Is ok to add 'no follow' to every outbound link?
-
How do you handle outbound links from your site?.. do you no follow them all to be on the safe side?
-
You're throwing out the baby with the bathwater (to use a colloquialism). External pointing, followed links are not only good for the web as a whole, they're good for YOUR site, too. We've seen numerous examples of sites that began opening their external linking policies and received greater search traffic and rankings as a result. The most famous of these in the NYTimes, which Marshall Simmonds talked about in his Whiteboard Friday here: http://moz.com/blog/convincing-upper-management-aka-justifying-your-existence-whiteboard-friday
I'd also suggest watching Cyrus' video on the topic of linking externally here: http://moz.com/blog/external-linking-good-for-seo-whiteboard-friday
And finally, I'd point out that sites that never link out with followed links create the perception that they are not generous and thus, not deserving, of links of their own. You might point out that only a fraction of web users know what a nofollow link is, and my response would be that those are the same people who control most of the websites and links.
All in all, I'd strongly advise against this (and Google does, too!).
-
My thought is really that if one of the sites we link to on a normal basis gets penalised/banned by google (we link to big sites but dont forget BMW scenario), then we could be penalised in turn for linking to them
-
What's your thought behind the question. In my opinion telling Google that this is a no-follow link indicates that the receiving site is not trusted.
If your happy to link to them then you should be happy to allow follow - if that's an actual term
-
I do not think it is a good idea to no follow ALL outbound links, but It seems like a lot of big websites (like Yell) are doing this now.
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
-
How Many Links to Disavow at Once When Link Profile is Very Spammy?
We are using link detox (Link Research Tools) to evaluate our domain for bad links. We ran a Domain-wide Link Detox Risk report. The reports showed a "High Domain DETOX RISK" with the following results: -42% (292) of backlinks with a high or above average detox risk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
-8% (52) of backlinks with an average of below above average detox risk
-12% (81) of backlinks with a low or very low detox risk
-38% (264) of backlinks were reported as disavowed. This look like a pretty bad link profile. Additionally, more than 500 of the 689 backlinks are "404 Not Found", "403 Forbidden", "410 Gone", "503 Service Unavailable". Is it safe to disavow these? Could Google be penalizing us for them> I would like to disavow the bad links, however my concern is that there are so few good links that removing bad links will kill link juice and really damage our ranking and traffic. The site still ranks for terms that are not very competitive. We receive about 230 organic visits a week. Assuming we need to disavow about 292 links, would it be safer to disavow 25 per month while we are building new links so we do not radically shift the link profile all at once? Also, many of the bad links are 404 errors or page not found errors. Would it be OK to run a disavow of these all at once? Any risk to that? Would we be better just to build links and leave the bad links ups? Alternatively, would disavowing the bad links potentially help our traffic? It just seems risky because the overwhelming majority of links are bad.0 -
Local SEO - 'Near me' phrases
Hi all, I would like to start works to give our website more visibility for 'near me' searches for x2 of our services. We have 130+ stores throughout the UK and would like to rank if someone in i.e. Leeds was to search 'pawnbroker near me'. Please can you advise the best way to achieve this? Do I need to add scheme mark up? If so, does this go on the service page? Or do I need to place on individual store pages? Any help much appreciated! Kind regards, Jack
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jack_Jahan1 -
Are These Links Junk?
I hired an SEO to create incoming links to me website insisting that only white hat techniques be used. The SEO was highly recommended by a family friend. In 3 months about 14 links to my site were obtained. The URLs for the domains where the links originate are below. I paid $8,000 for the services of the SEO provider to create the links over 4 months. When I looked at the links more carefully I noticed that the sites did not seem to have owners. That there was no phone number, physical address and scant information about ownership. I also noticed that most pages had outgoing links of a promotional nature. Also, that content created for me had grammatical and occasional spelling errors. The links did not look bad in terms of MOZ domain authority and MOZ page authority, but when I went subscribed to AHREFS a few days ago and evaluated the links, I noticed that the URL rating (somewhat equivalent to MOZ page authority) was really low. Furthermore, noticed that one of the domains solicits paid links from gambling sites. The SEO who sourced the links on my behalf says he will explain why I "have nothing to worry about". Dividing his monthly fee by the number of links and I paid $571 per link. Is it possible the the below domains could have pages that I would want links from? Would these links be potentially worth more than a few hundred dollars? O are these sites more like a cheap PBN or maybe "the hoth". If the links are in fact good I would be delighted. But if they are of poor quality could I legitimately ask for a refund? Also, are these domains so bad that it is imperative for me to get the links removed? <colgroup><col width="198"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
| https://www.equities.com |
| http://www.realestaterama.com |
| https://moneyinc.com |
| https://homebusinessmag.com |
| http://digitalconnectmag.com |
| https://suburbanfinance.com/ |
| http://www.homebunch.com |
| http://inman.com |
| https://www.propertytalk.com/ |
| http://activerain.com |
| https://www.conservativedailynews.com/ |
| http://moneyforlunch.com/ |
| http://baltimorepostexaminer.com/ |
| https://www.tgdaily.com/ |
| |0 -
Top hierarchy pages vs footer links vs header links
Hi All, We want to change some of the linking structure on our website. I think we are repeating some non-important pages at footer menu. So I want to move them as second hierarchy level pages and bring some important pages at footer menu. But I have confusion which pages will get more influence: Top menu or bottom menu or normal pages? What is the best place to link non-important pages; so the link juice will not get diluted by passing through these. And what is the right place for "keyword-pages" which must influence our rankings for such keywords? Again one thing to notice here is we cannot highlight pages which are created in keyword perspective in top menu. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Some site's links look different on google search. For example Games.com › Flash games › Decoration games How can we do our url's like this?
For example Games.com › Flash games › Decoration games How can we do our url's like this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lutfigunduz0 -
First Link on Page Still Only Link on Page?
Bruce Clay and others did some research and found that the first link on the page is the most important and what is accredited as the link. Any other links on the page mean nothing. Is this still true? And in that case, on an ecommerce site with category links in the top navigation (which is high on the code), is it not useful to link to categories in the content of the page? Because the category is already linked to on that page. Thank you, Tyler
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tylerfraser0 -
Links in body text
From a purely SEO /link juice perspective, is there any benefit to linking from body text to a page that is in a pervasive primary navigation? The primary nav puts a link at the top of the HTML. With the tests done by members of this site, the "first link counts" rule negates the link juice value of a link in the body text if there is already a link in the nav. Now I've also seen the data on using hash tags to get a second or third link, but ignoring that, it would seem that links in the body text to pages in the nav have zero effect. This brings me to another question - block level navigation. If anchor text links pass more juice than links in the top navigation, why would you put your most coveted target pages in the top nav? You would be better off building links in the content, which would create a poor user experience. To me, the theory that anchor text links in the body pass more juice than links in the primary nav doesn't make any sense. Can someone please explain this to me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CsmBill0 -
In order to improve SEO with silos'urls, should i move my posts from blog directory to pages'directories ?
Now, my website is like this: myurl.com/blog/category1/mypost.html myurl.com/category1/mypage.html So I use silos urls. I'd like to improve my ranking a little bit more. Is it better to change my urls like this: myurl.com/category1/blog/mypost.html or maybe myurl.com/category1/mypost.html myurl.com/category1/mypage.html Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Max840