Nofollow all outgoing links?

[ChristopherGlaeser]

If nofollow keeps link juice from leaking from a site, why not use nofollow on all external links? What would be the benefit of an external link that does not use nofollow? Best, Christopher

[RyanKent]

If nofollow keeps link juice from leaking from a site, why not use nofollow on all external links?

An excellent question Christopher. The responses which come to mind are:

1. Some external pages are under your control and you will directly benefit from link juice flowing to them. Your social account pages (facebook, twitter, etc.), company profile pages (linkedin, etc.) or other author pages.

2. Some external links are to partner sites who may not appreciate a nofollow link or could take offense as nofollow links are generally to untrusted sites.

3. There is always the "do onto others as you would have done to you" idea. Along these links you can generate goodwill.

4. Sometimes it is required. You may be presenting an image, video or excerpt from another site. In order to use the content a followed link could be required.

5. It's often the right thing to do. If a site is worthy of mentioning, they are often worthy of being linked to as well.

I imagine a percentage of people read reasons # 1 - 5 and are still of the mindset to nofollow most external links. Well reason #6 will probably convince most of those site owners otherwise.

6. All else aside, you should be clear you are not "saving" link juice for your site by nofollowing external links. The way link juice flows on a page is the value will flow to every link on the page whether it is followed or not. The difference is, the juice to a followed link flows through to the target, where the link juice to a nofollowed link simply "evaporates".

Using a simple example lets say your page has 100 links and all of which are followed. Each link will receive 1% of the page's PR value (I don't wish to complicate this example with a dampening factor, let's keep to simple math).

Using the same example of a page with 100 links but this time let's assume 10 of the links are nofollowed. Each of the 90 followed links would still receive 1% of the page's link juice. Many people assume 100/90 followed links = 1.1 so each link would receive 1.1% and that is not the case. One good aspect of this method is it prevents most site owners from simply nofollowing all external links in the manner you are asking about.

[AlanMosley]

You should always link out in my opinion and SEOMoz’s also as it states in the on-page report.

Matt cutt has said that it can be beneficial to link to relevant sites, but there is also another reason.
The Google page rank algo, does not award page rank to what is called hanging pages, that is a page on your website that has a link to it but does not link back when it is calculating pagerank for your site. If your whole site does not link back, to the internet then maybe it is seen as a hanging website in the bigger picture.
I assume that linking out give you some sort of juice for relevance and authority of the linked-to page, this may be better than the juice you lose.

Another idea is to make sure you have plenty of links to your own site on the page also, so that you are only giving away a small slice. you may notice that article sites do this, they have maybe 200 links to their own site, and one to yours. Also the first link in a page carries the most weight

[ChristopherGlaeser]

Regarding the first link on the page carrying the most weight, are you referring to external links, or both internal and external links?  Does Google know how to separate all the links in the menu from the rest of the page?

Best,
Christopher

[AlanMosley]

all links.

1st is best and descreses as you go along

The position of the link also counts. SEOMoz did some tests on this, (i think it was SEOMoz) footer does not give much juice, sides a bit better, head and body were the best.