Configuring “No Follow” links on your website can have both pros and cons.
To better understand what “No Follow” is, let's break them down:
Pros:
- Control Over Link Juice Flow: By using the "No Follow" attribute, you can control the flow of link equity (also known as "link juice") from your website to other sites. This can be beneficial if you want to prevent search engines from passing authority to certain external links.
- Mitigation of Spammy Links: Implementing "No Follow" can help mitigate the risk of associating your website with spammy or low-quality content by signaling to search engines that you don't endorse or vouch for those particular links.
- Compliance with Guidelines: Following best practices for link attributes, including using "No Follow" when appropriate, can help your website stay in compliance with search engine guidelines, reducing the risk of penalties.
Cons:
- Reduced Crawling of Linked Pages: Search engine crawlers may not follow "No Follow" links, which means they won't discover and index the linked pages. This could potentially hinder the visibility of valuable content you've linked to, especially if it's newer or less well-known.
- Potential Loss of Traffic: If you use "No Follow" for all external links, you may miss out on potential traffic from users who follow those links. While search engines won't pass authority through "No Follow" links, users can still click on them and visit the linked pages.
- Impact on User Experience: Overuse of "No Follow" attributes, particularly on internal links or user-generated content, can disrupt the user experience. Users may become frustrated if they encounter broken or inaccessible links due to excessive use of "No Follow."
- Complexity and Maintenance: Managing "No Follow" attributes across a large website can add complexity to site maintenance and content management. It requires ongoing attention to ensure that links are appropriately tagged, which can be time-consuming.
In summary, while "No Follow" links offer control over link equity and help mitigate spam, they can also impact crawling, traffic, and user experience. It's essential to use them judiciously and consider the specific goals and needs of your website when implementing them.