Site wide no follow links
-
Does it make sense to make all external links on my site no follow?
-
opps, I had a total misunderstanding about it, sorry about that.
-
If you nofollow a link, the PR just evaporates. Google changed this in 2008 or before, according to Matt Cutt's post at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/.
-
I could be wrong, but the way I understand it is that page rank flows from every link on a site, so nofollowing external links would be sculpting the page rank by keeping the link juice internally in the site. Like I said, I could be wrong on it, but that is how I understand it.
-
Lesley,
Page Rank sculpting was for internal links, and the original poster asked about nofollowing external links.
-
Hi Keri
No not really, I have quite a few guest blogs on our blog area. Some of the links maybe a little low quality so I thinking make them all no follow. I am definitely going to make my comments no follow.
-
Keri,
What I am referring to has actually been one of the reasons for an old algorithm change. People used to do a thing called page rank sculpting where they would no follow certain links on a page to keep some of the page's page rank. Google then changed the way that PR was passed so that if you no followed a link, the other followed links would get more link juice.
From my take on it, I would say it is trying to manipulate page rank artificially, which puts you at risk for a penalty. Look at Moz's site for example, you guys no follow forum links, which is standard. But you don't nofollow every link on the site, which would seem unnatural. The social media links at the bottom of the pages are followed, just about every link generated by a paid employee at Moz is followed. That is how it should be too.
If you browse around the web at other big places that deal with SEO, like Kiss, Raven, and other places like that, they do the same thing. I have a feeling it is because there is a risk of an unnaturally high number of nofollow links.
-
Lesley,
I haven't seen that about Google, and would love to hear more. My understanding is that if the link is paid, it should be nofollowed, not that all nofollowed links are paid. Many sites, including Moz, automatically nofollow all links in the comments, yet the links are by no means paid.
To Cocoon,
If you nofollow all outgoing links on your site, you're telling Google you don't trust any of the links that you have. Is that really what you want to do here?
-
I would personally stay away from any site wide rules like that. The hard and fast rule that I think google uses is that is a link is no followed, then it is paid. So you are giving the appearance that all of your external links are paid. Depending on how many you have this could raise a red flag about your site and content.
-
Do you not want the search engine to follow them?
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
-
Spammy nofollow links
Hello, One of our clients - a cleaning business - has a heck of a lot of spammy nofollow links pointing to their site. The majority of the links are from comments or 'pingbacks', most with the anchor text 'cheap nfl jerseys' or 'cyber monday ugg boots'. After researching the subject of spammy nofollow links, it seems there is a lot of uncertainty regarding the negative affect these could have on your SEO efforts. So I guess my question to the community is: if your site was suddenly hit by a plethora of spammy nofollow links, what would you do and why? Cheers, Lewis
Technical SEO | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
Could using our homepage Google +1's site wide harm our website?
Hello Moz! We currently have the number of Google +1's for our homepage displaying on all pages of our website. Could this be viewed as black hat/manipulative by Google, and result in harming our website? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | TheDude0 -
Feefo review links
Hi guys, so we are on feefo and noticed links coming in per review for different anchor text, this will be done on mass due to the amount of reviews we will get - this is all natural but in SEO site-wide links are typically not. How if at all do you think Google will react to this?
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
How do you perform your link audits?
What methods and tools do you guys use to perform link audits? Do you also use a traffic light system for links?
Technical SEO | | PurpleGriffon0 -
Links from Instructables.com?
This is a silly newbie question. But will posting on www.instructables.com with some valuable content and url link back to my site help with "linking"? Or do they put a no-follow on all links on their site? Thanks for answering! Ron
Technical SEO | | yatesandcojewelers0 -
Weird href - is it still a follow link?
On many publication sites I have noticed weird links like I have never seen before <a <="" span="">href="http://test.com" onclick="linkClick(this.href)">Test</a> Are these still follow links? Is the only thing that determines a no follow link "rel=nofollow"? So as long as the link doesn't have that, it's good to go? Why might they have used a link like this? For tracking?
Technical SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Should I ask third pages to erase their links pointing at my site?
Good Morning Seomoz Fans, let me explain what is going on: A surfing site has included a link to my Site in their Footer. apparently, this could be good for my site, but as It has nothing to do with my site, I ask myself if I should tell them to erase it. Site A (Surfing Site) is pointing at Site B (Marketing Site) on their Footer. So Site B is receiving backlinks from every single page on Site A. But Site B has nothing to do with Site A: Different Markets. Should I ask them to erase the link on their footer as Surfing people will not find my Marketing Site interesting? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | Tintanus0 -
301 an old site to a newer site...
Hi First, to be upfront - these are not my websites, I'm asking because they are trying to compete in my niche. Here's the details, then the questions... There is a website that is a few months old with about 200 indexed pages and about 20 links, call this newsite.com There is a website that is a few years old with over 10,000 indexed pages and over 20,000 links, call this oldsite.com newsite.com acquired oldsite.com and set a 301 redirect so every page of oldsite.com is re-directed to the front page of newsite.com newsite.com & oldsite.com are on the same topic, the 301 occurred in the past week. Now, oldsite.com is out of the SERPs and newsite.com is pretty much ranking in the same spot (top 10) for the main term. Here are my questions; 1. The 10,000 pages on oldsite.com had plenty of internal links - they no longer exists, so I imagine when the dust settles - it will be like oldsite.com is a one page site that re-diretcts to newsite.com ... How long will a ranking boost last for? 2. With the re-direct setup to completely forget about the structure and content of oldsite.com, it's clear to me that it was setup to pass the 'Link Juice' from oldsite.com to newsite.com ... Do the major SE's see this as a form of SPAM (manipulating the rankings), or do they see it as a good way to combine two or more websites? 3. Does this work? Is everybody doing it? Should I be doing it? ... or are there better ways for me to combat this type of competition (eg we could make a lot of great content for the money spent buying oldsite.com - but we certainly wouldn't get such an immediate increase to traffic)?
Technical SEO | | RR5000