Hope this helps!

                      Dmytro

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 4
                      • 1 / 1
                      • First post
                        Last post

                      Got a burning SEO question?

                      Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                      Start my free trial


                      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.

                      • See all categories

                      Related Questions

                      • McTaggart

                        What does Disallow: /french-wines/?* actually do - robots.txt

                        Hello Mozzers - Just wondering what this robots.txt instruction means: Disallow: /french-wines/?* Does it stop Googlebot crawling and indexing URLs in that "French Wines" folder - specifically the URLs that include a question mark? Would it stop the crawling of deeper folders - e.g. /french-wines/rhone-region/ that include a question mark in their URL? I think this has been done to block URLs containing query strings. Thanks, Luke

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart
                        0
                      • kirbyf

                        Website Redesign, 301 Redirects, and Link Juice

                        I want to change my client’s ecommerce site to Shopify. The only problem is that Shopify doesn’t let you customize domains. I plan to: keep each page’s content exactly the same keep the same domain name 301 redirect all of the pages to their new url The ONLY thing that will change is each page’s url. Again, each page will have the exact same content. The only source of traffic to this site is via Google organic search and sales depend on the traffic. There are about 10 pages that have excellent link juice, 20 pages that have medium link juice, and the rest is small link juice. Many of our links that have significant link juice are on message boards written by people that like our product. I plan to change these urls and 301 redirect them to their new urls. I’ve read tons of pages online about this topic. Some people that say it won’t effect link juice at all, some say it will might effect link juice temporarily, and others are uncertain. Most answers tend to be “You should be good. You might lose some traffic temporarily. You might want to switch some of your urls to the new structure to see how it affects it first.” Here’s my question: 1) Has anyone ever done changed a url structure for an existing website with link juice? What were your results and do you have a definitive answer on the topic? 2) How much link juice (if any) will be lost if I keep all of the exact content the same but only change each page’s url? 3) If link juice is temporarily lost and then regained, how long will it be temporarily lost? 1 week? 1 month? 6 months? Thanks.

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kirbyf
                        0
                      • KS__

                        How to rank for a location/country without having a physical address in that location/country

                        How do I go about it if my physical address (office) is in Country A but I want to rank my website in Country B, C and D (without having an office or physical address in the countries B, C and D)? I am aware of people setting up virtual offices in other countries/cities and adding them to Google Places/Maps with toll free phone numbers, but I don't wish to do any of that. I know Google will catch up with this one day or the other and punish me hard for trying to play games with it. Is there a way rank a website in another country without actually having a physical location there? If yes, please guide me how to go about it.

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KS__
                        0
                      • roberthseo

                        Sponsored blog - pass any link juice?

                        Hello there, If a quality blog in our specific niche writes an article about us which is clearly labelled "sponsored post" as we have either paid them or given them a product, will Google discount that link going back to our website? Should we request for the link to be "no-follow"? Thanks Robert

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | roberthseo
                        0
                      • DougRoberts

                        Embedding PDF previews and maintaining crawlability/link-equity.

                        One site that I'm working on has previously had a great deal of success from the pdf preview content on the site. The pdf previews are quite substantial and rank for many many long-tail terms that drive a reasonable amount of traffic back to the site to purchase the full version of the product. As part of a site redesign, the way the pdf previews are embedded/presented on the page is changing slightly: The proposed modal pop-up on the new site the code looks like thie: <object data="my-pdf-preview.pdf" type="application/pdf" style="width:100%; min-height:600px; max-height:100%;max-height:100%;"><embed src="my-pdf-preview.pdf" type="application/pdf"></object> Where as the old code looked like this: <object data="mt-pdf-previewpreview.pdf#view=FitH,50&scrollbar=1&toolbar=0&statusbar=0&messages=0&navpanes=0" <br="">type='application/pdf'
                        width='100%'
                        height='600'> It appears your Web browser is not configured to display PDF files. No worries, you can download the PDF file here.</object> Note: how previously the code contained a plain, standard link to the pdf document. My worry is that without this link, search engines won't a) be able to discover/crawl the pdf content or b) pass any link-equity to these pdfs. Does anyone have any experience/recommendations about this? I'd like to have some information before I request that they add a plain link to the pdf previews back onto the on-page content.

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DougRoberts
                        0
                      • bondhoward

                        Good or bad adding keywords in Pinterest description?

                        I added all keywords in description. Will this affect my website, Google takes this as negative way? I am not adding keywords on my own website, but adding keywords to third party website? https://www.pinterest.com/pin/304555993526970292/

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bondhoward
                        0
                      • Blink-SEO

                        Tool to bulk check outbound links

                        Hi. I have a list of 50 domains I need to check for links to three different sites. Does anybody know an easy way to do this? The best solution I have found so far is to crawl each with Screaming Frog and search for the domains, but I can only do one at a time this way. Some way to speed it up would be great!

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO
                        0
                      • JustinTaylor88

                        Duplicate internal links on page, any benefit to nofollow

                        Link spam is naturally a hot topic amongst SEO's, particularly post Penguin. While digging around forums etc, I watched a video blog from Matt Cutts posted a while ago that suggests that Google only pays attention to the first instance of a link on the page As most websites will have multiple instances of a links (header, footer and body text), is it beneficial to nofollow the additional instances of the link? Also as the first instance of a link will in most cases be within the header nav, does that then make the content link text critical or can good on page optimisation be pulled from the title attribute? I would appreciate the experiences and thoughts Mozzers thoughts on this thanks in advance!

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JustinTaylor88
                        0

                      Get started with Moz Pro!

                      Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                      Start my free trial
                      Products
                      • Moz Pro
                      • Moz Local
                      • Moz API
                      • Moz Data
                      • STAT
                      • Product Updates
                      Moz Solutions
                      • SMB Solutions
                      • Agency Solutions
                      • Enterprise Solutions
                      • Digital Marketers
                      Free SEO Tools
                      • Domain Authority Checker
                      • Link Explorer
                      • Keyword Explorer
                      • Competitive Research
                      • Brand Authority Checker
                      • Local Citation Checker
                      • MozBar Extension
                      • MozCast
                      Resources
                      • Blog
                      • SEO Learning Center
                      • Help Hub
                      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                      • How-to Guides
                      • Moz Academy
                      • API Docs
                      About Moz
                      • About
                      • Team
                      • Careers
                      • Contact
                      Why Moz
                      • Case Studies
                      • Testimonials
                      Get Involved
                      • Become an Affiliate
                      • MozCon
                      • Webinars
                      • Practical Marketer Series
                      • MozPod
                      Connect with us

                      Contact the Help team

                      Join our newsletter
                      Moz logo
                      © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                      • Accessibility
                      • Terms of Use
                      • Privacy

                      Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.