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
-
When domain a buys domain b (whose links direct to c), does domain a has links redirecting to domain c ?
Hi, I really need to know what happens when a company or domain (a) acquires another company with domain (b) with its links pointing to yet another location (c). Does company a then have redirects to c?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Yeshourun0 -
How to do Spam Link Analysis before posting a link?
OSE provides Spam analysis for website link profile, Do Moz have a tool to check the link quality before placing a link? How to do Spam Link Analysis before posting a link?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bondhoward1 -
Why is my blog out-ranking my main site?
Please see attached ranking history chart. On June 5th the chart shows that my main site is not coming up under our main keyword "door hangers" From then on, our blog took over. Any ideas why? Thanks Andrea lpEBciu.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JimDirectMailCoach0 -
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 -
Are Navigation links different to static links
We are trying to reduce the number of links on our homepage. We could remove some fly out navigation links, We rank 1st on Google for some of these links. Would removing these hurt our SEO. The links are accessible 1 level down if we remove the homepage.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Archers0 -
What is value in a back-link from article with multiple links pointing to various other sites?
In a standard article with 400-500 words my site got a back-link. However, within the article there are 4 other links pointing to other external content as well (so total 5 links within articles all pointing to external sites, and 1 of the links is to my site). All links are to relevant external content that is. Question: wouldn't it be much more valuable for my site if only my site got a back-link from the article, as less link juice is now passed to my site, since there are 4 other links pointing to various sites from this same article? Or, is the case that given the other links are pointing to quality material it actually makes the link to my site look more credible and at the end of the day have more value. Conclusion: is it that on one hand less links in same article is better from a link juice perspective, however, from a credibility perspective it looks more convincing there are other links pointing to quality content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen0 -
Content linking ?
If you have links on the left hand side of the website on the Navigation and content at the bottom of the page and link to the same page with different anchor text or the same would it help the page (as it is surrounded by similar text) or is the first one counted and this is it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
How to Define rel=nofollow Attribute for External Links?
I want to define rel=nofollow attribute for Vista Patio Umbrellas. I have designed narrow by search section on home page. I want to define rel=nofollow attribute for all text links which are available in left navigation. So, what is best solution for that?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0