: Not using nofollow for links in user generated content My site contains many links that were user generated so I've added a rel=nofollow to them. I'm considering removing that tag at least partially,

@Deb1703797

Note that if you control all of those websites, what you want to have is a link on those websites back to you. On each page. For example, all stackexchange.com websites have a large set of links at the bottom of the page back to the main website or some specific pages. In your case, you could have something like "Website hosted by [blah]" where [blah] is a link back to your company with its name as the anchor and maybe a title with your main keywords.

It is rare to see a list of websites getting a link for free (without the nofollow) as you mention. If you want to reward some of those websites, I would instead suggest that you create pages on your blog or similar pages, one per such website. It will increase your content and be much more natural (assuming you spend the time to write worthy articles).

The list you currently have should certain stay the same though.

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@BetL925

If I were you, I would keep the rel="nofollow" attribute for all outgoing links generated by users. It limits spams a little bit and you don't waste time to analyze all posted links by users.

Moreover, removing this attribute for a category of links can be an bad indicator for Google regarding SEO, it can be weird and Google can detect this as a PageRank sculpting technique or something else, don't take a risk.

If you want to say thank you to your users, a good example is the links on Stack Exchange's network sites. They are all with the rel="nofollow" attribute except the site link in the users profile (for users with more than X reputation points). This way, Stack Exchange thanks users for contribution to its sites.

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@Sarah324

You should use nofollow links when the links are untrusted or paid. Untrusted links are for example entries in comments or guestbook entries. You can for example set all user generated links as nofollow as default, but when a user has made several good contributions, he could be rewarded with removing the nofollow attribute.

Another thing you can do is to have a system where you approve user generated content and check the quality of links. As soon as the link has been verified you approve the UGC content and remove the nofollow attribute.

Please see Google Webmaster tools documentation found here for more information.

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