Do you think too many (nofollow) outbound links is a problem?
-
Just received my first crawl report from SEOmoz for my blog.
I've rreceived a number of warnings / errors about having too many outbound links on my pages. These are simply comments from people (some pages have 300+) and the links are nofollowed.
It seems like you guys must have a reason why this warning is in place, so I would love your theories...
-
The warning for too many nofollowed links is there because these links affect your SEO.
Your page offers SEO benefits to your site. If you create a "hello world" page, that page will inherit some value from being part of your domain. It will receive further value from links to the page, social sharing of the page (tweets, etc) and so forth.
The value of the page can be passed along to other pages, both inside and outside of your site, through links. The nofollowed links devalue any followed links on your page. If you want to use your blog to pass more juice to other pages within your site, I would recommend a comment tool that not only tags the links with "nofollow" but instead breaks the links so they appear as text, not links.
To answer your question directly, YES, I think too many nofollow outbound links are a problem that should be fixed. If you don't believe these pages offer value to your site, you can ignore the warning. I think doing such is a missed opportunity.
-
That's what I thought. Was curious to see "The Moz" view on things
-
Ahh, so they are not dropping a comment as such, it is just the usual linkback from the posters name like in a wordpress blog?
I would not sweat that at all. The search engines know what a comment is and understand that is not a link as such.
The moz tools are great, as an indication things like this, but in this instance, the warning is a bit of a red herring so don't sweat it.
Marcus
-
Hey Marcus,
I run a popular marketing blog, ViperChill, and get hundreds of comments on every single post.
When people comment, they link back to their site with their name (just like regular comments).
-
Hey, it's always pretty tough to gauge these things without a link but it does seem a bit unusual for so many comments to include an outbound link. That said, I would say google is a bit more savvy at detecting areas of UGC and spotting the link condom used here but still, it seems a bit funny, like an unmoderated comment feed which could be an indication of low content.
The point of nofollow is to say that you don't trust the author or the destination of the link, so, to have 300 nofollowed links in UGC seems a little fishy.
As ever, it maybe perfectly right in this case, and I believe that for this to be a problem it would need to be combined with other signals before they would take action.
Out of interest, can you give some indication of why there are so many outbound links? Is it across all articles or just one or two where you have asked for links or some such?
Hard to give much better help or opinion without context.
Cheers
Marcus
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
-
Link building… how to get high rewarding links?
Hi Guys, I have a few people whom I have built relationships up in my industry with that would like to link to my site. Is there any particular things I need to be mindful of before having them link to me? I'm just mindful of the unknown. Also, which links to use etc? Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edward-may0 -
URL Value: Menu Links vs Body Content Links
Hi All, I'm a little confused. I have read a number of articles from authority sites that give mixed signals over the importance of menu links vs body content links. It is suggested that whilst all menu links spread link juice equally, Google does not see them as favourably. Inserting a link within the body will add more link juice value to the desired page. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch0 -
Too many 301 redirects?
Hey, My company currently has one chief website with about 500-600 other domains that all feature the same material as the chief website. These domains have been around for about 5 years and have actually picked up some link traffic. I have all of these identical web-pages utilizing rel=canonical but I was wondering if I would be better served, from SEO purposes, to 301 redirect all of these sites to their respective pages on our chief website? If I add 500 301 redirects, will the major search engines consider this to be black-hat link-building even though the sites are related and technically already feature the same content? For an example, the chief website is www.1099pro.com and I would 301 redirect the below sites to the chief site: 1099softwarepro.com 1099softwarepro.info 1099softwarepro.net 1099softwarepro.biz 1099softwareprofessionals.com 1099softwareprofessionals.info ...you get the point
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Stew2220 -
Does anyone have a clue about my search problem?
After three years of destruction, my site still has a problem - or maybe more than one. OK, I understand I had - and probably still have - a Panda problem. The question is - does anyone know how to fix it, without destroying eveything? If I had money, I'd gladly give it up to fix this, but all I have is me, a small dedicated promotions team, 120,000+ visitors per month and the ability to write, edit and proofread. This is not an easy problem to fix. After completing more than 100 projects, I still haven't got it right, in fact, what I've done over the past 2 months has only made things worse - and I never thought I could do that. Everything has been measured, so as not to destroy our remaining ability to generate income, because without that, its the end of the line. If you can help me fix this, I will do anything for you in return - as long as it is legal, ethical and won't destroy my reputation or hurt others. Unless you are a master jedi guru, and I hope you are, this will NOT be easy, but it will prove that you really are a master, jedi, guru and time lord, and I will tell the world and generate leads for you. I've been doing website and SEO stuff since 1996 and I've always been able to solve problems and fix anything I needed to work on. This has me beaten. So my question is: is there anyone here willing to take a shot at helping me fix this, without the usual response of "change domains" "Delete everything and start over" or "you're screwed" Of course, it is possible that there is a different problem, nothing to do with algorithms, a hard-coded bias or some penalizing setting, that I don't know about, a single needle in a haystack. This problem results in a few visible things. 1. Some pages are buried in supplemental results 2. Search bots pick up new stories within minutes, but they show up in search results many hours later Here is the site: http://shar.es/EGaAC On request, I can provide a list of all the things we've done or tried. (actually I have to finish writing it) Some Notes: There is no manual spam penalty. All outgoing links are nofollow, and have been for 2 years. We never paid for incoming links. We did sell text advertising links 3-4 years ago, using text-link-ads.com, but removed them all 2 1/2 years ago. We did receive payment for some stories, 3-4 years ago, but all have been removed. One more thing. I don't write much - I'm a better editor than a writer, but I wrote a story that had 1 million readers. the massive percentage of 0.0016% came from you-know-who. Yes, 16 visitors. And this was an exclusive, unique story. And there was a similar story, with half a million readers. same result. Seems like there might be a problem!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | loopyal0 -
To Many Links On Page Problem
Hello My Moz report is showing I have an error for too many links on my sitemap and blog. The links on both pages are relevant and I'm not sure if this has to be sorted out, as I would have thought Google would expect sitemaps and blogs to have lots of links. If I were to reduce the number of links how much of a positive affect would it have on my site? If any of you feel it is best practice to reduce number of links on these particular pages, do you have any suggestions on how I can tackle this? http://www.dradept.com/blog.php http://www.dradept.com/sitemap.php Thank you Christina
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ChristinaRadisic0 -
SEO Problem with PowerPoint to PDF?
Can anyone think of any reasons why it would be a bad idea to use PowerPoint to create documents and then convert them to PDFs? Do you think this could cause any crawling issues for Google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Linking Within Website
Hello - I have about 10 landing pages that I am focusing on ranking for and I'm doing okay. My question is should I have all these pages on a drop down menu from my home page or is the innerlinking too much? http://www.kasplacement.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ksundheim10 -
Best Link Solicitation Email Structure - Link Building
Hello, What is the best thing to say when soliciting a link for link building. Say you're contacting a site with a resource section where your competitors are listed. What would you say to be the most persuasive. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0