Is it better "nofollow" or "follow" links to external social pages?
-
Hello,
I have four outbound links from my site home page taking users to join us on our social Network pages (Twitter, FB, YT and Google+).
if you look at my site home page, you can find those 4 links as 4 large buttons on the right column of the page:
http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/
Here is my question: do you think it is better for me to add the rel="nofollow" directive to those 4 links or allow Google to follow? From a PR prospective, I am sure that would be better to apply the nofollow tag, but I would like Google to understand that we have a presence on those 4 social channels and to make clearly a correlation between our official website and our official social channels (and then to let Google understand that our social channels are legitimate and related to us), but I am afraid the nofollow directive could prevent that. What's the best move in this case? What do you suggest to do?
Maybe the nofollow is irrelevant to allow Google to correlate our website to our legitimate social channels, but I am not sure about that.
Any suggestions are very welcome.
Thank you in advance!
-
And what about "external"?
-
Thank you guys! I really appreciated your help! This clarified a lot for me.
All the best to all of you!
-
I can't see any reason why you would want to nofollow links to your own social networking pages. They are very much related to your site so why not pass pagerank to them. As Takeshi rightly points out, if you nofollow them then any pagerank they might have got from your home page just evaporates.
-
Do not nofollow your social media profiles.
Adding nofollows to links does not increase your PR, it just eliminates the link juice that would have gone to those pages. Do not nofollow your own links or links to properties you manage. Only nofollow links if they are low quality sites, you have a commercial relationships with them, or they are competitors.
Linking to your social media profiles will also get them ranking higher in the search results for your brandname, which is a good thing if you maintain good social media profiles.
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
-
23k Links from one doman pointing to a single page, good or bad?
Hey all, So I found a domain that GWT tells me has 23k links pointing to a landing page. I found that the link is part of their global nav as a text ad and that's why it's probably registering so many links. The site has a DA of 56, is this a bad thing? Could it be hurting the rest of my site's ability to rank? Thanks, Roman
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Dynata_panel_marketing0 -
WordPress – parent category "blog" instead of regular "post page"?
In WordPress you normally show you blog posts on: Your home page. Your "posts page" (configurable in the Reading Settings) I want to do neither and have a third option instead: Assign a parent category called "blog" for all posts, and show the latest posts on that category's archive page. For the readers, the experience will be 100% the same as a regular "posts page". The UI, permalinks, and breadcrumbs will be 100% the same. But, I have heard that the "posts page" is important for Google for indexing and understanding your blog. So is is smarter SEO-wise to use a "posts page" instead of a parent category named "blog"? What negative effects might there be, if I have no "posts page" and just use the parent category "blog" instead?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NikolasB0 -
Putting "noindex" on a page that's in an iframe... what will that mean for the parent page?
If I've got a page that is being called in an iframe, on my homepage, and I don't want that called page to be indexed.... so I put a noindex tag on the called page (but not on the homepage) what might that mean for the homepage? Nothing? Will Google, Bing, Yahoo, or anyone else, potentially see that as a noindex tag on my homepage?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Philip-DiPatrizio0 -
Alrogthimc penalty due to pharma hack that created drug links to home page. What to do?
Our site: Starcitylimo.com got destroyed by a pharma styled hack to their wordpress site. After having to re build the site from scratch to remove the virus, it was found that hundreds or even thousands of pharma links from overseas sites point to his home page (so we can't just 404 the pages). Contacting the sites for removal does nothing. Added to dissavow 4 months ago did nothing. He's page 5 for every keyword he was position 5 or better for. Is this one of those situations where its time to move on to a new domain?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iAnalyst.com0 -
Using both dofollow & nofollow links within the same blog site (but different post).
Hi all, I have been actively pursuing bloggers for my site in order to build page rank. My website sells women undergarments that are more on the exotic end. I noticed a large amount of prospective bloggers demand product samples. As already confirm, bloggers that are given "free" samples should use a rel=no follow attribute in their links. Unfortunately this does not build my page rank or transfer links juice. My question is this: is it advisable for them to also blog additional posts and include dofollow links? The idea is for the blogger to use a nofollow when posting about the sample and a regular link for a secondary post at a later time. What are you thoughts concerning this matter?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 90miLLA0 -
Does link equity to a page that is 301'd to a new domain pass juice on?
If we build some quality inbound links to certain pages, that are a later date 301'd to another domain, does any equity or juice get transferred across? Or is the inbound link's value wasted? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
Do links to PDF's on my site pass "link juice"?
Hi, I have recently started a project on one of my sites, working with a branch of the U.S. government, where I will be hosting and publishing some of their PDF documents for free for people to use. The great SEO side of this is that they link to my site. The thing is, they are linking directly to the PDF files themselves, not the page with the link to the PDF files. So my question is, does that give me any SEO benefit? While the PDF is hosted on my site, there are no links in it that would allow a spider to start from the PDF and crawl the rest of my site. So do I get any benefit from these great links? If not, does anybody have any suggestions on how I could get credit for them. Keep in mind that editing the PDF's are not allowed by the government. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayvensoft0 -
"Jump to" Links in Google, how do you get them?
I have just seen yoast.com results in Google and noticed that nearly all the indexed pages show a "Jump to" link So instead of showing the full URL under the title tag, it shows these type of links yoast.com › SEO
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters
yoast.com › Social Media
yoast.com › Analytics With the SEO, Social Media and Analytics all being clickable. How has he achieved this? And is it something to try and incorporate in my sites?0