(Entry was posted by Judy Johnso on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 10/11/2016).

All outbound links must now be `nofollow`

Just reading a piece on Search Engine Watch and had a question about links. It states that links are still vital for SEO. But we`ve been essentially told by Google that all outbound links must now be `nofollow` - so if all sites do the same, in order to avoid penalties, how can we benefit from links coming to our site?

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YOUR ANSWERS

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

Judy Johnson: Just reading a piece on Search Engine Watch and had a question about links. It states that links are still vital for SEO. But we've been essentially told by Google that all outbound links must now be 'nofollow' - so if all sites do the same, in order to avoid penalties, how can we benefit from links coming to our site?
Dave Elliott: we haven't been told that all external links should be no-follow. Only (and even this is debatable) that all PAID for links should be no-follow.
Judy Johnson: +Dave Elliott
Ah ok - we had to make a call to make all outbound links no-follow in order to get a reconsideration request, as despite using no-follow for all paid-for content, we still had action taken against us. So felt a blanket rule was best! I usually blog in my spare time about my work on other sites, with links, so does this mean I can continue to use followed links in that situation?
Dave Elliott: f you have a legitimate reason for the link to be the on page then it should be fine. That said if i has just been under a manual penalty i would be very careful about doing any link building at all untill i'd been through my backlink profile and got rid of any suspect links.