Why No Follow Links Matter
There is quite a bit of debate in the SEO world on whether no follow links matter or not. If you are unfamiliar with the concept, a “no follow” is an HTML attribute value that is used to instruct some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. Many people think this type of link shouldn’t help your site rank better in search engine results. Sites such as Wikipedia use them to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of search engine spam. This is thought to improve the quality of search engine results and to help prevent spamdexing.
But, there are two main reasons why no follow links are important. First no one really knows search engine algorithms work exactly. Google, Yahoo and the other search engines keep their rating algorithm a secret so even if they tell us that the links don’t pass authority there is no definite way to know how they impact ratings.
Secondly, Google spiders do follow a no follow link. This is evidenced because Traffic Marks reports only what Google gives it. However, we don’t know how important the link is to Google, only that they are indeed following it.
Finally, if there is a term that you want to rank for you should perform a search for it. If you find in those results that they all have a backlink in common, it makes sense to try and get the same links as the market leaders. Besides this links are some of the easiest to obtain. Ignoring them could be a big mistake if it’s done without any thought put into the decision.
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Link Building Tips | seowhitehats | October 3, 2008
Thanks for this information. It pretty much confirms my own suspicions that worrying about whether or not links from a blog are follow or nofollow should not be a big factor in whether or not you post a comment on it.
Seek out good quality blog posts in your niche market (especially ones that use your keywords), READ the blog post and respond to it with an intelligent comment. I’m sure this is a much better strategy than obsessing over follow/nofollow.
I have thought this all along. Yeah there are “gurus” who say “nofollow” links don’t work. My question is…How do they REALLY know? No one does.
As marketers we can only guess what is fact or fiction.
I used to spend countless hours trying to find blogs that were “dofollow” only. What a waste of my time! Until I hear it from the Big G, I will continue to post on both “nofollow” and “dofollow” blogs/sites.