How to Make All External Links Into Nofollow Links in WordPress

Do you want to make all external links in WordPress nofollow links? A nofollow link is a link that tells search engines to not follow it, but the link still works perfectly for visitors. WordPress cannot create nofollow links without using plugins or additional code to do so. The most popular use of nofollow links is to prevent other websites from creating backlinks.

The SEO of your website is extremely important and directly affects how much traffic your website will receive. Nofollow links allow you to prevent search engine bots from following links that would hurt your SEO. Today, I will demonstrate how to make all of your external links on your website into nofollow links using the External Links plugin.

Why Would I Want All External Links to be Nofollow Links

There are many ways to add nofollow links to your website, but many of them will require you to manually create them. This will work fine for a single author’s website, but when you have multiple authors you are increasing the chance they forget to create a nofollow link. A way to deal with this is to make all of your external links nofollow links.

Of course, you need to keep in mind that this can definitely help your website’s SEO in some cases, but it can also hurt it as well. This will stop badly placed external links from hurting your SEO, but it will also stop good external links from helping you. If you are new to this and feel external links are hurting your website, this is a great solution. When you get more experienced, you may change your mind and the benefits of doing external links correctly will outweigh the disadvantages.

How to Make All External Links Into Nofollow Links in WordPress

Today, I will demonstrate how to make all of your external links on your website into nofollow links using the External Links plugin. This plugin will make every single external link a nofollow link. This will not change anything for your visitors, only for search engines. It only takes a few minutes to set up and can do more than just create nofollow links.

Installing the External Links Plugin

Let’s start off by clicking on Plugins and selecting the Add New option on the left-hand admin panel.

Add New

Search for External Links in the available search box. This will pull up additional plugins that you may find helpful.

Search for External Links in the available search box.

Scroll down until you find the External Links plugin and click on the “Install Now” button and activate the plugin for use.

Click on the "Install Now" button.

On the left-hand admin panel click on Settings and select the External Links option. This will pull up the main settings page.

Click on Settings and select the External Links option.

Using the External Links Plugin

This plugin is very simple to use. You can select between multiple options and the plugin will do what you select. The settings can be changed at any time, but keep in mind that changing the links on your website multiple times will hurt your website’s SEO.

The most important option on this page is the Add No Follow option. This will make all external links on Pages and Posts a nofollow link.

Make sure that the Add No Follow is checked.

You should also make sure that the Apply to Text Widgets is also checked. This will affect links that are found in your header, footer, and sidebar areas. These are usually visible on most pages and posts.

Make sure that the Apply to Text Widgets is also checked.

The rest of the options are up to you, but a word of warning on the Apply Globally option. If you only have access to your theme’s files, keep this unchecked. You need complete access to your website to enable this properly.

Another good recommendation is to check the Open in New Window check box. This will open all external links on a new tab. This will ensure that visitors are still on your website after they click on a link.

Once you have changed the settings to meet your website’s needs, click on the “Save Changes” button.

Click on the "Save Changes" button.

Congratulations, you have successfully made all of the external links on your website into nofollow links. You can disable this plugin at any time, but keep in mind that constantly changing your links from follow to nofollow to follow will have negative effects on your website’s SEO.

External Links Are Important

Many websites focus exclusively on internal links, which are extremely important, but external links are just as important. They allow you to provide and share other sources that strengthen your point. For example, saying Facebook has over 1 billion active users does not make it true. Instead, if you support it with statistics from statista.com, a respectable statistics website, it becomes a hard fact.

Search engines love this and this is how you do external links correctly. They pertain to the topic you are talking about and come from a widely respected website. This improves the points you are trying to make and even search engine bots can see the value in it. Always strengthen your points with multiple sources because it makes them look better.

How easy do you find the plugin to use? Do you think trying to use external links correctly is difficult?

1 thought on “How to Make All External Links Into Nofollow Links in WordPress”

  1. Hi Robert,
    I have a very basic query. I have to convert 500+ url into nofollow, and i dont want to continue with a plugin. Can i remove this plugin after converting alll links to nofollow.

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