Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I am not afraid of linking to external sites connected with particular widget type, as we plan to create some kind of authority site about widgets for our users (and hopefully for Google too).
I wonder whether we should link to external widget shops and other resources using rel="nofollow" attribute or not.
Those outside links are clearly connected to the subject of each page. They are in some way moderated too and are usually high quality ones (however it is not always the case). We are also not too afraid to share some of our PageRank, so rel="nofollow" would not be necessary.
On the other hand, most of those outside links are paid ones, as widget shops pay us for publishing them. Matt Cutts for example is quite clear that all the paid links should have rel="nofollow" attribute and we are *not* a paid SEO links service, nor we want to be treated as one.
What's more, I'm not sure what would happen if we linked directly to 3 product pages of particular widget in 3 different widget shops from our own product price comparison page without rel="nofollow". Would our page be placed higher as a kind of authority page which helps users to find information about those widgets or lower, below the target product pages of those 3 widget shops we linked to?
What do you think, what could be the effect of using rel="nofollow" (or not using it) on potential positive aspects of placing outside links to sites connected to the subject of current page and useful to visitors?
Do you have some other ideas for white-hat SEO strategies that could be used by widgets price comparison site?
