Weblinks 301 - Is this good or bad?

[Antonimo]

When using the weblinks component, a link that is created to point to an external web page is actually a link that point to an internal location but which is redirected using a 301 permanent redirect.

Is this a good or bad thing from an SEO point of view?

Would it be better to have the actual destination as the link?

Also, the destination does not appear to be an external link if you look at the status bar of the browser. This is not very helpful for the website visitors either.

Would anybody care to comment on this and perhaps advise whether or not a work-around should be considered?

[serrbiz]

This was most likely crated in an attempt to stop "PR BLEED" which is caused by linking direclty to 3rd part sites. However, the addition of the 301 redirect seems to be defeating the purpose.

I would reccommend reworking the system to load the off-site url in iframe, wrapper, or just a straight html frame. Or, code the URL in a js function. Or, code the url to use Google norel tag. That, according to Google, should stop the PR Bleed, score some google grownie points, and still let the user see the destination url in the status window.

[PavlovaPete]

Hi Antonimo,

Quality outbound links could possibly also be seen as an indicator of editorial quality.

I'd be leery of having *no* outbound links.

Cheers

[Antonimo]

Hi PavlovaPete,

I agree - outbound links are very important for establishing the "community" that the site belongs to and is definitely n important factor in SEO.

Hi serrbiz,

Your comments are very useful but I'm afraid that I have no idea how to begin editing the core Joomla component for weblinks to make the changes you have suggested.

I think the best solution will be to create articles that contain links and in this way maintain complete control over how the links are coded and displayed. The only drawback is losing the statistics from the weblinks component but this is easily overcome with some alternative tracking.