Follow or Nofollow outbound links to resourceful, related site?

[TKIGWebTeam]

As I am going through and redeveloping a website, I am trying to add some external links to resourceful information regarding this page. Should I put a nofollow or follow attribute on these?

I am only putting 1-5 links per page to associations and other organizations that would be beneficial to the visitor. I am worried about the number of outbound links causing me to get penalized.

Ideas?

[AlanMosley]

spot on, no-follow does leak link juice, it just that it is not awarded to the linked-to page.
the only use for it is when you dont vouch for the linked-to page.
No-follow for a limited time did not leak link juice, but this made it hard to get links because everyone was trying to hoard link juice, many still believe no-follow does not leak link juice and are still reluctant to give a follow link.

[Getz.pro]

always follow those links. SEs like to see you linking out to relevant important sites. Also, you never know when one of those sites might take notice.

[KrisRoadruck]

Most of the time.. if its worth linking out to, its worth leaving followed. No-follow really doesnt help you save any juice these days it just tells google you don't trust the site you are linking out to. I would say if you dont trust a site you are linking out to... maybe just don't link to it at all (unless its for a blog post were you are poking fun at the site in question and the link is for reference purposes)

[TKIGWebTeam]

Thanks for the reply!

I agree with both points. I think I am just more or less worried that what I am doing would cause search engines to penalize me due to the amount of outbound links from the domain. Maybe I am just thinking to much into it.

I doubt that any of these sites would ever backlink to this specific site, but we can always dream!

[TKIGWebTeam]

Thanks for the reply.

Should I actually put the rel="follow" attribute into my <a>tags or leave it off, since default settings should follow that link?</a>

[MaryAnneG]

Agree with the other two replies - as long as the link goes to a respectible and useful resource, I would leave it as "follow".  My reasoning being:

1)  People have linked to useful sites since the beginning of the web - It's the more "natural" thing to do.  Google tends to like "natural".

2)  There's always the chance the site owner will notice the link on my site and link back to me.

[aethereal]

Personally, I use the "follow" attribute on links to useful resources as it can make a page more relevant if you are linking to authority sites on a particular topic. I can't see why you would be penalized, unless you are linking to off topic spammy sites.

[eyepaq]

When I'm linking out from a page to resourceful information regarding that particular page I always let the link free (without a no follow attribute) so google will follow it and see that the content is somehow valuable for the user. I think if you det the no follow attribute it won't help you as far as SEO, it will only help the user that sees and uses the link.

As for dilution, even if the link is no follow the link juice is still split and counts both do follow and no follow links within that particular page.

Anyway, that's just me.