Blog links - follow or nofollow?
-
I need my memory refreshed here!
Say, I've got a blog and some of the posts have links to recommended external sites and content. Should these be nofollowed?
They're not paid links or anything like that, simply things relevant to the post.
-
Agreed. It's called the web for a reason - a web of links. To my way of thinking, when I link out I am saying to Google: this is my neighborhood, and I am linking to it.
-
Gyi - the fear has subsided for the time being!
Thanks for the response
-
Thanks Keri. Well put
I've taken it on board
-
Google doesn't have the x-ray vision some of us fear.
The ONLY reason to nofollow a link, IMO, is because you have sold the link and want to be compliant with Google Webmaster Guidelines. To use nofollow in most other cases makes no sense to me.
I know it was developed to prevent blog spam - and if you don't have time to moderate comments, then nofollow might make sense. But, IMO, it's better to have a clearly stated followed, moderated blog comment policy; when readers know that substantive comments are approved and followed, it encourages participation.
-
+1 for what Keri said. Don't fear linking out. It's upsetting that so many webmasters are suffering from outbound link paranoia. In fact, many are just wholesale nofollowing their entire sites. So sad.
-
I'd put the links out there straight. I don't see anything for you to worry about at all. You're curating the links, you feel they are valuable, let Google know they are valuable and trusted links.
-
As long as you doing it the right way you will be ok. Good luck with it. Nice taliking to you.
-
Yes, that's a fair point.
My caution is because in the past, the blog didn't link out to other sites at all. Now I've just started creating posts with external links in them.
As long as this won't be detrimental in anyway, I'll carry on
-
I dont think that woukld be a problem as long they are no links to spammy sites of some kind. The thing is it is really hard for google to see if it is a paid link and they will not just give you a penalty for without looking into it.
-
I know that google's traditional stance on this is that any paid links should be nofollowed, so I just don't want google to think that these might be paid links which haven't been nofollowed... and therefore impose a penalty for this.
-
I would say make it dofollow because this way you will pass linjuice to the other site and kind of reward them for good information.
If you are asking because you are loooking for blogs to comment on i wont worry to much. The thing is if you are going to get 99% dofollow and 1% NOFOLLOW people will notsee this as natural and nobody want that.
Hope this helps
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
-
Blog.ledsupply.com VERSUS ledsupply.com/blog
Hi All- We had a security issue that started on out blog (ledsupply.com/blog) and moved into our shopping cart, so IT suggested and moved the blog to its own server. This means we had to change the URL structure. It's now blog.ledsupply.com/ instead of ledsupply.com/blog...Is there evidence or opinion on whether this will effect SEO/Traffic (assuming we set-up redirects, etc.)? I remember reading that Google suggests having your BLOG be part of your main domain and not a SUB domain, so I'm very hesitant to switch and also welcome any additional security measure suggestions we could set-up, so that we can keep the preferred domain structure. Thank you so much! -Brooke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | saultienut0 -
NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW Mistake
One of our top organic landing page was set as "NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW" by "mistake". I took me about a week to realize this after I saw a drop of traffic on that page. I looked on Google to see if it was indexed and my fear were confirmed! After finding our that it was switched to "NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW" I switched it back to "INDEX,FOLLOW" and did an index request in our Google Search Console. Anyone else has run into a similar issue? Did you ever got the page inxed again?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FrankViolette2 -
Too many on page links
Hi I know previously it was recommended to stick to under 100 links on the page, but I've run a crawl and mine are over this now with 130+ How important is this now? I've read a few articles to say it's not as crucial as before. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Disavow Links Notification
No manual actions on our sites, just Penguin related. I put in a disavow for one site in October and Webmaster Tools kept a message up for some time saying the disavow links file for that site had been updated. I put in a disavow for another site of ours last week and I've had no such message. I checked and the file is there. Was this an intentional change on Google's part? Just want to make sure something's not messed up here.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingof50 -
Can too many NoFollow links damage your Google rankings?
I've been trying to recover from a Google algorithm change since Sep 2012, so far without success. I'm now wondering if the nofollow on external links in my blog posts are actually doing me damage. http://www.smartdatinguk.com/blog/ Does anyone have any experience of this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | benners0 -
Charity links
Quick question - Are links on charity websites with a small mention about what your company does good links to go for?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson1 -
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 -
Does the number of links on a page metric include repeated links?
Just wondering if the number of links on the page metric includes links that are repeated? So, if I had 100 links to one page would this count as 100 or 1 link?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cornwall
If it's the former does this mean more links to one page adds weight? Thanks0