No follow question about out-bound links

[Caruso]

Example: page has affiliate and non-affiliate links. The affiliate links are in a sidebar, and maybe scattered around the page.

The affiliate links all have the rel="nofollow" attribute.

The non-affiliate links are informational. In a page describing the history of slots, the links will be to the first slot machine, its location, how slots work, and all manner of pages about other matters relating to slots. All purely informational.

Should those informational links also have the nofollow attribute, or not?

My concern with not nofollowing them is that they could be wrongly regarded as spam (paid links) and suffer penalisation from Google et al. A friend of mine, and also an SEO at the LAC I asked yesterday, think otherwise.

Any thoughts? The page in my example above is this one:

http://www.hundredpercentgambling.co....php?pid=Slots

I have many more such. I'm a serial informational-linker, which makes me worry about not nofollowing everything.

[Scampi]

Do you mean internal links? There is no need to nofollow internal links.

[Caruso]

No, I mean outbound links, like linking to Wikipedia / WizardOfOdds etc.

[justbookies]

nofollow those external links. It does not penalise the target site. In fact it can only do it good that there is a link to it of some sort from a decent site. wikipedia nofollows all its reference source external links at the bottom of its pages (take a look for yourself).

[universal4]

Caruso,

You should just continue to build your pages for the visitor like you always have.

If while your building a page and talking about a game, you link to a page or game, that is a link created for the visitor. By changing the link to a no-follow, in my opinion, you would be doing this for seo purposes.

Rick
Universal4

[sweetbet]

imho it's always advisable to add a rel="nofollow" to all outbound links. This eliminates the risk of being penalized by unknowingly linking to a site (that might expire, go offline or become penalized for whatever reason) and as a result cause your site to drop in the serps.

[TheGooner]

Do you really think that outbound links and no-follow is the point of googles link monitoring guys? That seems so 2007 to me - and I cannot imagine that being any sort of factor in serp rankings.

I'm struggling to understand an environment where Google wants all outbound links to be nofollow and will then penalise site that do not use that piece of html for all outbound links. Given that Google claim to be all about users - and the nofollow attribute has no visual impact on users - it seems that would not be smart search engine ranking technology at all.

I have never coded a nofollow link, EVER. I link to affiliate programs, I link to sports reports at ESPN, BBC, or FIFA, I link to other stuff that I find interesting at will, I don't angst about the "juice flow" or any other weird (and probably imaginary) SEO metric. I just link to itms that are relevant.

I'm with Universal on this one - just concentrate on creating the content for users - and having well formed HTML. Do not worry about the latest "witch doctor" mumbings on SEO.

[justbookies]

Yes, I agree and that all makes sense. The real problem is it is not just witch doctor mumblings. It is Matt Cutts' mumblings, which he broadcasts to the world. He has probably lots of videos on this, but I certainly saw one where he was telling people to use nofollow on external links in sidebars. Then you have wikipedia nofollowing all external links. Affiliates will look at that and copy, because wikipedia is in top 3 for everything (though that will be a manual boost by google anyway).

Yes, I would love a search engine where it is a true economy. However google has messed with that badly by creating the nofollow attribute and then creating the disavow tool (what's that if not confirmation they cant do their job). So when all these manipulating tools are created by google and then their spokesman does videos on them in monotone telling people where to use them (but deliberately leaves it a tad vague, with 'maybe' and 'perhaps'). Well you cant blame people for talking about it and using it.

Your site is a good example of what you say. It seems to do well in the serps and you are being more 'natural' than anyone. However when google tells us to be 'natural' they are actually telling us not to 'game the system' to use their words. They do that out of self motivation and yet they create the rules, rules where they created the 'nofollow' and the 'disavow', neither of which are in any way natural, but which were created to be used in certain instances.

So if you want to get a position in the serps (owned by the God Almighty google), if that is your ambition, you have to mull these points and watch the monotone videos and open threads on 'nofollow' links.

I am with you though, it is not a good business model to be reliant on the whims, fancies and mercy of google.

[Jokerman99]

If you are linking to a quality site then why would you even consider nofollowing it?