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.

      Save 36% now!
      Moz Pro

      Save 36% now!

      Sign up
    • 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.

      Save 36% now!
      Moz Pro

      Save 36% now!

      Sign up
    • 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. Technical SEO
    4. Rel="external"

    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.

    Rel="external"

    Technical SEO
    3
    3
    2668
    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.
    • Sharer
      Sharer last edited by

      Hi all,

      I got a link and its off a site and marked up with rel="external". Is this a followed or nofollowed link? Does it pass link juice?

      Thanks

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • blu42media
        blu42media last edited by

        Hey Robin-

        I agree with Nakul - no worry about the link juice not flowing.  If you have rel="nofollow" then the juice stops.  The neat thing is you can combine the two attribute values as long as you put a space between them like rel="external nofollow".

        Hope that helps!
        John

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

          Yes, no need to be worried. You are good. rel="external" is the XHTML valid version that informs search engine spiders that the link is external. However, using this does not open the link in a new window. target="_blank" and target="_new" does this, but is not XHTML valid. I hope that helps.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • 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

          • houlihanlokey

            Ranking penalty for "accordion" content -- hidden prior to user interaction

            Will content inside an "accordion" module be ranked as non-hidden content? Is there an official guide by google and other search engines addressing this? Example of accordion element: https://v4-alpha.getbootstrap.com/components/collapse/#accordion-example Will all elements in the example above be seen + treated equally by search engines?

            Technical SEO | | houlihanlokey
            1
          • mundsack

            Is SEO effected of putting an external link in the primary navigation of a website?

            I have a customer, www.xxx.com.  This site has good traffic, low bounce rate (28%), 2:00 min avg time on site, and 45% return visitor rating.  No spam rankings, etc.  Good load time. Another site, www.yyy.com, has sent out a request for them to add them as a new link in www.xxx.com's primary navigation - using a title such as "abc" (not the name of the company or site of yyy.com).   This second site, www.yyy.com, has a bounce rate of 98%, avg time on site is :30, and 10.2% return visitor rate.  No spam flags noted in Open Site explorer.  Plus they are asking other sites similar to www.xxx.com to do the same thing. Questions/Concerns and Feedback appreciated: Will yyy.com's analytics and quality pass back to xxx.com and cause Google or algorithms to flag or penalize xxx.com?  (It ranks #1 for quite a few things.)  The relevancy between the sites is good -same industry, same business objectives. From a usability standpoint, isn't it more appropriate to place a link to another website in a different way? e.g. a promotional graphic wit a link or anchor text links? Isn't it more appropriate to ask another business for links - not using the primary nav of a site?  (It seems yyy.com is essentially asking other sites for 'free advertising/promotion.' Thanks!

            Technical SEO | | mundsack
            0
          • Answer2cancer

            Rel=canonical on Godaddy Website builder

            Hey crew! First off this is a last resort asking this question here. Godaddy has not been able to help so I need my Moz Fam on this one. So common problem My crawl report is showing I have duplicate home pages www.answer2cancer.org and www.answer2cancer.org/home.html I understand this is a common issue with apache webservers which is why the wonderful rel=canonical tag was created! I don't want to go through the hassle of a 301 redirect of course for such a  simple issue. Now here's the issue. Godaddy website builder does not make any sense to me. In wordpress I could just go add the tag to the head in the back end. But no such thing exist in godaddy. You have to do this weird drag and drop html block and drag it somewhere on the site and plug in the code. I think putting before the code instead of just putting it in there. So I did that but when I publish and inspect in chrome I cannot see the tag in the head! This is confusing I know. the guy at godaddy didn't stand a chance lol. Anyway much love for any replies!

            Technical SEO | | Answer2cancer
            0
          • Happy-SEO

            Images, CSS and Javascript on subdomain or external website

            Hi guy's, I came across webshops that put images, CSS and Javascript on different websites or subdomains. Does this boost SEO results? On our Wordpress webshop all the sourcescodes are placed after our own domainname: www.ourdomainname.com/wp-includes/js/jquery/jquery.js?ver=1.11.3'
            www.ourdomainname.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/example.jpg Examples of other website: Website 1:
            https://www.zalando.nl/heren-home/ Sourcecode:
            https://secure-i3.ztat.net//camp/03/d5/1a0168ac81f2ffb010803d108221.jpg
            https://secure-media.ztat.net/media/cms/adproduct/ad-product.min.css?_=1447764579000 Website 2:
            https://www.bol.com/nl/index.html Sourcecode:
            https://s.s-bol.com/nl/static/css/main/webselfservice.1358897755.css
            //s.s-bol.com/nl/upload/images/logos/bol-logo-500500.jpg Website 3: 
            http://www.wehkamp.nl/ Sourcecode:
            https://static.wehkamp.nl/assets/styles/themes/wehkamp.color.min.css?v=f47bf1
            http://assets.wehkamp.com/i/wehkamp/350-450-layer-SDD-wk51-v3.jpg

            Technical SEO | | Happy-SEO
            0
          • SOtBOrlando

            how to set rel canonical on wordpress.com sites

            I know how to do this with a wordpress.org site but I have a client that does not want to switch and without a plugin I am lost. any help would be greatly appreciated. Jeremy Wood

            Technical SEO | | SOtBOrlando
            0
          • AlexSG

            Rel canonical between mirrored domains

            Hi all & happy new near! I'm new to SEO and could do with a spot of advice: I have a site that has several domains that mirror it (not good, I know...)  So www.site.com, www.site.edu.sg, www.othersite.com all serve up the same content.  I was planning to use rel="canonical" to avoid the duplication but I have a concern: Currently several of these mirrors rank - one, the .com ranks #1 on local google search for some useful keywords. the .edu.sg also shows up as #9 for a dirrerent page. In some cases I have multiple mirrors showing up on a specific serp. I would LIKE to rel canonical everything to the local edu.sg domain since this is most representative of the fact that the site is for a school in Singapore but...
            -The .com is listed in DMOZ (this used to be important) and none of the volunteers there ever respoded to requests to update it to the .edu.sg
            -The .com ranks higher than the com.sg page for non-local search so I am guessing google has some kind of algorithm to mark down obviosly local domains in other geographic locations Any opinions on this? Should I rel canonical the .com to the .edu.sg or vice versa? I appreciate any advice or opinion before I pull the trigger and end up shooting myself in the foot! Best regards from Singapore!

            Technical SEO | | AlexSG
            0
          • Sayers

            Rel next prev, should i nofollow pagination links

            Hi Everyone. When implementing rel next and prev on pagination pages, should I make the pagination links themselves no followed? Have seen people saying yes and no so just want a final answer! Thanks

            Technical SEO | | Sayers
            0
          • vernonmack

            Should we use "and" or "&"?

            Our client has an ampersand in their brand name.  The logo has "&", their url is spelled out.  I'm trying to get them to standardize the use of the name for directories/listings.  Should we use "and" or "&"?

            Technical SEO | | vernonmack
            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.