No-follow links on advertising pages
-
Hi
I run a job board that enables employers to post job vacancies and information about their organisations. These are 'paid for' pages (advertising) on our site.
These link out to their own websites. My question is, would it be better for these links out to their sites to be no-follow?
From my site's perspective, I cannot necessarily dictate the quality of their websites (although the majority are leading firms) as I would in article and feature content, where we do happily link out and refer to other quality sites with information that gives readers further information.
I know that many large job boards do this where they run listings of feeds from other sites, but should we also do this at the page level where the link out is effectively paid for.
What would be the pros and cons if I do or if I don't use no-follow?
I hope this makes sense and look forward to some replies.
Many thanks
-
Great to get this feedback. It gives me food for thought. That there are differing views actually makes me feel a bit easier about things as it shows that it isn't necessarily clear cut.
The advertising content is clearly segmented, so potentially I could test it out on a defined area.
-
It is a little tricky, but I think a link from a paid listing is still a paid link, if you want to push the letter of the law. Since you're not worried about the outbound link-juice, I agree with Keith that you're safer just to nofollow.
-
I am new to the community here too, and I love it!
I would still be careful, whether they are paying for the link or the ad, Google can decide and you could be screwed.
Also, if you can't vouch for the page it is linking to, I wouldn't make it a followed link. Being careful who you link to is important, at the same time I think it is important to link out to high quality sites with relevant content.
To me, if you are questioning it, your gut is already telling you the answer. Besides, the advertisers are there for the job ads, not followed links right?
-
What you raise, is what has been my concern.
We are in a competitive market fighting it out with a lot of sites with similar focus and similar offering, so cross-domain duplicate/near-duplicate content ends up being the main focus for how we optimise this area of our content.
This no-follow thing has just been in the back of my mind as something I should look into just in case we are giving out a negative signal in someway.
And in our case, it is not the link that is paid for. They are paying to post a job vacancy - the link is mechanism for applying or finding out more.
So how does a search engine detect what is paid for and what is not?
This is my first SEOmoz question, so I am really excited to have two people respond so quickly... how wonderful the community here!
-
If you don't no-follow the links, isn't it just paid links which is against TOS? Seems like a big chance you would be taking in getting penalized to me.
-
For you I see no problem leaving the links without nofollow. I hope I could help.
Best Regards,
Naghirniac
-
Thanks for replying so quickly. I will have a read through/watch the WBFs in the links you suggest.
To confirm, I am not worried about passing on link juice to other sites. I just noticed that other sites of a similar ilk take this approach and wondered about the advantages and disadvantages.
From a client perspective, we track the visits to their sites via their links using our own reporting set up, so they know how well we do in terms of meeting their advertising needs.
-
Thanks for replying so quickly. I will have a read through/watch the WBFs in the links you suggest.
To confirm, I am not worried about passing on link juice to other sites. I just noticed that other sites of a similar ilk take this approach and wondered about the advantages and disadvantages.
From a client perspective, we track the visits to their sites via their links using our own reporting set up, so they know how well we do in terms of meeting their advertising needs.
-
This is a very important point, because google change a lot how they threat the nofollow links, and some people stay with old premisses.
The nofollow links lose the benefit of the link juice. In my opinion, for you website, there is no problem to use links without the nofollow.
You should read these posts to help you out:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/nofollow-is-dying-the-impact-of-microblogging-and-nofollow-on-seo
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-dangers-of-nofollow
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-how-do-we-plug-the-nofollow-leak
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
-
Home Page Ranking Instead of Service Pages
Hi everyone! I've noticed that many of our clients have pages addressing specific queries related to specific services on their websites, but that the Home Page is increasingly showing as the "ranking" page. For example, a plastic surgeon we work with has a page specifically talking about his breast augmentation procedure for Miami, FL but instead of THAT page showing in the search results, Google is using his home page. Noticing this across the board. Any insights? Should we still be optimizing these specific service pages? Should I be spending time trying to make sure Google ranks the page specifically addressing that query because it SHOULD perform better? Thanks for the help. Confused SEO :/, Ricky Shockley
Technical SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Can I redirect a link even if the link is still on the site
Hi Folks, I've got a client who has a duplicate content because they actually create duplicate content and store the same piece of content in 2 different places. When they generate this duplicate content, it creates a 2nd link on the site going to the duplicate content. Now they want the 2nd link to always redirect to the first link, but for architecture reasons, they can't remove the 2nd link from the site navigation. We can't use rel-canonical because they don't want visitors going to that 2nd page. Here is my question: Are there any adverse SEO implications to maintaining a link on a site that always redirects to a different page? I've already gone down the road of "don't deliberately create duplicate content" with the client. They've heard me, but won't change. So, what are your thoughts? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Rock330 -
Different links to ultimately the same page on Magento
Hi Everyone, I'm wondering if some of you could help me out a bit here as I'm a bit consfused. If you please take a quick look at my site: https://tesorotiles.co.uk the way it's setup is that you can get to the same page via 3 or 4 different routes as below: https://tesorotiles.co.uk/type/wall-tiles/rho https://tesorotiles.co.uk/by-area/bathroom-tiles/rho https://tesorotiles.co.uk/collections/rho These 3 are the exact same page and we've done it this way to make sure there is no break in the breadcrumb. Is this ok SEO wise or anyone have any recommendation. Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | VIVO0 -
Quality links are beneficial, but are neutral links detrimental?
So obviously a link profile featuring quality / authoritative / relavant in-bound links is preferable, but here's my question: If I'm starting work on a brand new domain, should I build links that one would consider neutral (i.e. from a non-spammy, but unrelated site) or should I not bother and only focus on quality links? Thanks
Technical SEO | | underscorelive0 -
Footer Links with same anchor text on all pages
We have different websites targeted at the different services our company provides. (e.g. For our document storage services, we have www.ukdocumentstorage.com. For document management, we have www.document-management-solutions.co.uk). If we take the storage site for example, every single page has a link in the footer to our document management site, with the anchor text 'Cleardata Document Management' SEOMoz is telling me that these are seen as external links (as they are on a different URL's), and I'm just clarifying that would this be a major possible factor in the website not ranking highly? How should I rectify this issue?
Technical SEO | | janc0 -
404 error - but I can't find any broken links on the referrer pages
Hi, My crawl has diagnosed a client's site with eight 404 errors. In my CSV download of the crawl, I have checked the source code of the 'referrer' pages, but can't find where the link to the 404 error page is. Could there be another reason for getting 404 errors? Thanks for your help. Katharine.
Technical SEO | | PooleyK0 -
Too many on page links
Hi All, As we all know, having to much links on a page is an obstacle for search engine crawlers in terms of the crawl allowance. My category pages are labeled as pages with to many "one page" links by the SEOmoz crawler. This probably comes from the fact that each product on the category page has multiple links (on the image and model number). Now my question is, would it help to setup a text-link with a clickable area as big as the product area? This means every product gets just one link. Would this help get the crawlers deeper in these pages and distribute the link-juice better? Or is Google smart enough already to figure out that two links to the same product page shouldn't be counted as two? Thanks for your replies guys. Rich
Technical SEO | | Horlogeboetiek0 -
Settle an argument re first links from a page? Anyone?
If we accept "the first link from a page to another is the one that transfers anchor text and PR" - does that then apply just the same for internal linking as it does with linking from domain to domain?
Technical SEO | | AidanMcCarthy0