Lately I’ve seen a lot of people in the forums and other places asking what the rel=”external” tag is? And does it carry any SEO effect?
People seem to confuse this tag with the rel=”nofollow” tag, which is meant for to not pass any Pagerank (or Google Juice) to the sites you link to. Well, let me start with saying that the rel=”external” tag has nothing to do with the rel=”nofollow” tag.
So what is rel=”external” then?
rel=”external” does nothing except notifying the browser to open the link in a new window (or tab). It does the very same as target=”_blank”, except that rel=”external” is xhtml valid while target=”_blank” is not. In conclusion, rel=”external” will pass Pagerank.
Tips:
If you want it to don’t pass any Pagerank, you could just use rel=”external nofollow”.
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Hi, interesting post.
Does this mean a listing in a directory with:
rel=nofollow target=”_blank”
will not count as a back link to the website it is directing to?
Cheers Stuart.
No, not when it has the rel=”nofollow” tag.
great topic and great tips