: Replacing external links with internal links and redirect I thought I read a while back that Google search rankings penalize pages with many links that go offsite. I believe the logic was that

@Shelley277

The way Google looks at this is whether the links you've added add up to the quality of the pages. It's a myth that linking out hurts, on the contrary, linking out to relevant authority sites helps improve your topical authority. Google sees this as an attempt to provide a better user experience.

However, if you have 10 links or a hundred links going out from each of your pages, that would look unnatural to Google and might invoke a manual review and possibly follow with a penalization if they deem that you're part of a link network and trying to manipulate the ranks of the sites you're linking to. If you do absolutely need to have those links for reasons other than trying to rank those sites, nofollow them, that rules out any penalization possibilities from Google. Things get especially bad if you knowingly or unknowingly link out to a site that has a bad reputation with Google. So nofollow is your safest bet

Back in the days, webmasters used to redirect links with JS so as to prevent loss of link juice and PR, but since Google has gotten very efficient with parsing JS and redirect links, I think it will have the same consequences as having a non-redirect link.

So my advise to you would be


Keep the links that you absolutely have to.
nofollow them


Google is getting more aggressive with link networks with every Penguin update and so you run a greater risk of running into hot waters if Google deems your website to be a part of a link network

Vote Up Vote Down