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 a nofollow link from a high DA site count towards trust?
I've been checking out competitors through the 'link intersect function in my Moz account. Many have got nofollow links from high DA websites. I understand that nofollow links do not count count as a backlink, but will they add towards the trust factor?
Link Building | | ThorUK0 -
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 -
Unable to view link from Apprentices gov.uk site
Hi, I've noticed that when some companies are advertising for apprentices on the https://apprenticeshipvacancymatchingservice.lsc.gov.uk website they gain a followed link from the site. When I then use opensiteexplorer the link doesn't show. Does anyone know the reason for Moz not picking this up? Am I not giving it long enough to show? Your help would be very much appreciated.
Link Building | | GoMetrics0 -
Cluster of outbound links on blog
Hi, If a blog has a section which contains 40 outbound links almost like a blogroll do you think Google looks at this cluster as suspicious? Could this come across like paid links to Google?
Link Building | | Bondara0 -
Advisable to pay for a link from a highly reputed site in same domain?
Is it okay to pay for a link if the site is a very highly reputed (PR4) one in the same domain as your site? Thanks
Link Building | | EricMoore0 -
Trying to get links to a pdp of an ecommerce site
hi all i am working for a ecommerce site doing seo and i am thinking of starting a blog for one of the brands im trying to rank for on the site and then have some links from the brandreview.co.uk/blog to the pdp page of the ecommerse site that im working for, is this a good way to go about things
Link Building | | Westernoriental0 -
Links per Site vs. Domain Authority
Here's a quaint one: 1. Posting follow links on another site helps increase one's domain authority. 2. If I post to the same site/forum with followed links each week, would my domain authority reap a domain authority increase benefit? In short, is there any domain authority benefit to continually post links to a site to which I've already posted a follow link?
Link Building | | GreenCupboards0 -
Nofollow links & content syndication
When syndicating content, I have heard/read that even if the piece you syndicate has a link back to your site (original post), the engines should be able to tell your post is the original because of the link that is pointing back. Is this the case when the links are "nofollow"? I think not, but I just would like to get someone else point of view. I think that if they don't want to follow the links, they should at least add noindex meta robots tags to the post so it doesn't create duplicate content... Any thoughts? Thanks!
Link Building | | bonnierSEO0