Outbound Links
-
I have a page on upstrap-pro.com that provides weights of cameras and lenses. The user/buyer of my on-slip camera straps needs to know the weight his camera and lens to determine the proper pad size... large to small. We have put together a long list of the most popular customer cameras. The way it was done (by my daughter) was to also provide a via a link to dpreview.com which is an excellent site for camera information including specifications etc. My personal feeling about this is mixed. I can do it by having it open dpreview.com in a new tab but then the user/customer could still get distracted and go down the rabbit hole. On the other hand dpreview is such a good site that if they are new to photography and don't know about it, they should. I don't get a dime from dpreview. If fact I doubt they would ever link back to me because they do not write about camera straps.
I hear mixed things about outbound links. In this file there are quite a few outbound links to dpreview to keep it consistent. I could do a nofollow on all of them but I read that this is the easy way out. Google is jump ball and I have no clue what Cutts and his merry men are going to decide is cool or not cool.
I'd like some thoughts or options... Thanks... A small part of the file below.
Wideangle prime lens
Canon EF
22.8 oz
645 g
-
Bleed is just slang that means that portion of the PageRank is lost. If a page has multiple outgoing links, the PageRank is divided among them. If some of these links are nofollow, the portion of the PageRank associated with those links is not only not passed on, it is lost. In other words, the PageRank is divided among all outgoing links, both follow and nofollow.
-
That helped....thanks. So the short version is to use them in no follow mode and do not put them in the site map. I might do a generic header with the link to dpreview that allows the to go there if they want but not a link on every single one. Besides, there are other good sites such as Ken Rockwell.
-
This is jargon I do not understand. Bleed...dirt below?
-
Thanks.. so if I understand you this page can't be in the site map .
-
I wouldn't worry too much about losing PageRank. In the old days, SEOs used this technique known as PageRank sculpting, but a few years ago Google changed how they handle nofollow links so that you don't actually save anything by using them.
Nofollow should be used on links you don't trust or can't vouch for, and for paid or non-editorial links. Since these links don't fall into any of these buckets, there shouldn't be an issue.
As far as linking out, the real question here is what would make your visitors most happy? Sometimes a visitor that clicks away and goes down a rabbit hole is happier than one who doesn't find anything interesting on your site, so it's best to weigh all sides.
Best of luck!
-
Right, I was commenting on your use of the word bleed, which refers to the affect on the page with the link, not the page that is linked. I agree, nofollow does not transfer PageRank; it just bleeds to the dirt below. At least, that is my understanding.
Best,
Christopher -
I don't think you are correct. Google isn't the most truthful at times, but straight from the horse's mouth:
How does Google handle nofollowed links?
In general, we don't follow them. This means that Google does not transfer PageRank or anchor text across these links. Essentially, using
nofollow
causes us to drop the target links from our overall graph of the web. However, the target pages may still appear in our index if other sites link to them without usingnofollow
, or if the URLs are submitted to Google in a Sitemap. Also, it's important to note that other search engines may handlenofollow
in slightly different ways.https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/96569?hl=en&ref_topic=2371375
-
It is my understanding that follow and nofollow external links bleed the same page rank.
Best,
Christopher -
I would just go with the no follow if the issue is that you are concerned about bleeding page rank. I don't think it is a big issue either way though.
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
-
disavow link more than 100,000 lines
I recieved a huge amount of spamy link (most of them has spam score 100) Currently my disavow link is arround 85.000 lines but at least i have 100.000 more domain which i should add them. All of them are domains and i don't have any backlink in my file. My Problem is that google dosen't accept disavow link which are more than 2MB and showes this message : File too big: Maximum file size is 100,000 lines and 2MB What should i do now?
Technical SEO | | sforoughi0 -
Are bad links the reason for not ranking?
Hello Moz community. I'm looking here for some input from the experts on what could be wrong with a site I'm working on. The site is in Spanish, but I'm sure you'll get the idea. We want to rank the site first page on Google Mexico (www.google.com.mx) for the keyword "refacciones Audi" and some other brands (refacciones = replacement parts would probably be a good translation, just FYI). Now, our page hasn't been completely optimized, so in my mind it's OK not to be on first page yet. However, our main competitor is ranking first page for all the keywords we want to rank for, but when you check their site, you'll find there is hardly any content, no keywords are being used in their content, all pages have the exact same title and meta description, their catalog is in a completely different domain. In short, no SEO whatsoever. Looking at Moz data, our site has a DA of 26, while our competitor's has a 10. They have no external backlinks at all, while we have a few hundred. This leaves me scratching my head: how can a completely non-optimized site outrank us? I decided to check our backlink profile, and a previous SEO agency seems to have built MANY fake blogs with lots of backlinks with rich anchor text. Quite a big percentage of our backlinks are of this kind, so this is the only thing I can think can be affecting our ranking. Will disavowing be our solution? If you'd like to check, our site is: www.refaccionariaalemana.com.mx Our competitors' is: www.saferefacciones.com ANY help will be extremely appreciated as I feel a bit lost. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | EduardoRuiz1 -
Competitors Dodgy Link Profile - How to handle?
Hi All, One of my competitors doesn't seem to mind collecting links with no relevance and over optimisation of anchor text also leaves me scratching my head as to ho wit's possible for them to still get the rankings they do. My question is how do I handle them from a competitive point of view? Do I pay for a batch of poor links to topple this competitor? Or do I bide my time? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Mulith0 -
Different links to to the same page
Hi, Based on the user's actions we post activity into users Facebook timeline. And each activity has link back to our particular page on our website. For example if original page was: www.Domain.com from Facebook timeline it would be like this: www.Domain.com?Ffb_action_ids=101508953168 Do you think this will have a negative effect on our page rankings as we will eded up having a lot of different URL's to the same page? www.Domain.com?Ffb_action_ids=101508953168 www.Domain.com?Ffb_action_ids=456788765609 etc.. Thank you, Karen Bdoyan
Technical SEO | | showme0 -
Link Building - Quality,Quantity, or both?
Hello SEOMozzers, As I embark on yet another client's link campaign I ask myself where best to spend resources(time and money) on link building. Typically I provide a mix of blogroll links, article syndication contextual links, social media posting and high PR one way links. I would like to know if anyone here finds one form of link to carry weight over the rest. I have my suspicion and my own theory on it but I would like to know what the moz concensus is.
Technical SEO | | TheGrid0 -
What should i do with the links for "Login", "Register", "My Trolley" links on every page.
My website ommrudraksha has 3 links on every page. 1. Login 2. Register 3. My trolley My doubt is i do not want to give any weightage to these links. does these links will be calculated when page links are calculated ? Should i remove these as links and place these as buttons ? ( with look a like of link visually ? )
Technical SEO | | Ommrudraksha0 -
Link API returns Error 500
http://lsapi.seomoz.com/linkscape/links/nz.yahoo.com?SourceCols=4&Limit=100&Sort=domain_authority&Scope=domain_to_domain&Filter=external+follow&LinkCols=4 Hi folks any idea why the above returns Err 500 ? Seems to pertain to the domain - it works on other sites just not nz.yahoo.com Thanks!
Technical SEO | | jimbo_kemp0