Site wide no follow links

[Cocoonfxmedia]

Does it make sense to make all external links on my site no follow?

[benjaminmarcinc]

Do you not want the search engine to follow them?

[LesleyPaone]

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.

[KeriMorgret]

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?

[LesleyPaone]

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.

[Cocoonfxmedia]

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.

[KeriMorgret]

Lesley,

Page Rank sculpting was for internal links, and the original poster asked about nofollowing external links.

[LesleyPaone]

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.

[KeriMorgret]

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/.

[LesleyPaone]

opps, I had a total misunderstanding about it, sorry about that.