Follow or Nofollow outbound links to resourceful, related site?
-
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?
-
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. -
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.
-
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)
-
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!
-
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>
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
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 an external link to an image file on my site help my SEO?
I found a few websites that are displaying images from my site. Curiously, they have also linked these images to the source image file on my website. I found these because Moz showed these sites in my list of backlinks. I assume that means it impacts my Domain Authority. But does this actually help me in search engines since it's not linking to a page on my site?
Link Building | | AlexLenhoff0 -
Links From Unrelated Sites
Ok, I know this has kind of been answered, but... I have a website that helps people find lawyers. I also have a lot of friends who are musiciansand singer songwriters. I could get these bands to link back to my page. Should I do this?
Link Building | | RafeTLouis0 -
Links to www version of my site, but we are on http - is this a problem?
My website is hosted on e.g. http://eg1 but i have lots of links and new links pointing to http://www.eg1
Link Building | | fattestcat
Is this something to worry about?
Should i contact the sites and ask them to change the links to http?
Or is it nothing to worry about? Thanks for your advice.0 -
Typical percentage of links found in Webmaster Tools but are not in Open Site Explorer?
50% of our links are found in Webmaster Tools but are not found in Open Site Explorer. Is this normal? If these links are not indexed does that mean our DA will not grow as high as it could until they are crawled?
Link Building | | calf0 -
Followed and nofollowed links
Hi all, When we should add followed links and when no followed? How this will affect to our site? Should all our links to other sites be no followed? Which sites we should give value? Thank you for your time Miško Macolić Tomičić
Link Building | | Eurasmus.com0 -
How can create links of our website on . edu and .gov sites?
I want to create links on .edu & .gov sites for my website . So, what kind of activities we will do for this process and how? Can you also provide list of .edu and .gov sites for create backlinks?
Link Building | | surabhi60 -
Guest Posts on Sites With Irrelevant Outbound Links
Suppose you came across a website in your niche with solid domain authority that accepts guest posts. However you notice some of the guest posts are linking out to somewhat off-topic sites. If you already have an article that you think would be accepted easily and all you have to do is spend 10 minutes to craft an email pitch, would you do it? Why?
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
Value of Inbound Links to Pages With a lot of Outbound Links
Suppose you have a resource page of the Top 50 Awesome Sites in your niche. Since there are about 50 outbound links, then I would think there will be less Page Rank being passed to internal pages from internal links on the resource page. Since you are getting less PR passed to internal pages, are there other ways the inbound links can be beneficial, such as increasing the diversity of links of your domain? Sites like SEO Optimise seem to create a lot of Top 30 Resources lists and I have read that they think it is a strong tactic.
Link Building | | SparkplugDigital0