Should I add rel=nofollow ?
-
Say I have an article that includes a list of many websites with ressources for the articles topic.
From a SEO perspective, should I add nofollow to them? some of them? all of them?
-
HI Alberto,
Keep in mind I have not seen your page. I am talking in general specifics. The over all point is if you have a link to another site which is there for reference the user there is no reason to not make it an actual link. Any reason you can think of not to make it a link would also be a reason to remove it.
If you feel you have too many links on a specific page then you probably do! Pick the most pertinent ones and axe the others.
There are ways to maximize link juice and page authority by using some more advanced SEO tactics, See Rand's post about link sculpting. I will say this is some advanced level planing and not something you would just single out one page to do.
Remember SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. White hat SEO deals with how you can best present your page to search engines with out frustrating your users. When you purposely make a change that negatively effects your users and possibly tricks search engines to rank you better you have crossed into grey or black hat SEO. Something that will eventually bit you in the ass.
The choice is of course yours, and if you would like me to look at the page in question you can PM me a link I will be happy to do so. I do stand by everything I said in all my replies while speaking in general terms.
Don
-
I agree from a user point of view, it should be a link. The links are all relevant, and high PR sites. But from a pure SERP/SEO point of view, it would be more beneficial to not link them (pain text), isn't that so?
thanks
-
Actually no I wouldn't recommend that.
The reason is if the link is helpful it should be a link right? From a users point of view do you not find it frustrating to see a link that is not a link?
My suggestion is to evaluate each site you're linking to, if they deserve the link leave it in. Otherwise simply remove the link.
The reason behind my suggestion is the way the internet and page rank / authority is supposed to work. When a web master find a link to a site that is beneficial to their sites users, then they link to them. This generates page authority to the linked site but also helps the web master serve their users. In turn it also associates the web masters site with the linked site.
The web has taken many twist and turns since the original method of passing link juice was developed. Tools such as robots.txt, nofollow noindex, and disavow have been added to deal with the changing environment. But, the core of the system still remains.
Hope this make sense,
Don
-
so would you recommend puting those websites in plain text (no link at all)? That seems to be the best option, from an SEO point of view, right?
-
If you mean a link like:
VS
Then yes, because the first one is not technically a link.
-
thanks of the answer. Question: If I just put the links in plain text, would that increase the linkjuice that is passed in my internal links, since I'm not passing any to those external sites?
-
HI Alberto,
Understanding the purpose of the NOFOLLOW tag is what would make your decision. In general you should NOFOLLOW.
Edit for Reference: Google NoFollow Tag
- Untrusted Content (like user generated un-moderated)
- Paid Links Or Paid Advertisements
- Links to Pages That Serve No Search Engine Value (sign up, registration, etc..)
In your case you have "resources" which in theory adds value to the page and the users experience. A single page with resource links is not going to hurt your site at all. Without seeing the exact page I would lean to say it would be fine as follow links. That being said, you want it to be tasteful non-spammy and indeed a boon to the user experience and not just a big list of garbage.
