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  4. Is it better "nofollow" or "follow" links to external social pages?

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Is it better "nofollow" or "follow" links to external social pages?

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  • fablau
    fablau last edited by Apr 18, 2013, 7:12 PM

    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!

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 9
    • ITestenseAdv
      ITestenseAdv last edited by Nov 28, 2017, 6:51 AM Nov 28, 2017, 6:51 AM

      And what about "external"?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • fablau
        fablau last edited by Apr 19, 2013, 1:57 PM Apr 19, 2013, 1:57 PM

        Thank you guys! I really appreciated your help! This clarified a lot for me.

        All the best to all of you!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • simon_realbuzz
          simon_realbuzz last edited by Apr 19, 2013, 1:56 PM Apr 19, 2013, 7:56 AM

          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.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 5
          • TakeshiYoung
            TakeshiYoung last edited by Apr 19, 2013, 1:56 PM Apr 18, 2013, 8:19 PM

            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.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 11
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