I’ve heard several questions the past week about ‘when’ or ‘how’ to add external links (links to other sites) to lenses.

I try to follow a few basic rules of thumb that work quite well for me.

1) add ‘rel=nofollow’ to affiliate links - Especially if they link to some crazy domain or something. Besides, you aren’t trying to build link equity for the manufacturer you are trying to rank for, are you?

2) Links to other authority sites on the topic - Yes, I feel including these in a Do Follow format is actually benificial for several reasons, the main one being it provides a much better user experience. Remember when ‘linkbait’ seemed to mean ‘the top 100 sites for..’ ? The simple fact is that people would rather talk about something that links to a lot of useful resources. Sure you lose some visitors to the other sites, but they are more likely to come back than if your lens is simply a ‘dead end’ with no other information to follow up on.

3) Links to reviews / Forum threads - For the same reasons stated above, these can provide traffic back to you as well as improve user experience.

If you visited a site about your lens topic, would you want access to more information if you were truly interested? Of course.

If that’s what people want, why not give it to them?