Pros and cons of making redirected (outgoing) links on my site "nofollow"

[Brandon Tanner]

Hey everyone,

Currently working on a PDF report that will feature several links to various webpages and products. But instead of linking directly to those target webpages, I am linking to redirect pages on my website, which then go to the target webpages.

This is so if any of the target webpages ever change, I can edit one of the redirect pages on my site, and all the links in the report will still be valid.

But here's the kicker... this will amount to around 80 redirects (I would use a separate 301 redirect php page for each redirect, btw).

Do outgoing 301 redirects "leak" page rank? If so, should I add a "no follow" to each one? Or would adding that many "no follows" look suspicious to the SE's?

I've done a bit of research on this topic and it seems that there are so many varying opinions on this. Can anyone shed some light?

One other option I'm considering is to get an additional domain name and just run ALL my redirects through that (so that page rank from the site featuring the report won't be negatively affected).

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I like the last option. That way, as I create more and more reports in the future, I could just use 1 domain for the redirects for ALL of them.

But, I wanted to get some opinions before I manually code all those redirects. Would hate to do that twice!

So, what do you guys think?

[dburk]

Hi Brandon,

I wouldn't bother doing a redirect until it's actually necessary. You will only need to do a redirect if the actual URL changes. If you plan things out in advance, and use a well thought out link structure, you should be able to avoid the need to ever do a redirect. You can just change the page content rather than the URL. The only reason you will ever need to do a redirect is if you change domain names.

If you are doing a 301 permanent redirect then the search engines will pass any link juice to that page. If you decide to redirect an existing URL to a new one, there will be a period of time that the credibility of new URL will not exist and your rankings will suffer until all credibility has been transferred.

Again the need to redirect can be mitigated by a well thought out link structure. Permanent links are always the best way to go.

[Brandon Tanner]

Hi Don,

Maybe I didn't explain myself well enough. Here's an example of why I want to use redirects...

Let's say I want to mention a useful website in my ebook (a website which I do not own)...

www.UsefulWebsite.com

Now, I could link directly to that website, but instead I am going to link to the following page on my website...

www.MyWebsite.com/links/UsefulWebsite.php

...which would redirect to the destination website (www.UsefulWebsite.com)

I do this because if the owner of www.UsefulWebsite.com ever deleted or moved their site to another domain, then all I have to do is edit the URL on my redirect page, and the link in my ebook will still be valid.

If instead I just linked from my ebook directly to www.UsefulWebsite.com, then if the owner of that site ever moved it or took it down, then the link in my ebook would no longer be valid, and there's nothing I could do about it.

I just think it's unprofessional when I read an otherwise quality ebook, that has several links in it which no longer work (especially when the links look like they could have been useful!)

That's what I want to avoid!

[dburk]

Originally Posted by Brandon Tanner

Hi Don,

Maybe I didn't explain myself well enough. Here's an example of why I want to use redirects...

Let's say I want to mention a useful website in my ebook (a website which I do not own)...

www.UsefulWebsite.com

Now, I could link directly to that website, but instead I am going to link to the following page on my website...

www.MyWebsite.com/links/UsefulWebsite.php

...which would redirect to the destination website (www.UsefulWebsite.com)

I do this because if the owner of www.UsefulWebsite.com ever deleted or moved their site to another domain, then all I have to do is edit the URL on my redirect page, and the link in my ebook will still be valid.

If instead I just linked from my ebook directly to www.UsefulWebsite.com, then if the owner of that site ever moved it or took it down, then the link in my ebook would no longer be valid, and there's nothing I could do about it.

I just think it's unprofessional when I read an otherwise quality ebook, that has several links in it which no longer work (especially when the links look like they could have been useful!)

That's what I want to avoid!

Hi Brandon,

So you are not redirecting to another page on your own site, you are redirecting to sommeone else's website? In that case 100% of the link juice will go to the redirected website. Your website will not accrue any SEO benefit at all from those type of links.

What you could do instead, is to create a page with relevant content, perhaps a description, presell page, squeeze page or offer page that links to the other website. Avoid the redirect if you want to accrue any benefit from those backlinks.