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?
-
Not necessarily. Yes, you shouldn't automatically nofollow every external link; however, nofollowed external links versus followed external links have to be treated differently.
Especially in cases of online journalism and blogging, it's not unheard of to link to a site that might be unsavory. Using a nofollow in that case (where otherwise, external links are usually followed) would clue crawlers in that "this site might be bad, don't ding us for it".
If 95% of your external links are spam/porn, and you nofollow one of those links, then, yes, you should expect to get smacked down. But, when you have a slightly shady in-context link that's nofollowed, and plenty of other good links that are followed, it's not going to be an issue.
-
Good point
-
If you are writing an article on spam or malware, you may want to link to such a site, but not be associated with it.
-
Hi Donnie,
One of the occasions when you should use nofollow is paid links.
If you are offering sponsored links to you partners, Google demands that you nofollow those links.
Cornel
-
"The only time you should use a no-follow is when you are linking to a external site that has a bad reputation, suchas a porn site or spam site, that you do not want to be associated with."
In which case, you shouldn't be linking to those sites anyway.
the 'nofollow' attribute was created many years ago to be used within comment systems, and not within a website link structure.
In my opinion, I fail to see any time in which you feel you should be adding nofollow to any external link. If you are linking to an external site, it should ONLY be to a site that is relevant to your site and of a reputable nature. Adding nofollow to that seems redundant.
If you add nofollow to all your outgoing links, I could only imagine that Googlebot starts thinking, "why are these guys adding all these links to sites they don't trust?"
-
You should not use no-follow in internal links at all. you would simply be robbing yourself of link juice.
http://thatsit.com.au/seo/tutorials/a-simple-explanation-of-pagerank
The only time you should use a no-follow is when you are linking to a external site that has a bad reputation, such as a porn site or spam site, that you do not want to be associated with.
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
-
HELP: Why do I have a 61% score for "% of total links, external + follow"?
Firstly, I understand what this percentage is. It's the ratio of external links that are "follow" -> compared to the links that are "no-follow". Four questions: This is definitely not accurate! I have loads of no-follow links Does anyone have ideas or techniques to add more healthy no-follow links? Am I completely misunderstanding this? Will this high score negatively affect my ranking? I could definitely use some help. Thanks so much in advance. I don't think my website address should help, but if you need it for context, it's estatediamondjewely.com.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCitron0 -
Linking from purchased businesses to my own
Hi All, An SEO and Google guidelines question. We've recently purchased several local businesses that have websites. Legally, we've put a disclaimer saying we've purchased those businesses, the question is whether we should link from those sites to our main site. Will this bring a manual action from Google? It's legitimate that we'd like the visitors from those websites come to our main site because those business no longer named the way they were. So, is it OK to link from these sites to ours? Will this violate Google's guidelines regarding backlinking? Should we even link and if so add the rel:nofollow tag? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | OrendaLtd2 -
International Site Migration
Hi guys, In the process of launching internationally ecommerce site (Magento CMS) for two different countries (Australia and US). Then later on expand to other countries like the UK, Canada, etc. The plan is for each country will have its own sub-folder e.g. www.domain.com/us, www.domain.com.au/au, www.domain.com.au/uk A lot of the content between these English based countries are the same. E.g. same product descriptions.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright
So in order to prevent duplication, from what I’ve read we will need to add Hreflang tags to every single page on the site? So for: Australian pages: United States pages: Just wanted to make sure this is the correct strategy (will hreflang prevent duplicate content issues?) and anything else i should be considering? Thankyou, Chris0 -
International SEO
We want to expand to a few new regions internationally. My question is if we register sites in different geographies and upload our exact site to these web addresses (exact duplicates) so our web addresses will then be www.mysite.co.uk (current site) www.mysite.com (new intended site) www.mysite.com.au (new intended site) and add rel=“canonical” linking elements to prevent duplicate content issues.Will our content production on our current site www.mysite.co.uk retain its value within all the other sites. Is this the best way to do it? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aquaspressovending0 -
Do I have to many internal links which is diluting link juice to less important pages
Hello Mozzers, I was looking at my homepage and subsequent category landing pages on my on my eCommerce site and wondered whether I have to many internal links which could in effect be diluting link juice to much of the pages I need it to flow. My homepage has 266 links of which 114 (43%) are duplicate links which seems a bit to much to me. One of my major competitors who is a national company has just launched a new site design and they are only showing popular categories on their home page although all categories are accessible from the menu navigation. They only have 123 links on their home page. I am wondering whether If I was to not show every category on my homepage as some of them we don't really have any sales from and only concerntrate on popular ones there like my competitors , then the link juice flowing downwards in the site would be concerntated as I would have less links for them to flow ?... Is that basically how it works ? Is there any negatives with regards to duplicate links on either home or category landing page. We are showing both the categories as visual boxes to select and they are also as selectable links on the left of a page ? Just wondered how duplicate links would be treated? Any thoughts greatly appreciated thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
URL Value: Menu Links vs Body Content Links
Hi All, I'm a little confused. I have read a number of articles from authority sites that give mixed signals over the importance of menu links vs body content links. It is suggested that whilst all menu links spread link juice equally, Google does not see them as favourably. Inserting a link within the body will add more link juice value to the desired page. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch0 -
How do I find the links on my site that link to another one of my pages?
I ran IIS Seo toolkit and it found about 40 pages that I have no idea how they exist. What tool can I use to find out what internal link is linking to them so I can fix them or get rid of them?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Link Acquisition - link building
When using Site Explorer to find out my competiters links so I can do some link aquisition SEO do I look for the "inbound" links or or "linking domains"? Also, what filters should I choose? I want to make a spreadsheet as Rand suggested in his video and start to prioritize my link building.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | musicforkids0