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Understanding the value of Nofollow Links

Guest post by: John Alexander

Article Overview: I wanted to share just a quick simple tip on the topic of link building using links that have the Nofollow attribute. Now before you say to yourself that there is no value in having Nofollow links, let's talk about it here.

Understanding the value of Nofollow Links

When it comes to link building, most experts agree that all links are not created equal and you probably already understand a little bit about the most effective types of link building. In obtaining links, you want to never accidentally do something that could hurt your reputation. For example, most people understand that allowing for some topic drift is quite natural where as having 100% links with the text pointing to your site could potentially cause you some issues because it looks contrived and unnatural.

In the early days, peoples obsession with Google PR would cause certain instances where people would engage in link building farms (not recommended) or purchasing links from high PR Web sites (not recommended) or building their link popularity in other unnatural looking ways.

Most are aware that some types of link employ "No follow" attributes which still look like a link, behave like a link and can certainly bring a visitor to your Web site, but the Nofollow link will NOT pass forward any Google PR. The nofollow attribute value is not meant for blocking access to content, or for preventing content to be indexed by search engines.

So to be clear, a link using the Nofollow attribute:

--Can be used so a visitor follows the link

--Shows the existence of the link (but only for pages previously indexed.)

--But does NOT Use the Nofollow link for ranking or boosting PR.

Therefore, what some people conclude is that it must be wise only to get straight links that do assist with PR and ranking influence and avoid sites or directories that use a Nofollow attribute in the link.

So how can a Nofollow link be of any possible value?

Here is the tip that some people are not aware of that involves something

called link diversity (which is different than link reputation or link popularity.)

Understanding the value of "No Follow" links.

There is a somewhat hidden value and a very good reason to have some link diversity that includes links with the Nofollow attribute, linking to your site along with straight text links too.

Just as it is important to have some topic drift in your linking strategy so as to avoid being contrived and unnatural with your link reputation, so does Google expect a portion of your inbound links to also possess the "Nofollow attribute."

When some people become so obsessed with avoiding the use of Nofollow links, it can also make your strategy look somewhat contrived and unnatural. Plus do not forget the value of the link for the sake of the readers who choose to follow it into your Web site.

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Related Forum Posts
Re: How can I promote my site? - There are various useful techniques for promoting a website. In SEO the techniques could be "white hat" and "black hat" techniques. White hat techniques includes following techniques to promote website as per the search engine rules. - Search Engine Friendly Tags - Website submission to Search Engines - Website Submission to Social Sites (Like twitter, Facebook) - Articles Promotion & Press Release Promotion - Quality Directories promotion - Contribution to Blogs, Forums Black hat techniques can reduce website strength in the search engine and can treat site as spam that could be following. - Keywords Stuffing. - Hidden Links - Maximum Links of unknown sites.
Re: Bad SEO techniques? - There are few more techniques which also known as the Bad SEO Techniques or Black Hat SEO Techniques. Such as: - Relying on keyword metatags - Purchase Links (From Spamming or blacklisted sites or doing purchase links on high level for site marketing) - Horde Page Rank: This is one of my favorites, because it's one that most webmasters don't understand yet. This is because it changed over the past year or two. The concept people have in their mind is that page rank is a key part of site rankings and linking to other sites "leaks page rank" from your site. However, the world has changed. - Swap Links: Another oldie, but not goodie. Search engines want links to represent endorsements. Swapped links represent barter, and they are trivial to detect. Don't swap links for the purpose of building page rank. It's a waste of your time - Implement duplicate content - Use Session IDs on your URLs - Use lots of Javascript - Implement your site in Flash
Re: Bad SEO techniques? - [quote="WebBizIdeas.com":1jr37kqx]There are few more techniques which also known as the Bad SEO Techniques or Black Hat SEO Techniques. Such as: - Relying on keyword metatags - Purchase Links (From Spamming or blacklisted sites or doing purchase links on high level for site marketing) - Horde Page Rank: This is one of my favorites, because it's one that most webmasters don't understand yet. This is because it changed over the past year or two. The concept people have in their mind is that page rank is a key part of site rankings and linking to other sites "leaks page rank" from your site. However, the world has changed. - Swap Links: Another oldie, but not goodie. Search engines want links to represent endorsements. Swapped links represent barter, and they are trivial to detect. Don't swap links for the purpose of building page rank. It's a waste of your time - Implement duplicate content - Use Session IDs on your URLs - Use lots of Javascript - Implement your site in Flash[/quote:1jr37kqx] Hi Jeff, Thanks for adding to the list. I have one question, though. How would one implement Session IDs for a URL, and what benefit would come from doing so?
Re: Bad SEO techniques? - [quote="WebBizIdeas.com":1a8vvwse]There are few more techniques which also known as the Bad SEO Techniques or Black Hat SEO Techniques. Such as: - Relying on keyword metatags - Purchase Links (From Spamming or blacklisted sites or doing purchase links on high level for site marketing) - Horde Page Rank: This is one of my favorites, because it's one that most webmasters don't understand yet. This is because it changed over the past year or two. The concept people have in their mind is that page rank is a key part of site rankings and linking to other sites "leaks page rank" from your site. However, the world has changed. - Swap Links: Another oldie, but not goodie. Search engines want links to represent endorsements. Swapped links represent barter, and they are trivial to detect. Don't swap links for the purpose of building page rank. It's a waste of your time - Implement duplicate content - Use Session IDs on your URLs - Use lots of Javascript - Implement your site in Flash[/quote:1a8vvwse] I wouldn't think of "relying on keyword metatags", "using lots of javascript", and "implementing your site in Flash" as bad/black hat...just ineffective. The search engines don't pay much attention to keyword metatags, and using javascript/flash just means the search engines can't "read" it (so if your menu is javascript, for instance, the search engine won't see any keywords you might have in there.)
Re: Bad SEO techniques? - [quote="Alan Mater":3gnk0yja][quote="WebBizIdeas.com":3gnk0yja]There are few more techniques which also known as the Bad SEO Techniques or Black Hat SEO Techniques. Such as: - Relying on keyword metatags - Purchase Links (From Spamming or blacklisted sites or doing purchase links on high level for site marketing) - Horde Page Rank: This is one of my favorites, because it's one that most webmasters don't understand yet. This is because it changed over the past year or two. The concept people have in their mind is that page rank is a key part of site rankings and linking to other sites "leaks page rank" from your site. However, the world has changed. - Swap Links: Another oldie, but not goodie. Search engines want links to represent endorsements. Swapped links represent barter, and they are trivial to detect. Don't swap links for the purpose of building page rank. It's a waste of your time - Implement duplicate content - Use Session IDs on your URLs - Use lots of Javascript - Implement your site in Flash[/quote:3gnk0yja] Hi Jeff, Thanks for adding to the list. I have one question, though. How would one implement Session IDs for a URL, and what benefit would come from doing so?[/quote:3gnk0yja] Session ID shows up in the URL only if the method of the submitted form is GET, i.e., <form method="get"...>. If you can arrange for the form method to be POST, this particular problem does not arise. Data-transmission paths to the host differ between GET and POST. The latter, as well as being somewhat more secure, completely sidesteps the issue of fake URLs and SE confusion.


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