Do NOFOLLOW backlinks have ANY value? or did I waste money?
-
So, I hired a helping hand to create some back-links for me (in form of comments on some blogs and forums etc)
About 60% of those links created are using "nofollow" attribute in the link.
Is there ANY - ANY! value in creating such links? or is just wasted time and money and Google will absolutely not give any love for NOFOLLOW links?
please share you insight.
thnak you.
-
Every Link is not necessarily counted....
If the Blog comment was a nofollow outside of his niche, and on a completely irrelevant subject, it can't necessarily "hurt" but it sure wont help.
Maybe back in the days when Authority was based solely on the amount of links or Page Rank. But sorry, from a long term Internet Marketing and Strategy perspective it is a waste of money to get 60% Nofollow blog comments, especially since it was done by someone who there is no idea what he was posting.
So maybe if you just want to make your clients do good for a few weeks or even months, but as a longterm strategy paying someone to do this is a wasted effort in the grand scheme/big picture.
Where you are correct, a link is a link in the fact that someone looking for a service may see the post and if it is genuine and on topic you may get residual traffic, or even a conversion.
But as a strict link building tactic... It is very weak and money could be alloted to other places for more return on investment.
It is not always about just gaining links... it is about Return on the money invested.
SO in the aspect of return, it was a waste of money, but sure your right, he gained a few links.....
-
Maybe those links have little SEO value but in the other hand, if you really help on specific forums, you have potential clients there. It all depends, let me explain:
We had this experience with Spanish forums about joomla (we don't use joomla anymore). My partnership helped other people never thinking about SEO or whatever, just helping about things that she know that she was ahead of others and giving right answers. Our experience was that some people just tried and failed to create his own website with joomla and then, searching about it on forums and google, to find help, found our answer and thought, ok, this person knows it better than me, so I'm gona hire her.
So I don't think you wasted your money, it all depends on the focus of these forums, at least, our experience was good, and we never expected it.
-
Hi, Limens
Having someone put together back links for you can be a risky move. As you have found quality control can be an issue. Value is in the eye of the beholder. Links are good to have. And good could come from anywhere.
I would focus on fostering links on your own in the future. Take a look at where your competition is getting em..... and maybe where they are not. With that information there may be a number of directions you may go.
Open Site Explorer and Competitive Link finder can be of great help. Good Luck!
-
You didn't waste your money. A link is a link.
Check your competitors using SEOmoz tools. What is their ratio of nofollows/dofollows.
To me it seems that if you had 60:40 that is awesome.
To those who claim you wasted your money - don't you guys remember that nofollow isn't the same as noindex? Every link you have is counted.
-
Agreed with these others. At best, the NoFollow link will generate actual traffic but will have little ranking influence. I've always found this kind of tactic somewhat risky myself, because there's always a chance you could end up on something spamtrackers.eu or stopforumspam.com, which in turn feed into other services like Web Of Trust, URLVoid, etc. To me it seems chancy to trust your good name with a third party in edge cases like these.
-
Lets say a REALLY powerful and trusted site in your Niche gives you a NoFollow, then the user/traffic benefits are good. Also Some NoFollow helps to make you look more natural. but 60% that is REALLY HIGH
In my opinion, sorry... You wasted your money, Live and Learn right?
Maybe not a waste of time as maybe you might get some residual traffic, but cannot say that for sure.
Happy SEO'ing
w00t!
-
Hi there, from how you've described the link building that you outsourced, 'commenting on blogs and forums', there will likely be little SEO value to be had there, especially as so many links are not followed (though some no follow links can still pass link juice). It's the non-relevance and poor quality factors of those blogs, forums and links that will not help to add any Search value for your website, if that's the case which is very likely when outsourcing such link building, depends on the professionalism and competence of the agency being used.
Though can't be sure without a proper analysis of the blogs and forums in question.
Guest blogging is an important part of inbound marketing, helping to build up ones' profile and Authoritiveness. However simply commenting for the purposes of link building is all too often wasted effort and money.
I'd suggest focusing on creating some really useful socially shareable content and distribute it well. You'll find the links being obtained as a result of great content work far more valuable and beneficial.
