Simple guide on how to add nofollow to all External Links in your WordPress Blog. NoFollow tag can be added to external links manually or by using a plugin. As far as SEO is concerned, it is not good to have too many dofollow links in your blog post. First of all you need to know the difference between “nofollow” and “dofollow” links, then you can decide which one to use.
img via mic
Difference between “NoFollow” and “DoFollow” links
NoFollow Links: Tells the Google Bot or any other Search Engine Bot, not to follow the link. Attribute rel=”nofollow” is mostly used when we add a link to any untrustable or bad websites in our blog post.
DoFollow Links: Every search engine Bot will follow these links and certain value will be given to them, based on the quality of your blog. Attribute rel=”dofollow” is used when we interlink the articles on the same blog.
Where to use nofollow attribute in links ?
This is quite simple thing and here are some cases where many bloggers regularly add rel="nofollow" attribute to the link.
- Affiliate Links used on your Blog.
- Image Credit Link on your Blog Post.
- Blog Roll links on footer of your blog.
- Any External Link to other blog or website.
Manually add nofollow attribute to all External Links
If you got some basic knowledge in HTML, then its very easy to add nofollow attribute to all External Links. Here are the steps you need to follow:
Consider this default link
<a href=”http://www.wpsquare.com”>WordPress Resources</a>
Now, add rel=”nofollow” attribute to the default link
<a href=”http://www.wpsquare.com”
rel="nofollow">WordPress Resources</a>
Voila, you have successfully added nofollow to the link.
Add nofollow to all External Links using WordPress Plugins
Using a plugin is quite simple task and many other advanced options are also available. Here we got 2 Ultimate WordPress plugins that helps to add nofollow attribute to all External Links.
1. WP External Links
Here is an awesome tutorial on how to install and configure WP External Links plugin on your WordPress blog. Please do check the screenshots and follow the below steps.
Download and install WP External Links plugin using the link below.
After installation, go to Wp External Links options page. Here you need to configure the plugin based on your requirement and we did the same.
General Settings
Open external links in new tab or window and apply those settings to links in Sidebar, Content Page and comments section. You can also add some URL’s to ignore list separated by an enter.
SEO Settings
Attribute rel=”external” helps to notify the browser to open link in new tab or window, similar to target=”_blank” attribute. But the difference is rel=”external” attribute is XHTML valid, whereas target=”_blank” is not.
Style Settings
The additional feature of this plugin is, we can style the external links by adding an icon to them, as shown in screenshot. Select an icon based on the color scheme of your blog and save changes.
Extra Settings
These settings are not necessary in normal case, but are handy in some situations. You can change the WP External Links menu position using that link.
Hope, you like this awesome plugin and now just move-on to another plugin which is an alternative to WP External Links.
2. External Links
This plugin works similar to WP External Links and got quite less features when compared to it. External Links plugin adds rel=”nofollow” attribute to all outgoing links and also helps to open them in new tab or new window. Icon can also be included in any external link and if you don’t want an icon, simply get rid of it by adding attribute in the link.
Hope, you like this ultimate article on “How to add nofollow to all External Links”, if you got any queries just drop a comment and we will get back to you soon.
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It’s really advisable to use nofollow to unimportant outbound links. Thanks for the useful plugin list.
Nice tips there. I’m using Easy WP SEO to manage all my internal and external link.
Easy WP SEO is a handy plugin for on-page optimization, soon we will review that plugin and glad you like our tips.
Wow so good & easy trick for do not follow, this is very useful post, thanks for sharing nice post.
Glad you like it…
This one is great plugin, i use this one when i was experimenting wordpress through localhost.
There are some other plugins also, that helps to add no-follow attribute to external links, but they don’t have advanced options.
Woww! I’ve been searching for this plugin(in fact, I asked about this plugin at bloggers lounge group!). I got the answer here. Thanks for sharing this pal
Glad you like this plugin…
i was looking such a plugin..thx i instal the 1st plugin and test it works..thanks sharing
Simple tutorial, Now I know what is no-follow and do-follow links and there difference. Thanx!
Glad you like our article and thanks for dropping by
I have used WP External Links plugin to implement nofollow links on my blogroll. As I understand, this tag is primarily for Google rankings. Wouldn’t it be considered as a valid link in bing and yahoo searches?
Now i install this plugin…thanks for sharing
Hello, I just installed the WP External Links plugin. I have about 140 posts on my blog now. Will the plugin add NoFollow attribute to existing posts or just to new ones since downloading the plugin? Thanks, Ken
Thanks for the tut.
Can you please tell how can we manually do nofollow on all external links without the help of any plugin?
The WP External links plugin does not work for us.
We tested it and after reading the website source code we do not see the rel=nofollow
You need to configure options in the settings page. Anyhow here is an alternative for that plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-noexternallinks/
Wow!!! Thanks WPsquare for giving us such a nice info. Now I can no follow all my external link to no follow.
NoFollow tag is used to inform search engine that the links are not indexable, or not to index those links with Nofollow tag, this tag restricts from spreading link love. But bloggers still pass this tag in the link section because it helps to keep the blog away from spamming.
Thanks for the share. Good tips.
very nice blog dear, can u tell me what is the solution of ” You do not have ALT tag set to your keyword ” and where to put keyword ?
Very good article. Thsi plugin is good also for links from the templates?