It’s important to know which links to use and when to use them when you are linking out to other sites as not to cause a disruption in your site’s ranks.
Links pass PageRank , Google’s official page rank metric (“link juice,” “authority,” etc.). Passing PageRank to a site for the wrong reasons can be a problem.
Here are the link types every websmaster with SEO in mind should be using:
rel=”nofollow”
The ol’ PageRank blocker. Any links with this attribute do not pass PageRank and will not conribute to a page ranking. If there is no rel=”nofollow” attribute in the HTML link code then Google will consider it a followed link and will pass PageRank.
Interestingly, back in 2019 Google reps said that they started treating each of the nofollow attributes as “hints” rather than ignoring them completely. They likely won’t impact ranking, but Google may choose to use nofollow links for rankings in the future.
rel=”ugc”
A link attribute Google wants you to use for non-branded pages. For example, user generated content where there is no monetary incentive.
rel=”sponsored”
Affiliate links should be sponsored because their in monetary incentive. Another good example is a blog that reviews products. The blog’s webmaster should use rel=”sponsored” when linking out because there is incentive coming from the company that sends the blog webmaster the products to review in the first place.
An interesting thing about these links is that they can be combined in some cases (i.e. rel=”nofollow sponsored”) but it’s not necessary to do so.
Follow these outbound link rules to ensure your ranking in Google stays high.