Rel=nofollow

I've read of articles about the nofollow and external links, but since most are pretty old iam worried about theire current accuracy. So i have an important question.

Iam in the top10 in Google on a few important keywords. Iam slowly going down because i need to ad an external link once in a while. I assume Google doesn't like too many outgoing links and actually prefers no outgoing links at all. So there are two solutions, one is to get rid of all links and two is to nofollow the external links. Since one is not an option i think i can either go with two or do nothing at all, iam worried what would be best.

If i add the nofollow tag on all external links all of a sudden, would that hurt my position? Or would it (as old articles make you believe) give your site a boost again?

Putting no follow tags should still give you a boost in the rankings... but it is kind of a black hat technique to impose on people you exchanged links with.

Links is not where the answer is found. Exceptional content will bring you automatic links, with no work from you - as long as you have a relevant traffic flow.

Let's think of the logic here... Why would google prefer No outgoing links? that is what they base a large part of their algo on, the natural interlinkage between sites. Some might even say that using source links and links to authority sites actually helps your trust factor...

you make quite a bold statement by saying "Iam slowly going down because i need to ad an external link once in a while." This is purely you assuming this is the problem. This is troublsome because many people will take such a bold statement to heart which in fact has no root in fact.

You need stronger links coming into your site period.
You can nofollow the outgoing links, this will simply not pass page rank to the people you are linking to. Since page rank has nothing to do with rankings this wont have a direct effect on your rankings over all.

All you guys thanks for the reply!

BGreen > I don't exchange links, it's no blackhat technique.

EGOL > Luckily i have a lot of incomming links and valuable content. The sites i do link to are projects i've worked on and that iam proud of. I link to them because i want them to be part of my portfolio. Since they are projects they are not related to my site other than i worked on it. In Googles eyes they are not related and some also don't have any (other) incomming links. I just don't want to lose position because of the links. Since you have a lot of posts iam curious about your opinion. Will nofollow affect my rankings positively (no outgoing links anymore) or negatively (the sudden change might give Google the feeling iam blackhatting or something) or do nothing at all?

Googler > It used to be like that in the past, outgoing links affected your ranks negativly, at least that's what everyone was telling. I don't know how it currently is. See what i wrote above to EGOL, perhaps you understand why iam in doubt to no follow the links.

I should say first that I link out to lots of other sites (four to ten sites per day), but almost all of those links are related to the the theme of my site and specifically to the page upon which they are placed. These are not paid links. They are recommended links in a blog.

Most people would consider me to be very conservative in that I value my sites and try to avoid any risky practice. In fact, most of the links that I have between my own sites have the nofollow attribute on them just as if they were advertising. I mention this so you know that a person with a higher risk tolerance would give you a very different answer.

I don't believe that outgoing links to related content will hurt you. In fact, my experience says that the page where the link appears will be more strongly optimized for the terms of the anchor text (this is based upon my experience of increased rankings after adding hypertext links out for specific terms). Google likes the citation model. It was what pagerank was developed upon so they should not have any penalty for linking out to related sites (unless you somehow are found selling links to those sites).

How they view linking out to unrelated - off topic - sites is an interesting question which might not be answered with certainty unless you have done a lot of testing. Just speculating here... I would say that it would be risky to link to unrelated sites using simple text links in a footer or blogroll or in persistent navigation on your site. However, if you are linking to them in editorial content I doubt that those links would hurt your rankings - unless you have a lot of them. I have some of these links on my site simply because I have an industry related blog that often says... "hey look at this just for fun" and links to an unrelated site. This is reasonable for a site to do so google should not have a problem with it unless you do it a lot.

I link to four to ten different sites every day in a blog. None of these links have nofollow because I am recommending another site based upon its content. I am never paid for the links. I do have some paid ads on my sites and every one of them goes to a high quality website and has nofollow links.

Related to your real question... I have a PR7 page on one of my sites where I link to about 100 other websites in a specific industry segment. Two of them offered to pay me for a more obvious link at the top of the page. When I accepted that payment I placed nofollow on all 100 of the links that appear on that page (plus the two obvious links at the top). This was done six months ago. That page competes for some difficult terms against strong competitors. So far all of my rankings have held. I have not seen any of the rankings for this page go up. My opinion is that using nofollow does nothing positive or negative for your site.

I didn't go out looking for this topic but stumbled into an article that is very relevant.

http://www.searchenginemarketing.co.uk/blog/sem/pagerank-sculpting/

I agree with what was said here, I think that you should not worry about adding a nofollow, but me more concerned about getting more high quality links pointing towards your site.

The only time I'd consider a no follow would be if I were linking to something that wasn't relevant to my site. The only reason I'd link in the first place would be to help someone on my site out, answer a question. But if overall it wasn't relevant, I may throw in a no follow.

Matt

EGOL > Thanks for that link, that's great information.

Everyone else, thanks for the help as well.

Grow Up

Use Rel=nofollow as it was intended, to source sites that you're not entirely sure are reputable, or for user generated submissions that you're unable to regularly control.

Linking to other related sites, as Egol points out, should only help your sites relevancy. Perhaps, if your visitor didn't find what they were looking for, your supplied link will offer it to them. If that's the case, wasn't your page a successful search result? Otherwise, in this instance, you may have seen a bounce to find that other page.

Make your pages as helpful to your visitors as possible. If this means you lose some traffic and/or juice to another better page, so be it. It just makes your page stronger, and the difference will be made up with natural linking, and in turn better SERPS.

I suggest limit your out going links and only put out going link to related site.

The Berg > It's a portfolio website and the outgoing links are links to projects i've worked. The projects are not related other than the fact that i worked there. The projects range from a university to a software company and everything in between. Does that change your opinion?

Everyone > Iam using Flash for the outgoing links. I noticed Google DOES index it and DOES follow the links. In Flash there is no option to REL=Nofollow per link. So it's follow all links or none. For the particular page iam thinking to add an index,nofollow so it won't follow the external links. What do you guys think?

It then wouldnt follow the internal links...