There are SEO benefits to external links, but should they be nofollow?
-
I just read a great article on the SEO benefits of external links to relevant authoritative sites. But it didn't state if the benefits still existed if the external links were nofollows.
The article concluded: “Outgoing relevant links to authoritative sites are considered in the algorithms and do have a positive impact on rankings.”I found this old article on the subject, but opinions on the nofollow issue were mixed:
https://moz.com/blog/external-linking-good-for-seo-whiteboard-fridayCan anyone shed any light?
Thanks! ~Caro
-
Thank you James
-
Thanks for that input Egol. Sounds logical.
-
This is not gospel. It is an old fart kibitzing....
Nofollow is supposed to mean... "we don't vouch for this"... or... "these people paid us"... or... "don't count this"... or.... "we don't trust this".... So, on that basis, I would not add nofollow these links if I wanted them to be helpful.
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
-
What link would be better?
Hi Guys, Just wondering what would be better in this instance: finding an old post (with good authority) and getting a link from that old article or creating a brand new article and adding the link to that. Finding an old post (with good authority) and getting a link from that old article Creating a brand new article and adding the link to that. Both naturally link out to the page you want a link too. To me, number 1 as the page already has authority but then again number 2 since Google might place some weight to recency. Any thoughts? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | spyaccounts140 -
SEO benefit of tracked URLs
I've found a lot of mixed info on this topic so I thought I'd ask the experts (Moz community). If I'm adding tracking parameters to URLs to monitor organic traffic will this affect the rank/value of the original clean URL? If so, would best practice be to 301 redirect the tracked URL to the original:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IceIcebaby
i.e. redirect www.example.com/category/?DZID=Organic_G_NP/SQ&utm_source=Organic&utm_medium=Google TO www.example.com/category Thanks for your help!
-Reed0 -
Will an inbound follow link on a site be devalued by an inbound affiliate link on the same site?
Hey guys, quick question I didn't find an answer to online. Scenario: 1. Site A links to Site B. It's a natural, regular, follow-link 2. Site A joins Site B's affiliate program, and adds an affiliate link Question: Does the first, regular follow link get devalued by the second affiliate link? Cheers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ipancake0 -
Is it better "nofollow" or "follow" links to external social pages?
Hello, I have four outbound links from my site home page taking users to join us on our social Network pages (Twitter, FB, YT and Google+). if you look at my site home page, you can find those 4 links as 4 large buttons on the right column of the page: http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/ Here is my question: do you think it is better for me to add the rel="nofollow" directive to those 4 links or allow Google to follow? From a PR prospective, I am sure that would be better to apply the nofollow tag, but I would like Google to understand that we have a presence on those 4 social channels and to make clearly a correlation between our official website and our official social channels (and then to let Google understand that our social channels are legitimate and related to us), but I am afraid the nofollow directive could prevent that. What's the best move in this case? What do you suggest to do? Maybe the nofollow is irrelevant to allow Google to correlate our website to our legitimate social channels, but I am not sure about that. Any suggestions are very welcome. Thank you in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau9 -
SEO friendly blog.
i've read somewhere that if you list too many links/articles on one page, google doesn't crawl all of them. In fact, Google will only crawl up to 100 links/articles or so. Is that true? If so, how do I go about creating a page or blog that will be SEO friendly and capable of being completely crawled by google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | greenfoxone0 -
Advice on forum links
Hi guys, Looking for some good advice on forum links and there potential negative impact. I am analysing the links of a URL and around 60% of the links are coming from a forum (on a different domain). The forum is very relevant - about the same product he is selling and also has a decent user base. This 60% of links account for roughly 6,500 links. All with different varying keyword anchor text's, and some with excessive usage of a particular keyword anchor text. They are also all do-follow. They are in a mixture of signature links and in post links. The site they link to has been hit by penguin which also has an EMD. MY question is even though these links are relevant and on a good site with good traffic, do you think they have likely been picked up in the penguin algorithm? My initial thought was yes only because they are all do follow and mostly keyword based. But id love to hear thoughts on this as well as possible recovery options, i.e should he remove the forum links, reduce drastically or make them all no follow so traffic can still pass through? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ROIcomau0 -
What type of links should be followed and nofollowed internally?
We have submitted our sitemap.xml to search engines so now that they have that should we use a nofollow attribute on the sitemap.html? Do we even need a sitemap.html? For other links on the site such as: Contact us About Us Locations and other phrases that we are not trying to rank for should we set these to nofollow?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0