External Link Styling

How external links (links from your site to OTHER sites) LOOK and BEHAVE on your public site — color, target tab, nofollow rules, and icons.

Get there

Linkilo → Settings → External Links (under the Front-end Display group in the Settings sidebar).

A Front-end only badge at the top reminds you that these settings affect how outbound links render on your public site, not which links Linkilo suggests.

External links have more options than internal because they affect SEO (nofollow, sponsored, ugc rel attributes).

The page has three cards.

Card 1: How external links behave

Open in a new tab

Recommended ON for external links. Keeps your site open in the original tab when readers follow an outbound link.

Tell Google not to follow

Adds rel="nofollow". Tells Google "don't pass my ranking signals to this destination." Common for affiliate links, sponsored posts, and user-submitted content.

Extra link tags

Checkboxes:

• noopener (safer new-tab opens) — recommended if links open in new tabs
• noreferrer (hides where the click came from) — privacy option
• sponsored (paid or affiliate) — Google asks for this on paid links
• ugc (user-generated content) — for comments and guest posts

You can have multiple at once: rel="nofollow sponsored" is common for affiliate links.

Trusted sites (skip nofollow)

Textarea, one domain per line. Links to these domains will NOT get nofollow added. Use for trusted partner sites or your own external properties.

Example:

mysecondblog.com
github.com/myname
wikipedia.org

Only administrators can save the extra link tags and trusted-site list; Linkilo cleans the values before storing them.

Card 2: How external links look

Style external links

Master toggle. When ON, Linkilo gives external links their own color and text style (set below). When OFF, your theme decides. Icons and rel attributes still have their own toggles.

Link color

Color picker.

Text style

Bold / Underline / Italic checkboxes.

Custom CSS class

Appended to every external link Linkilo manages.

Card 3: Link icons

A small icon next to each external link. Common for showing readers a link leaves your site. Requires Font Awesome, which Linkilo ships with.

Icon style

• No icon (default)
• Arrow icon — small arrow
• Verified (check) icon — checkmark

Position

Right or Left of the link text.

Size and Color

Icon size, and a color picker for the icon (separate from the link color).

Hide icon when link wraps an image

Hide the icon on links whose anchor is an image.

Hide icon on these domains

Comma-separated list of domains that should skip the icon.

Click Save Settings.

Common Questions

Should I add nofollow to all external links?

Depends on your site type:

• Editorial blog — generally yes, with Trusted sites (skip nofollow) for partner sites you vouch for.
• Niche site with affiliate links — turn on sponsored instead of (or in addition to) nofollow.
• Forum / comment-heavy site — turn on ugc for the user-content sections.

What's the difference between nofollow, sponsored, and ugc?

All three tell Google "don't pass my ranking through this link" — but for different reasons:

• nofollow — generic. "I'm not vouching for this link."
• sponsored — paid links. Required by Google for affiliate/sponsored content.
• ugc — user-generated content. Used for comments, forum posts, guest posts.

You can combine them: rel="nofollow sponsored" for a paid affiliate link is normal.

What's "Trusted sites (skip nofollow)" for?

You probably want some external links to NOT get nofollow — like links to:

• Your own other sites or alternates
• Partner sites you vouch for
• Authoritative sources you cite (Wikipedia, etc.)

Add those domains here. Linkilo skips nofollow for them.

My affiliate links should be sponsored, not just nofollow

Turn on the sponsored checkbox in Extra link tags. By default it applies to all external links. For more control (only some links sponsored), leave it off and add rel="sponsored" manually in your post editor for those links.

How do I make external links look different from internal ones?

Use a different Link color here vs. in Internal Link Styling. And add an icon (arrow or check) to signal "this leaves the site." Most sites do both.

Linkilo treats a link to my sister site as external — can I change that?

Yes, both ways. To make Linkilo treat a URL on your own domain as external (so it gets nofollow), add it under Settings → Content & Ignored Words → Treat these URLs as external links. The reverse list, Mark Domains as Internal, lives on the same settings pane.

Last reviewed for Linkilo 3.0.0 (October 2026).