Nofollow link for plugin links

Question

In http://www.onlineincomestartup.com/drive-traffic-to-your-website/ , In the author bio that shows up inside each posts,

I need to make all the links except Google plus, a no follow for SEO purposes.I am using a plugin called WP about author.I guess I need to make changes to the following code.But I'm not that good in editing codes.someone please help.thanks

// Generate social icons
function wp_about_author_get_social_links($wp_about_author_settings){
    $content="";
    $socials = wp_about_author_get_socials();
    foreach($socials as $social_key=>$social){
        if (get_the_author_meta($social_key)){
            if(isset($wp_about_author_settings['wp_author_social_images']) && $wp_about_author_settings['wp_author_social_images']){
                $content .= "<a class='wpa-social-icons' rel="nofollow" href='".str_replace('%%username%%', get_the_author_meta($social_key), $social['link'])."'><img src='". $social['icon']."' alt='".$social['title']."'/></a>";
            } else {
                if($content != "")
                    $content .= apply_filters( 'wp_about_author_separator', " - ");
                $content .= "<a href='".str_replace('%%username%%', get_the_author_meta($social_key), $social['link'])."'>".$social['title']."</a>";
            }
        }
    }
    return $content;
}

function wp_about_author_get_socials() {
    $socials = array();
    $socials['twitter'] = array('title'=>'Twitter', 'link'=>'http://www.twitter.com/%%username%%', 'icon'=> WPAUTHORURL_URL .'/images/twitter.png');
    $socials['facebook'] = array('title'=>'Facebook', 'link'=>'http://www.facebook.com/%%username%%', 'icon'=> WPAUTHORURL_URL .'/images/facebook.png');
    $socials['linkedin'] = array('title'=>'LinkedIn', 'link'=>'http://www.linkedin.com/in/%%username%%', 'icon'=> WPAUTHORURL_URL .'/images/linkedin.png');
    $socials['pinterest'] = array('title'=>'Pinterest', 'link'=>'http://www.pinterest.com/%%username%%', 'icon'=> WPAUTHORURL_URL .'/images/pinterest.png');
    $socials['googleplus'] = array('title'=>'Google Plus', 'link'=>'https://plus.google.com/%%username%%', 'icon'=> WPAUTHORURL_URL .'/images/googleplus.png');
    $socials['digg'] = array('title'=>'Digg', 'link'=>'http://www.digg.com/%%username%%', 'icon'=> WPAUTHORURL_URL .'/images/digg.png');
    $socials['flickr'] = array('title'=>'Flickr', 'link'=>'http://www.flickr.com/people/%%username%%', 'icon'=> WPAUTHORURL_URL .'/images/flickr.png');
    $socials['stumbleupon'] = array('title'=>'StumbleUpon', 'link'=>'http://www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/%%username%%', 'icon'=> WPAUTHORURL_URL .'/images/stumbleupon.png');
    $socials['youtube'] = array('title'=>'YouTube', 'link'=>'http://www.youtube.com/user/%%username%%', 'icon'=> WPAUTHORURL_URL .'/images/youtube.png');
    $socials['yelp'] = array('title'=>'Yelp', 'link'=>'http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=%%username%%', 'icon'=> WPAUTHORURL_URL .'/images/yelp.png');
    $socials['reddit'] = array('title'=>'Reddit', 'link'=>'http://www.reddit.com/user/%%username%%', 'icon'=> WPAUTHORURL_URL .'/images/reddit.png');
    $socials['delicious'] = array('title'=>'Delicious', 'link'=>'http://www.delicious.com/%%username%%', 'icon'=> WPAUTHORURL_URL .'/images/delicious.png');
    return apply_filters( 'wp_about_author_get_socials', $socials );
}

Answer 1

You can change this line where the username link is generated

$content .= "<a href='".str_replace('%%username%%', get_the_author_meta($social_key), $social['link'])."'>".$social['title']."</a>";

to

$content .= "<a rel='nofollow' href='".str_replace('%%username%%', get_the_author_meta($social_key), $social['link'])."'>".$social['title']."</a>";

and that should add nofollow to your links.

Answer 2

I had the same requirement. I had social links and icons on my site and found that our website was passing off thousands of dofollow links and draining our sites link juice. After some research I came across a nice little feature in Rank Maths SEO plugin that would allow you to actually select certain domains and set them to nofollow site wide. This was really handy. However if you are already using yoast you will need to make sure you turn all of the Rank Math plugins features off and only use the nofollow domains options.