Make a Blogger Bloglist Blog Roll widget NoFollow

Having a blog roll (blog list widget) on a Blogger blog has its pros and cons.

I use mine a lot, I like to see when my favourite reads have updated and it's a habit for me to look there, despite using Bloglovin too. So for me it's about me not the reader experience. There are cons to having it there like you have to keep it up to date, what if a 'bad' site takes over a url on your list and you are inadvertently sending your readers there.  Also, they can look at bit outdated these days too.  But I also like them on other sites as I will follow links to other blogs for a new read.

But in terms of SEO and Page Rank for your own blog it can have problems as it creates a follow link to all the sites on your blog roll.  Follow links aren't always bad, and Google ought to be taking their own code into account with their PR calculations but some places I read are shouting "Bloglist followlinks BAD", so why not just make it nofollow and be done with it.

Step 1: on the left of your main blogger dashboard page for your blog, choose 'TEMPLATE'

Step 2: BACKUP YOUR CURRENT TEMPLATE NOW.  Here's how if you are now sure.  Do not do anything else until you have a backup in the bag.

Step 2.5:  Re-read Step 2 and do it

Step 3: Choose 'EDIT HTML'

Step 4:  Choose JUMP TO WIDGET, then BLOGLIST1

Step 5:  There will be 3 small dots on the line of code for the widget bloglist1, click on them once and the code will expand.

Step 6:  But it only expands to 3 lines, there are now 3 more dots on the centre line, click on those once

Step 7: Now you see the full widget code, there are 3 lines with the entry target='blank', find these

Step 8:  Add the code rel='nofollow' to those 3 lines, just like below

Step 9:  Save the changes

Done.

It's not hard.

You might want to consider removing the list altogether, but if you want to hang onto it, then this is the way to make it NoFollow.

Remember you should make any badges or other sidebar links NoFollow too, unless you have a very specific reason for not doing so.