Diana Manning
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Hello,
Once again re-visiting cloaked links as per Ros’ tutorial and the recent link-cloaking for tech newbies thread.
I want to be sure that my affiliate links are nofollowed, to avoid having these outbound links suck Google juice from my site.
Is this already set up automatically somewhere within WordPress, and something I don’t have to concern myself with? Or is this another thing I’d need to set up myself?
If I need to do this myself, I’m surely gonna need some help!
Thanks for any clarification.
Regards,
Diana
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Jim Hutchinson
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When adding your links to the blog, you can include the ‘nofollow’ tag manually, but that can be a hassle doing that for every link. Since WordPress does not have that option built in, you can add an SEO plugin like All-in-One SEO or WP Affiliate Elite. I use that one and it can add the nofollow tag on individual links when you create them.
If you want to do that on an individual basis, you can edit the link by going into the HTML tab, locating the link and adding this to it inside the a href: rel=”nofollow”
I hope that helps!
Jim
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Diana Manning
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Hi Jim,
I saw in another post that you’re trying the WP SEO plugin by Yoast.
That’s good, because now I can reference something within that plugin, and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about!
If you go into any post within the WP dashboard, below the post is the WP SEO stuff. There are 3 tabs, and within the 3rd tab (Advanced) are the Meta Robots settings.
If I set the Meta Robots Follow: to Nofollow, will this cause Google to nofollow all of the links within that post, or only the links that lead to another site (outgoing links, I think)? In other words, If I have a link within a post to another post on my site, will that link also be nofollowed?
The reason I ask is that I’ve read that it is good SEO to give Google various ways to crawl and access links within my site. And bad SEO to allow Google to follow links outside of my site.
Also, if I use Nofollow as described above, and if using Nofollow does cause Google to nofollow internal links, will this apply to my “You May Also Like” links, which are created by the YARPP plugin?
Thanks for any clarification.
All the best,
Diana
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Monja Wessel
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hi diana,
as far as i know it is good to have a no follow on external links. with external links you give “link juice” away – but then on the other hand – the web is based on links so i really hope google doesn’t judge linking to other sites. as always, i think a good mix is great – linking to another site from time to time can’t hurt but if you send your visitors away all the time i don’t think this will make either you or google happy 
have a nice weekend!
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Diana Manning
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@ Monja, Yes, I agree with you. A good mix is always best. Google is looking for a natural mix of inbound and outbound links, not something we’ve contrived to get higher ranking.
@Jim, still wondering about the following:
1)Does the Nofollow box on Yoast’s WPSEO plugin make sure that all the outgoing links on a post or page are Nofollowed?
2) Will that cause a Nofollow for internal links, as well?
3) What about the “You May Also Like” links, below a post, created by the YARPP plugin? Will these also be Nofollowed on the post or page on which they appear?
Thanks for your help.
Diana
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Jim Hutchinson
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Hi Diana
I have not looked that deep into Yoast’s WP SEO but will do that and get back with you.
Jim
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Jim Hutchinson
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I installed Yoast’s WP SEO and went through every option. Nothing in there references external links, but ‘nofollow’ tags are usually only for external links, so your internal links are safe.
That includes the related posts. The plugins look for links outside your site to ‘nofollow’. As long as the links are referencing internal posts/pages/tags/archives your content will be followed and indexed according to the rules you set in WP SEO.
Doing some searching, I found an interesting tip that you can add to your external links just to make sure they are not used against you:
When you add a link, edit it and add this:
`rel=’external nofollow’`
That external link will not count as link juice (a back link). Even if the site you are linking to is for example, a PR8, adding that nofollow option will treat the external site as a PR0.
I hope that all makes sense.
Jim
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Diana Manning
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Hey Jim,
It does make sense, and thank you so much for taking the time to help me out.
All the best,
Diana
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Diana Manning 75 days ago.