I set all external links to nofollow - is it a problem?

A few years ago my WordPress site was compromised and injected with loads of spam links. I quickly set all external links to "nofollow" using a plugin.

I manually removed all offending links from my site, but kept the nofollow plugin because I read that Google can penalise you if guest bloggers have paid for links on your site. I did have a few of these and thought I'd be saving my link juice by staying nofollow.

Now, a few years later, I think that my site may be suffering because of it. My DA used to be in the 30s but has dropped to 23.

Traffic is around 300 page views per day yet I'm consistently getting 100+ social shares a day. Affiliate sales were good leading to Christmas but slow now (probably natural for January anyway).

Should I:
a) deactivate the plugin and allow all external links to be followed
b) manually override the plugin by inserting rel="follow" on future external links
c) do nothing, it doesn't matter
d) something else

Sorry for the long question, this is something I can't figure out alone.

da has nothing to do if your links ad follow or nofollow.
you can set whatever you want.
if you like to bing up the da get some good links.

Get Do-follow links from Good Authority sites to increase DA...

Don't worry about it too much but have some do follow links to keep it diverse

Even you buy a 30 DA domain and you get up tomorrow to check, DA may decreased to 25, DA is useless in some extend.

Do nothing and keep building links and post contents.

abnormal setting may cause more trouble than help

The plugin probably has nothing to do with your DA but having all links nofollow can seem unnatural to google.

This is just one isolated situation but with one of my websites, I had all my links nofollowed and one of the main articles was stuck at the bottom of page 1. After I made most of the links ******** (not all) I moved up a few spots on the first page.

davain said:

having all links nofollow can seem unnatural to google.

Click to expand...

but wikipedia has all links nofollow

No-following all of your links is weird in googles eyes but having too many out-going links kills your link juice and rankings. You need to find a good median

As like @davin said you need some do follow links. Traffic is not related to DA, So don't bother about it.