Hope this helps,
Don
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
-
Moving from M. to Responsive: Rel Alternate Considerations
Hey Guys, We’re in the process of transitioning our key traffic generating pages on our website from m. to responsive. Today, our site uses Google’s ‘Separate URLs’ method. Rel alternate on desktop pages to m. pages 302 redirects pushing mobile visitors to m. pages Canonical on m. pages back to desktop pages As we make the transition to responsive we’ll be taking the following steps: Removal of 302 redirects pushing mobile visitors to m. pages 301 redirects from m. pages to desktop pages With those changes in mind, I’d love to get the communities opinion on how to best handle the real alternate attribute on desktop pages. I'm considering leaving the rel alternate attribute in place on desktop pages for 30-90 days so that search engines continue to see the alternate version without the 302 redirects in place, crawl it, and as a result discover the 301 redirects more readily. If we remove the 302 redirects as well as the rel alternate, then my feeling is that search engines would just index the responsive page accordingly and be less likely to catch the 301 redirects pointing from the m. pages and make the transition of mobile pages in search indices take longer than necessary. Ultimately, I'm probably splitting hairs and getting a bit nuanced because I believe things will work themselves out whether we leave the rel alternate or remove it but I thought it would be great to get any opinions or thoughts from community members that have made a similar transition. Thanks in advance for stopping by and providing your thoughts. All the best,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TakeLessons
Jon PS - for your reference, the only mention that I was able to dig up in Q&A for a move from m. to responsive are the following: Redirecting M Dot Mobile Website to Responsive Design Website Questions SEO Concerns From Moving Mobile M Dot site to Responsive Version?0 -
Site wide links - should they be nofollow or followed links
Hi We have a retail site and a blog that goes along with the site. The blog is very popular and the MD wanted a link from the blog back to the main retail site. However as this is a site wide link on the blog, am I right in thinking this really should be no follow link. The link is at the top of every page. Thanks in advance for any help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andy-Halliday0 -
Yoast & rel canonical for paginated Wordpress URLs
Hello, our Wordpress blog at http://www.jobs.ca/career-resources has a rel canonical issue since we added pagination to the front page and category-pages. We're using Yoast and it's incorrectly applying a rel-canonical meta tag referencing page 1 on page 2, 3, etc. This is a known misuse of the rel-canonical tag (per Google's Webmaster Blog - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ca/2013/04/5-common-mistakes-with-relcanonical.html, which says rel-canonical should be replaced with rel-prev and rel-next for page 2, 3, etc.). We don't see a way to specify anywhere in Yoast's options to correct this behaviour for page 2, 3, etc. Yoast allows you to override a page's canonical URL, otherwise it automatically uses the Wordpress permalink. My question is, does anyone know how to configure Yoast to properly replace rel-canonical tags with rel-prev and rel-next for paginated URLs, or do I need to look at another plugin or customize the behavior directly in my child theme code? This issue was brought up here as well: http://moz.com/community/q/canonical-help, but the only response did not relate to Yoast. (We're using Wordpress 3.6.1 and Yoast "Wordpress SEO" 1.4.18)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aactive0 -
Do you add 404 page into robot file or just add no index tag?
Hi, got different opinion on this so i wanted to double check with your comment is. We've got /404.html page and I was wondering if you would add this page to robot text so it wouldn't be indexed or would you just add no index tag? What would be the best approach? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rubix0 -
Duplicate Title - Magento Products / Kunena Forum - Nofollow vs. Follow
Hello Mozzers! This is my first post so hopefully I can explain this in a way that is clear! I just signed up for my PRO membership and wanted to finally start hacking away at this companies site that I work for. I ran my report and noticed my Crawl Diagnostics: 715 Dupliate Page Titles I noticed that a lot those were coming from the customer login in magento. So I added the: User-agent: *Disallow:/customer/ as mentioned in this link: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10742052/duplicate-content-issues-for-login-page Any suggestions on that? Also, We have a Kunena forum on our site and have noticed all of the nofollow links. People say I should change them to follow links, but other people say leave them or I will get penalized. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NRMWEBWORKS0 -
Paging Question: Rel Next or Canonical?
Hi, Lets say you have a category which displays a list of 20 products and pagination of up to 10 pages. The root page has some content but when you click through the paging the content is removed leaving only the list of products. Would it be best to apply a canonical tag on the paging back to the root or apply the prev/next tags. I understand prev/next is good for say a 3 part article where each page holds unique content but how do you handle the above situation? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bondara0 -
What type of links should be followed and nofollowed internally?
We have submitted our sitemap.xml to search engines so now that they have that should we use a nofollow attribute on the sitemap.html? Do we even need a sitemap.html? For other links on the site such as: Contact us About Us Locations and other phrases that we are not trying to rank for should we set these to nofollow?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
How to set cannonical link rel to CS CART
I whant to specify a link rel cannonical for each category page, how to do that without changing the code (just from admin section), because filters and sorting search are making the site dublicate content with their parameters; If there is a way please specify the method, i whant to avoid hours of working in a script like this. Thank's.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | oneticsoft0