Tell search engines exactly what to do with the links on your pages

When writing a post or a page, you might encounter some dilemmas. For example, you want to link to a site whose views you don’t share, but you need the link to make a point. Or, you have sponsors, and you need to link to their site, but you don’t want search engines to think you are endorsing it. Because, every time you link to a page, search engines view it as a vote for that page, and they assign value to the link. So what should you do? 

You could add HTML markup that tells search engines what to do with the link. Only, why do it the hard way when there is an easy way with Yoast SEO. All you need to do is click a button and Yoast SEO will set the right link attribute for you.

Why do I need to tell search engines what to do with the links? 

Both internal and external links are essential for SEO. Internal links help search engines understand your site structure, while external links help them understand your website’s relationship to other sites. With Yoast SEO, you get control over how search engines view the links you add on your site.

✅ Choose which sites you assign link value to

Imagine this. You really dislike the herb cilantro. In fact, you dislike it so much you have a website dedicated to cilantro alternatives. To present your arguments against cilantro, you want to link to a site that praises it. But, if you do that, you will be giving credit to that site and sending a signal to search engines that the site is a valuable resource. So what do you do? You can use Yoast SEO to easily add a nofollow attribute to the link. In that way, you will tell search engines: No, I do not support this page, and I am not giving it any value.

✅ Make it clear which of your links are sponsored

Sometimes you may need to link to your sponsor’s website. That means that you get compensated to place the link, but you don’t necessarily think the website is valuable. With Yoast SEO, you can easily qualify sponsored links, so that search engines understand what they are.

✅ Get the less valuable pages on your site automatically taken care of

Internal links are also crucial for SEO. Search engines use them to make sense of your site, and its structure. From time to time, you may need to link to some of your pages that are not very valuable for SEO. Like, you log in, or registration pages. Yoast SEO automatically adds a nofollow attribute to such pages, which helps both your SEO and search engines. 

How does adding link attributes work in Yoast SEO

In the Advanced tab of the Yoast SEO metabox, you can choose the nofollow option to prevent search engines from following the links on the whole page. 

Alternatively, you can set attributes to individual links. You can find the Yoast SEO link settings for individual links when you click the link icon in the WordPress block editor.