Should I no follow all external links?
-
I have worked with a few different SEO firms lately and a lot of them have recommended on the sites I was working on to "no-follow" all external links on the site.
On one hand this traps all the link equity/Pagerank. On the other I would think this practice is frowned upon by Google.
What are some opinions on this?
-
That is true. If you nofollow a link, nobody gets the PR.
-
Hi EGOL,
This caught my eye - 'If you nofollow a link the PR evaporates.'
When someone nofollow's a link, in most cases the person doing so thinks they are stopping PR from leaking out of the site.
If it evaporates, no one gets the PR?
Maybe I have got the wrong end of the stick here?
-
I link out to dozens of websites every week and every one of those links are followed.
-
This. I asked the same question many moons ago and EGOL wrote a really good reply along the lines of "You indicating to Google that you're linking to untrustworthy sites. Why link to them at all then?"
Anyway, it changed my opinion of external links. I ALWAYS make them followed, there is really no point having them no followed.
-
On one hand this traps all the link equity/Pagerank.
This is not true.
If you nofollow a link the PR evaporates.
And... if you link only to good, trusted sites then why nofollow anything? It tells google that you link only to untrusted sites.
-
Hi Spencer,
I did have the occasion that I no-followed an external link that was on the footer of the website, otherwise quite some link juice would of been wasted.
However, whenever I do new blog posts I make all external links do-followed within the blog post. By doing this you could let the sites who you linked out to know that they received a link, and the will enjoy the fact that it is do-followed. They might even link back or share the blog post on their social media accounts.
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
-
Sitewide Links delete or add nofollow
This question has been asked before, and I’ve read most of the answers. However, things are somewhat different, as we are a web hosting company and have many clients that link to us site wide in the footer, as well we have a website builder application where we control the footer links on our end user's websites. Most use just our “domain name” or “Powered by Domain” Should we remove them? It does provide visitors some value as they can tell where the website is hosting, has been developed or how to sign up for our website builder or web hosting services. Right now, they are all follow, and we are working on cleaning up our link profile so looking for some great advice on how to proceed. Our link profile is very large since we are a web hosting company that has been around for 10 plus years. Thanks in advanced for your recommendations.
Technical SEO | | goodhost0 -
"INDEX,FOLLOW" then later in the code "NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW" which does google follow?
background info: we have an established closed E-commerce system which the company has been using for years. I have only just started and reviewing the system, I don't have direct access to the code, but can request changes, but it could take months before the changes are in effect (or done at all), and we won't can't change to a new E-commerce system for the short to mid term. While reviewing the site (with help of seomoz crawl diagnostics) I noticed that some of the existing "landing pages" have in the code: <meta name="<a class="attribute-value">robots</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">INDEX,FOLLOW</a>" /> then a few lines later <meta name="<a class="attribute-value">robots</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW</a>" /> Which the crawl diagnostics flagged up, but in the webmaster tools says
Technical SEO | | PaddyDisplays
"We didn't detect any issues with non-indexable content on your site." so the question is which instructions does google follow? the first or 2nd? note: clearly this is need fixed, but I have a big list of changes for the system so I need to know how important this is tthanks0 -
Internal Link Analysis Tool
I want to get a better handle on what internal link text (and co-occurance if possible) my site currently has. We have a lot of old blog articles that provide link juice back to the main site, but with thousands of pages, we never kept track of when we internally link to a page. Are there any tools that will provide an analysis of this? OpenSiteExplorer seems like a very tedious way to do it and it didn't appear to be 100% accurate. Also, are there any tools that will provide analysis and recommendations based on keywords targeted?
Technical SEO | | TheDude0 -
Would removing or making non relevant links no follow boost a site?
Hi, I have just been checking out the backlinks for a prospective new client. It appears they have a number of links that are totally irrelevant to their nature of business and I was wondering if they would improve in the rankings etc if I removed them or made them no follow instead? Or would I simply just be throwing away crucial link juice? Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | Benjamin3790 -
How do I remove Links to my website???
Hi Guys, Please can anyone help!! Can anyone tell me how on earth I can remove links to my website? My website has been hit by the new penguin update and the company that was doing my SEO seems to have built a lot of spammy links!! How can I remove these links??? Please can anyone help Thanks Gareth
Technical SEO | | GAZ090 -
Too Many On Page LInk
The analysis of my site is showing that I have a problem with too many on-page links. Most of this is due to our menu, and wanting users to be able to quickly get to the shopping category they are looking for. We end up with over 200 links in order to get the menu we want. How are other people dealing with a robust menu, but avoiding getting dinged for too many links? One of our pages in question is: http://www.milosport.com/category/2176-snowboards.aspx
Technical SEO | | dantheriver0 -
Image Link
If I have an image that is well optimiswed for a keyword that the page it is on is ranking for but i put a no follow in the image link - is this going to lose the value of the image on that page. A strange question i know but this image i have on my homepage is optimised around a keyword, the image is also a link but when i changed the link in the image to no follow i seem to have dropped rankings for that keyword. Probably consicidence but i thought i would throw this question out there and get some views?
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Removing inbound Spam Links
Hello, Last February one of my clients websites was delisted. It turns out that some time ago that had attempted to launch a social network along time lines of ning. The project had fallen apart of the was still up. At some point spammers found it and started using it as part of a link farm. Once it was discovered, the subdomain it was posted on was removed and the website returned to search within 2 weeks. Last week, the website disappeared again OSE shows that in the last 2 months the website has got 2000 (There are about 16,000 total spam links) additional spam links now pointing and the root domain. On top of that, Google Webmaster Tools is reporting about 15,000 404 errors. I have blocked Google from crawling the path where the path were the spam pages used to be. If there a way to block the 1000s of inbound spam links?
Technical SEO | | Simple_Machines0