Regards, Simon
-
They will not help you rank. But they help with your link diversity by having a wide range of links from multiple sources making it look a bit more natural. But then it could also hurt if the links are on totally irrelevant sites and look spammy with 200 other poorly posted blog comments.
Short answer you wasted your money and need to come up with a better strategy.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Backlink redirects and resulting SEO impact
Hi, Please see the target URLs on the links in this article: http://www.nextgov.com/technology-news/tech-insider/2015/07/government-hacked-yet-again-its-time-make-government-cybersecurity-national-issue/118561/ As you can see, there is a redirect in place, presumably for tracking purposes. Do these links carry full SEO value?
Link Building | | mikekeeper0 -
Which page should my backlink lead to?
I used Keyword A for Page A, and Keyword B for Page B. Now Page B ranks on the first page in Keyword A. When I create backlinkS with Keyword A, should I link to Page A or Page B?
Link Building | | joony20080 -
Dofollow vs nofollow for place listings?
Our travel website has thousands of places, each with an individual page, that users can interact with via our site. The info includes a link back to the place's main web presence if available (homepage, Facebook page, hosted listing elsewhere, etc.). We have no problem passing along PageRank to these sites and setting the link as dofollow. However, due to the sheer number (50k+) of these place pages that have the same anchor text of "Visit Website" in the same location on every page, I fear Google will see us as spammy and ding us. That said, would it be better to set these external links as dofollow or nofollow (or leave them as part of the Javascript as they are now)? Thank you in advance!
Link Building | | brandonRT0 -
2 backlinking questions
I've got 2 questions regarding backlinking. 1 - I recently watched a webinar saying I should never get backlinks from any sites lower than a PR 3. However, I have found some relevant websites to our niche that are lower than that. We have recently set-up a new website that currently has a PR 0. Bearing that in mind do you think it was still be good for SEO to try and get links from the lower PR sites to build up our own PR? 2 - Has anyone found out what Google thinks of gaining links from domains hosted in other countries? For example, our websites are hosted in the UK, does it look suspicious to search engines if we have links from USA or other countries? Thanks
Link Building | | AAttias0 -
What value do external broken links give to a domain?
I ask, as I've just used opensite explorer to look at external links a competitor has, and I've found the high value ones at the top of the list go to a page that no longer exists on their site. Are these stiill of value in the SERP's, or have they messed up by not putting a 301 redirect on them?
Link Building | | xposurecreative0 -
Backlinks In Blogs
Hello! A direct competitor of my has a ton of backlinks exact anchor text on their inner pages coming from blogger blogs. How can they get away with this? Are they using different C blocks? Or are they paying for these links? The anchor text is Not anywhere in any of the blogs but it the side/bar colomn which follow through the entire site, so when I analyze the link anchor text OSE show ups several different pages from the same blog. Any help would be Greatly Appreciated!!!!! Thanks
Link Building | | TP_Marketing0 -
Blogging to add SEO value to site... recommendations
Hi Mozzers! A client has a high authority website in the travel industry, and needs any and all advantages to get ahead in very competitive keywords. The send out a newsletter bimonthly, but have no blog, so I recommended at the very least, they publish online their emailed newsletters to add informational and relevant content. The question is, for max SEO value, should they... create a blog as a subdomain or subfolder of their existing site? should they self host a blog with a separate domain? or should they simply use a blogger/wordpress.com free blog? Consider that just adding on a blog to their existing site isn't easy. It's some old CMS that's apparently a nightmare to deal with. Plus, branding a WP install to match the site isn't something they want to spend a lot of time on. Your insight is welcome and appreciated!
Link Building | | rosstaylor0 -
What's the real deal with nofollow
I had a few questions regarding nofollow links. It seems like more and more sites, forums, etc. nofollow their links. Is it still worth trying to get a link from? I've heard only Google takes nofollows into consideration. Do other search engines (Bing specifically) "listen" to nofollows? Finally, when checking for nofollow, does it need to be right by the link(s) or can it be anywhere in the source? Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | DevonIntl0