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
-
Follow no-index
I have a question about the right way to not index pages: With a canonical or follow no-index. First we have a blog page: **Blogpage **
Technical SEO | | Happy-SEO
URL: /blog/
index follow Page 2 blog:
URL: /blog?=p2
index follow
rel="prev" /blog/
el="next" ?=p3 Nothing strange here i guess. But we also have other pages with chance on duplicate content: /SEO-category/
/SEO-category/view-more/ Because i don't want the "view-more" items to be indexed i want to set it on: follow no-index (follow to reach pages). But now the "view-more" also have pagination. What is the best way? Option 1:
/SEO-category/view-more/
Follow no-index /SEO-category/view-more?=p2
Follow no-index
rel="prev" /view-more/
el="next" ?=p3 Option 2: /SEO-category/view-more/
Canonical: /SEO-category/ /SEO-category/view-more?=p2
rel="prev" /view-more/
el="next" ?=p3 Option 3: Other suggests? Thanks!0 -
Better to Remove Toxic/Low Quality Links Before Building New High Quality Links?
Recently an SEO audit from a reputable SEO firm identified almost 50% of the incoming links to my site as toxic, 40% suspicious and 5% of good quality. The SEO firm believes it imperative to remove links from the toxic domains. Should I remove toxic links before building new one? Or should we first work on building new links before removing the toxic ones? My site only has 442 subdomains with links pointing to it. I am concerned that there may be a drop in ranking if links from the toxic domains are removed before new quality ones are in place. For a bit of background my site has a MOZ Domain authority of 27, a Moz page authority of 38. It receives about 4,000 unique visitors per month through organic search. About 150 subdomains that link to my site have a Majestic SEO citation flow of zero and a Majestic SEO trust flow of zero. They are pretty low quality. However I don't know if I am better off removing them first or building new quality links before I disavow more than a third of the links to the site. Any ideas? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
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 -
Can Google read onClick links?
Can Google read and pass link juice in a link like this? <a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="#Link123" onClick="window.open('http://www.mycompany.com/example','Link123')">src="../../img/example.gif"/></a> Thanks!
Technical SEO | | jorgediaz0 -
Noindex, follow duplicate pages
I have a series of websites that all feature a library of the same content. These pages don't make up the majority of the sites content, maybe 10-15% of the total pages. Most of our clients won't take the time to rewrite the content, but it's valuable to their site. So I decided to noindex, follow all of the pages. Outside of convincing them all to write their own versions of the content, is this the best method? I could also block the pages with robots.txt, but then I couldn't pass any link juice through the pages. Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | vforvinnie0 -
Track outbound links
I would like to track outbound links at http://bit.ly/yYHmbf 1. Shall i add the following code before at the above page What does 100 means in above code ? 2. Then use this for each outgoing link ``` [onClick="recordOutboundLink(this, 'Outbound Links', 'example.com');return false;">](http://www.example.com) ``` [](http://www.example.com) ```[``` http://www.example.com is the outbound link Am i right on both counts ? where should i look for report in GA ? ```](http://www.example.com)
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Modifying urls cause broken links?
I want to modify my urls for the purpose of creating clean, informative urls that can be pasted directly for backlink purposes. Instead I have urls with long, garbled, strange characters. When I change the URL it breaks existing back links! Any way around this?
Technical SEO | | natearistotle0 -
Nofollow link passing link juice
Can a link which is nofollwed pass link juice ? Please see the discussion at - http://www.seomoz.org/q/if-multiple-links-on-a-page-point-to-the-same-url-and-one-of-them-is-no-followed-does-that-impact-the-one-that-isn-t
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050