sybrew
Support for rel nofollow/ugc/sponsored link attributes in Gutenberg
Please provide a way to add additional link rel attributes easily in Gutenberg. Having to manually edit code every time is very annoying. This is a basic feature that you will find in other SEO plugins (Rankmath, Yoast, etc).
This should've been a WP Core feature. They forewent implementation because of their 80/20% philosophy, which they often enough don't abide by. It's also discussed here: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/13542.
Mind that the "nofollow" link tag is only useful when linking to pages you do not wish crawled; the efficacy is questionable and prone to user error, however. Google states it also helps disassociate links, but I too question its usefulness here. Lastly, most of our users won't need such a feature, and we have no backbone in place for supporting Gutenberg blocks.
Nevertheless, until we can implement something like this, you may want to consider using EditorsKit. From its plugin-page:
The following rich text format[s] are available upon plugin activation: [...] Links with “rel” nofollow and sponsored attribute option
Mind that the "nofollow" link tag is only useful when linking to pages you do not wish crawled;
That's not true.
Lastly, most of our users won't need such a feature
I would disagree. Most users that need an SEO plugin also need this feature. That's why every other SEO plugin has added it even though it's not easy to do.
The purpose of adding nofollow/sponsored is for affiliate links.
Some link management plugins like Thirstyaffiliates and Prettylinks have options for this. However, I set up my redirects directly on NGINX for better performance so I'm not using any of those plugins. Currently I am using Editorskit but it is adding an unwanted stylesheet on the front end so not an ideal solution.
It looks like #23011 is finally getting some attention so hopefully they will add a filter so plugins can add this easily without having to do it the "ugly" way that Rankmath, Yoast, AIOSEO are doing it.
Unfortunately, it's still really clunky to add a nofollow attribute in WP Core. I would also really appreciate an extra toggle “Add nofollow” for buttons/links like some other SEO plugins have. I use it for affiliate links.
For us, as a user of Wordpress, the ability to add a 'nofollow' attribute is a key feature requirement for SEO and it should be easy to use, e.g. a simple toggle. In the interest of disclosure, this is who we are: https://www.pairfum.com
