How Often do You All Use Nofollow or Dofollow Links in Your Content?

Tyler
How often do you all use "dofollow" links in your content vs "nofollow" links?
I usually use dofollow links (unless I'm linking to Amazon, etc.) to be nice to whoever's site I feel is worthy of a shoutout. However, I'm wondering if this is a bad strategy. By doing this, don't I lose some of the link juice that gets spread around across my own pages?
Would it be smarter to give everyone nofollow links and change the link to dofollow ONLY if and when they reach out requesting it (presumably in return for a link exchange)?
Thanks!
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how often do you all use nofollow or dofollow links in your content

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Jim
Generally speaking, I only use dofollow if it's an official government site or quote from another site, otherwise I use notfollow so the crawler doesn't leave my site during the crawl.
Of course always dofollow if you're doing mutual backlinks.

Tyler ^✍️ » Jim
Why for an official government site? Why even give them the link juice and let the crawler leave?
For example, I frequently link to scientific studies and research papers. I usually use dofollow links for this, but I'm wondering why I should.
Jim
It's more of an unofficial nod to them being a safe site to visit. Google ranks sites on that basis so I don't mind. It will not help you at all all so if you use a nofollow it will not have an impact on your ranking or Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

McArthur
I've been mulling over this exact question for the last few days. I usually add at least one outbound link in all my articles. My affiliate links are all nofollow, as they should be, and links to related content or a wiki page are dofollow. I re-read the recommendations and this is the proper usage.
BUT, like you I'm now wondering what will give me the most benefit.
I am one of those that believes that having outbound links to related content does help SEO. Now, whether it helps MORE to have them as nofollow or dofollow… I don't know!
Google says "Use the nofollow value when other values (ucg & sponsored) don't apply, and you'd rather Google not associate your site with, or crawl the linked page from, your site." So it seems like simply not wanting G to crawl the linked page (for whatever reason) is a legitimate choice. But the question is.. which option brings the most benefit?
If ALL links were nofollow, would it look 'weird' or suspicious to Google?
Would the SEO benefit I currently see from adding high quality links be compromised if I changed them all from dofollow to nofollow? Or would it be improved, by hoarding the link juice, as you suggest?
I can't find any good article on this specific question, at least none that satisfy. My gut tells me that dofollow is the way to go for these types of links – it's more "natural". But I don't have data or hard evidence, which I'd love.
Sorry.. long reply with more questions than answers. 🙂
Who's tested this? Who can help us out?

Tyler ^✍️ » Laura
I also wonder, if anyone is checking their backlinks like we do, if they might reach out to say "Hey, I noticed you linked to me. Mind changing that to a dofollow link?"
Which gives me the opportunity to ask for a link back in exchange.
Maybe I'm overthinking it.
McArthur
That's not a bad idea. I actually don't do any kind of "link-building" so I haven't considered this.
What I think is kind of funny is that other people do see that I use dofollow links in my articles, and so I get frequent emails saying "I see you linked to example.com.. would you like to read this awesome article I wrote on the same topic and maybe link to it as well/instead?"
Everyone wants those glorious dofollow links and we are just giving them away!
Maybe you could try it on a group of posts and see if you get the desired outcome.
My sites have some incoming links from high-authority sites, but many are nofollow. I have never considered sending an email asking them to change them to dofollow. Is that something you have ever done? Does it actually work?
Tyler ^✍️ » Laura
Linkbuilding is not my forte, as I've mostly just be banging out content every day so far. I suppose that could work if someone already has a nofollow link going to you from their site. Although this wouldn't work with nofollow links that you created like blog comments, etc.
McArthur » Tyler
Right, agreed.
Anyway, I'd say considering nofollow for all external links for this possibility of people requesting dofollow and a possible link trade isn't a good idea. I don't think it's a good reason to make them all nofollow because a) it probably won't happen very often if at all and b) you should be more concerned about the SEO impact of such a move.
So that brings us back to the original question. SEO impact of nofollow vs dofollow for external links. Thing is, I've seen that many SEO users don't believe there is a ranking benefit to having outbound links in the first place, perhaps because I've seen this benefit first hand, and I do use dofollow links… maybe dofollow IS the way to go.
Honestly, at the end of the day I pretty much do whatever Google wants me to do. I'm at their mercy and 'tricks' that may work today can be penalized tomorrow. I'm pretty sure Goog thinks those links should be dofollow (the default), so in my case Google gets what Google wants — at least until I see evidence that there's a legitimate "better way".
Tyler ^✍️
That seems like a good way of looking at it. I'm far from an expert when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Not sure what I'll do going forward. Perhaps a mix of both for a bit until I see some evidence as to what is the most ideal.

Angie
The links that you want pointing to your site should be do follow anything going external should be no follow
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Kalra » Angie
but always hunt for follow links on other sites 🤣🤣🤣. Wow
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Lucy
You can use metrics in tools such as Ahrefs or Majestic to assess whether the domain you want to link to is authoritative and trustworthy. If it is, I'd go for a 'follow' as it'll be good for your overall backlink health. As mentioned previously, .edu & .gov site are good for backlinks as they meet these two criteria. You just need to make sure what you are linking to is relevant to the content on your page.
Kalra
I do what big media companies do. Follow links if the link deserves. Doesn't matter how authoritive site it is. Don't be selfish. Imagine everyone linking as nofollow.
Maguire
No-follow does not mean No-crawl, PR output is divided by the number of outbound links on the page, no matter if they are follow or no-follow. You cannot PR sculpt with the No-follow tag.

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