To follow or not to follow...?
-
One of my client's uses alot of links in their content. They follow style and fashion news. Many times I find the use of nofollows unnecessary, but sometimes they have articles with well over 20 oubound links...I wonder if this "drains" the authority/link juice of the page to the point where the long tail traffic wont kick in?
Should I have reason for concern, and should I use nofollow on the links? I notice many of our competitors dont really bother, but they also have alot more authority.
-
Hi Jonathon,
In general, outbound links are a good thing, and there's even a small amount of evidence suggesting that good outbound links can even provide a boost to your rankings (but never conclusively proven
Worrying about outbound links generally isn't worth the effort, but there are exceptions. For example, if you're trying to rank for the keywords "red shoes" and the first link on the page has the anchor text "red shoes" linking to another page (either external or internal) then this keyword cannibalization can hurt the ability of that page to rank for it's optimized keyword.
Generosity with outbound anchor text has a lot of value. I wouldn't worry too much about "leaking" authority, expect in the cases of keyword cannibalization described above. Others in the industry may disagree, and they are certainly entitled to their opinions and may even have some valid points, but I tend to see nofollows as a pain and only use them when you can't vouch for the editorial value of the link, such as blog commenting.
My 2 cents. Best of luck with your SEO.
-
All links cause the on-page pagerank to be diluted, regardless of whether they are followed or nofollowed. So if you are worried about link juice evaporation, nofollowing links won't solve the problem, only removing them will.
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
-
Does no-follow for pages affect site ranking?
Hey, I have a question. On my site, it's divided into the main site and the blog is in a subfolder of same domain. Within the main site (same domain), there are MANY checkout pages and other internal pages we use though all with "NO FOLLOW" on each. Despite it having "NO FOLLOW", will it affect our blog rankings in any way or domain ranking?"
On-Page Optimization | | Mirian0 -
Can we use internal no-follow links without negatively affecting rankings
we are creating a site structure for a travel website. the site homepage has a top navigation bar with 8 top level links and a total link count of 33 links in this (within menus). There are also 10 footer and ad-hoc links As this top navigation bar is a site-wide navigation, when entering s specific "travel destination" page, the "travel destination" page has its own contextual links and reference links, making the total inks on the destination page approx 107. do you think its ok to make all links in the top navigation bar no follow on all pages except the homepage? how would you approach this to create less links to maintain effective link-juice flow to required pages
On-Page Optimization | | Direct_Ram0 -
Is it convinient to use No-Index, Follow to my Paginated Pages?
I have a website http://www.naukrigulf.com and it has a lot of Paginated pages on its SERP and most of paginated pages are getting indexed in Google SERP. Is it beneficial to use No-Index, Follow to keep the link equity to main (first page), although we have already used rel=next and rel=prev. If Answer is "yes" is their any harm by using no-index, follow with rel=next, rel=prev.
On-Page Optimization | | vivekrathore0 -
Google ranking is HORRIBLE. Following SEOMoz suggestions and just can't climb.
First of all, the URL is stores.dhsequipment.com. In January, this online store switched from Homestead to Big Commerce. Since the store updated, we decided now is the time to update our product descriptions, URL's, title tags and meta descriptions. (For the first time, we had the ability to customize our URL's.) Product Description: I went through 2,500 products and updated the product description. I added an H1 & H2 to each description, and included pertinent information such as part numbers. Each product also received a new page title, meta description (which is usually the first line of the product description, don't know if this is bad or not) and a new URL, (which did redirect). Once I would complete a section, I would submit a new sitemap to Webmaster Tools. After a month and nothing happening, I started using SEOMoz which helped me rebuild some of my more important pages, such as the home page and main category pages such as: http://stores.dhsequipmentparts.com/stihl-ts420-parts/
On-Page Optimization | | pearldesign
http://stores.dhsequipmentparts.com/stihl-ts700-parts-stihl-ts800-parts/ I fetched these pages in Webmaster Tools after completion. However, it's been several weeks since and I'm still on page 4 or 5 in the SERPs. Just a little history on the store; this store has been in operation for more than 6 years. Previously, we ranked on page one for 75%+ of our products. My belief is because our URL's had history, probably more so than our competitors. I'm not sure what I should do. Business is super slow and we can't afford to wait much longer.0 -
Ratio follow/nofollow outbound links
Dear all, So far, I couldn't find any satisfying answer to my problem - I hope you might be able to help: Due to the fact that our website consists of user-generated content, we've got many many outbound links to other sites. Until now, it was possible to assign a follow-attribute to these links. In the ages of "pandas" however, we realised we had to limit this possibility as well as the amount of outbound follow links already published. My question now is whether there is some kind of rule of thumb as to what ratio of outbound follow and nofollow links is advisable. I'd appreciate any ideas or comments. Thanks a lot!
On-Page Optimization | | Mulle0 -
Should links on a family bar be no follows?
I have a network of sites that we use a family bar for to get the user to where they want to go but as I am looking at my link profile, i keep on seeing these links everywhere. (DUH, of course) Question is, should these links be no follow? Could these links hurt me?
On-Page Optimization | | SBRMarketing0 -
No followed links, what happens to the PR?
Hi, I have read a few times, on here and other places that when a website applies a no follow tag to a link the PR is not retained but instead disappears (evaporates) thus neither website benefiting. Is that true? If so what is the actual benefit of no following a link?
On-Page Optimization | | Bondara0 -
Will a "no follow" "no index" meta tag resolve duplicate content issue?
I have a duplicate content issue. If the page has already been indexed will a no follow no index tag resolve the issue or do I also need a rel canonical statement?
On-Page Optimization | | McKeeMarketing0