• About Us
  • Contributors
  • Guides
  • Speaking Engagements
  • Write for The SEM Post
  • Submit a tip or contact us!
  • Newsletters

The SEM Post

Latest News About SEO, SEM, PPC & Search Engines

  • Google
  • SEO
  • Mobile
  • Local
  • Bing
  • Pay Per Click
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • State of the Industry
You are here: Home / Google / Don’t NoFollow All Links for Outbound Link Manual Action Recovery

Don’t NoFollow All Links for Outbound Link Manual Action Recovery

April 12, 2016 at 4:20 am PST By Jennifer Slegg

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
  • WhatsApp
  • Evernote
  • SMS

nofollow outboundIf you were on the receiving end of a manual action warning for unnatural outbound links this weekend, if your strategy to fix the problem was to nofollow every link on the site, you may want to rethink that strategy for a number of reasons.  This is also something I brought up in my initial article all about the Unnatural Outbound Link Manual Actions published Monday, detailing everything important about these manual actions.

First, Google is not recommending nofollowing all the links on a site as a way to see this manual action lifted.  In one of the many threads in the Webmaster Help Forums about these new manual actions, John Mueller did advise that bloggers shouldn’t nofollow all links on the site. Here is what he said specifically this aspect of the nofollow.

There’s absolutely no need to nofollow every link on your site!

So this isn’t needed in order to be able to clean up the problematic links and submit a reconsideration request.

It is understandable why some bloggers – especially those with larger sites or those without the time necessary to go through a blog link-by-link – are opting to either nofollow all external links, or worse, nofollow ALL links, including internal ones.  It is a quick fix, it means potentially submitting a reconsideration request much quicker, but it could have long term repercussions.

First, those bloggers going the all nofollow strategy are preventing sites they link to naturally from benefiting from those links, meaning they could contribute to those sites losing rankings.  While one link doesn’t seem like much, across dozens or hundreds of blogs, it definitely could hurt rankings for those sites.

Second, applying nofollow on all internal links on a site can make it harder for Google to recognize which pages are most important on a site, something that can certainly affect rankings and Google’s ability to surface the those top pages in the search results.  Nofollowing all internal links is a horrible idea for SEO.

So it is definitely a better strategy to nofollow links that should be nofollowed, such as product reviews you received compensation for, rather than nofollowing everything.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
  • WhatsApp
  • Evernote
  • SMS
The following two tabs change content below.
  • Bio
  • Latest Posts
My Twitter profileMy Facebook profileMy Google+ profileMy LinkedIn profile

Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post
Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.
My Twitter profileMy Facebook profileMy Google+ profileMy LinkedIn profile

Latest posts by Jennifer Slegg (see all)

  • 2022 Update for Google Quality Rater Guidelines – Big YMYL Updates - August 1, 2022
  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines: The Low Quality 2021 Update - October 19, 2021
  • Rethinking Affiliate Sites With Google’s Product Review Update - April 23, 2021
  • New Google Quality Rater Guidelines, Update Adds Emphasis on Needs Met - October 16, 2020
  • Google Updates Experiment Statistics for Quality Raters - October 6, 2020

Filed Under: Google, SEO

Sign up for our newsletter


Comments

  1. Tahir says

    April 12, 2016 at 7:20 am

    if you are using wordpress, there are quite few plugins which will no follow only external links and/or you can also specify any other site(s) you do not want no follow as well.

    • Peter says

      April 13, 2016 at 5:31 am

      The manual action isn’t about nofollowing every external link. You just should nofollow external links, which have been put in return for money or a product / service.

      • Jennifer Slegg says

        April 13, 2016 at 6:19 am

        Correct… unfortunately, this isn’t what bloggers are telling others to do :/

Trackbacks

  1. SearchCap: Google expands feature snippets, penalizes free product reviews & more says:
    April 12, 2016 at 1:01 pm

    […] Don’t NoFollow All Links for Outbound Link Manual Action Recovery, thesempost.com […]

Founder & Editor

Jennifer Slegg (2052)

Sign up for our daily news recap & weekly newsletter.


Follow us online

  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • Linkedin
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Latest News

2022 Update for Google Quality Rater Guidelines – Big YMYL Updates

We finally have the first Google Quality Rater Guidelines update of 2022, and like usual, it is … [Read More...]

Recent Posts

  • 2022 Update for Google Quality Rater Guidelines – Big YMYL Updates
  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines: The Low Quality 2021 Update
  • Rethinking Affiliate Sites With Google’s Product Review Update
  • New Google Quality Rater Guidelines, Update Adds Emphasis on Needs Met
  • Google Updates Experiment Statistics for Quality Raters
  • Analyzing “How Google Search Works” Changes from Google
  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines Update: New Introduction, Rater Bias & Political Affiliations
  • Google Updates Quality Rater Guidelines: Reputation for News Sites; Video Content Updates; Quality for Information Sites
  • Google Makes Major Changes to NoFollow, Adds Sponsored & UGC Tags
  • Google Updates Quality Rater Guidelines Targeting E-A-T, Page Quality & Interstitials

Categories

  • Affiliate Marketing
  • Amazon
  • Apple
  • Bing
  • Branding
  • Browsers
  • Chrome
  • Content Marketing
  • Design
  • Domains
  • DuckDuckGo
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Firefox
  • Foursquare
  • Google
    • Analytics
    • Google RankBrain
    • Quality Rater's Guidelines
  • History of Search
  • Industry Spotlight
  • Instagram
  • Internet Explorer
  • Links
  • Local
  • Mobile
  • Native Advertising
  • Other Search Engines
  • Pay Per Click
  • Pinterest
  • Publishers
  • Security
  • SEO
  • Snapchat
  • Social Media
  • State of the Industry
  • The SEM Post
  • Tools
  • Twitter
  • Uncategorized
  • User Experience
  • Video Marketing
  • Week in Review
  • Whitepapers
  • Wordpress
  • Yahoo
  • Yelp
  • YouTube
August 2022
MTWTFSS
« Oct  
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
293031 

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS
  • WordPress.org

Copyright © 2022 · News Pro Theme On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in