Does using data-href="" work more effectively than href="" rel="nofollow"?
-
I've been looking at some bigger enterprise sites and noticed some of them used HTML like this:
<a <="" span="">data-href="http://www.otherodmain.com/" class="nofollow" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a>
<a <="" span="">Instead of a regular href=""
Does using data-href and some javascript help with shaping internal links, rather than just using a strict nofollow?</a>
-
I think this is actually a really good question. The main reason most SEOs these days don't "sculpt" or "shape" with nofollow links anymore has to do with the fact that they will still take away from the total amount of pagerank available to be passed on to other links on the page. So the question I'm reading above seems to be:
Do<a data-href...="" links="" still="" take="" a="" portion="" of="" pagerank="" away="" from="" the="" total="" pr="" available="" to="" be="" passed="" on="" other="" same="" page?<="" p=""></a>
<a data-href...="" links="" still="" take="" a="" portion="" of="" pagerank="" away="" from="" the="" total="" pr="" available="" to="" be="" passed="" on="" other="" same="" page?<="" p="">My answer is "I don't know" but I'd like to see a test if anyone can think of a way to try it out.</a>
<a data-href...="" links="" still="" take="" a="" portion="" of="" pagerank="" away="" from="" the="" total="" pr="" available="" to="" be="" passed="" on="" other="" same="" page?<="" p="">However, even if the test came back saying "No, these are treated differently and do not currently affect the total amount of PR available to other links on the page" I still would not use it for the purpose of pagerank sculpting. The reason is that how Google treats these links today can change tomorrow, making "tactics" like this a bad idea IMHO. It just leaves a mess for either you or some other poor SEO to cleanup later.
If I don't want pagerank to pass through a link on a page I simply don't put the link on the page. In extreme circumstances where there is no other way around it I might consider obfuscating the link with some javascript, for instance. However, even if you block the .js file that handles this "link" in the robots.txt file Google still executes it (as you can see when viewing the cached version on Google for pages that do this).</a>
-
Hi Jonathan,
I highly doubt it, you normally use the data-href to trigger some events with JavaScript and as these links still have the rel="nofollow" it probably will have the same value (0, as it's nofollow) to search engines.
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
-
Rel="publisher" validation error in html5
Using HTML5 I am getting a validation error on in my HTML Validation error: Bad value publisher for attribute rel on element link: Not an absolute IRI. The string publisher is not a registered keyword or absolute URL. This just started showing up on Tuesday in validation errors. Never showed up in the past. Has something changed?
Technical SEO | | RoxBrock0 -
Should we rel=nofollow these links ?
On our website, we have a section of free to low-cost tools that could help small business increase their productivity without spending big bucks. For example, this is the page for online collaboration tools: http://www.bdc.ca/EN/solutions/smart_tech/tech_advice/free_low_cost_applications/Pages/online_collaboration_tools.aspx None of the company pay anything to be on these list. We actually do quite a lot of research to chose which should be listed there and which should not. Recently, one of the company in our lists asked us to add rel=nofollow to the link to their website because they add been targeted by a manual action on Google and want their link profile to be as clean as possible (probably too clean). My question is : Should we add rel=nofollow to all these links ? Thanks, Jean-François Monfette
Technical SEO | | jfmonfette0 -
Question About Using Disqus
I'm thinking about implementing Disqus on my blog. I'd like to know if the Disqus comments are indexed by search engines? It looks like they are displayed using Ajax or jQuery.
Technical SEO | | sbrault740 -
Dofollow and Nofollow links
What is the difference between dofollow and nofollow links? I know that some sites/blogs only let you post nofollow links. In such a case how do I know if a comment I posted on a certain site will be a nofollow or dofollow? How about big traffic sites such as Huff Post. Do they only allow nofollow links?
Technical SEO | | greenfoxone0 -
Instance IDs on "Events" in wordpress causing duplicate content
Hi all I use Yoast SEO on wordpress which does a pretty good job of insertint rel=canonical in to the header of the pages where approproate, including on my event pages. However my crawl diagnostics have highlighted these event pages as duplicate content and titles because of the instance id parameter being added to the URL. When I look at the pages head I see that rel=canonical is as it should be. Please see here for an example: http://solvencyiiwire.com/ai1ec_event/unintended-consequences-basel-ii-and-solvency-ii?instance_id= My question is how come SEOMoz is highlighting these pages as duplicate content and what can I do to remedy this. Is it because ?instance_id= is part of the string on the canonical link? How do I remove this? My client uses the following plugins "All-in-One Event Calendar by Timely" and
Technical SEO | | wellsgp
Google Calendar Events Many thanks!0 -
Rel="no follow" for All Links on a Site that Charges for Advertising
If I run a site that charges other companies for listing their products, running banner advertisements, white paper downloads, etc. does it make sense to "no follow" all of their links on my site? For example: they receive a profile page, product pages and are allowed to post press releases. Should all of their links on these pages be "no follow"? It seems like a gray area to me because the explicit advertisements will definitely be "no followed" and they are not buying links, but buying exposure. However, I still don't know the common practice for links from other parts of their "package". Thanks
Technical SEO | | zazo0 -
Should I be using use rel=author in this case?
We have a large blog, which it appears one of our regional blogs (managed separately) is simply scraping content off of our blog and adding it to theirs. Would adding rel=author (for all of our guest bloggers) help eliminate google seeing the regional blog content as scraped or duplicate? Is rel=author the best solution here?
Technical SEO | | VistageSEO0 -
Is there a work around for Rel Canonical without header access?
In my work as an SEO writer, I work closely with web designers and usually have behind the scenes access. However, the last three clients who hired me have web designers that are not allowing admin access to anyone else (including the clients) outside of their companies/small business. Is there a work around for the Rel Canonical element that usually is placed in the header? I am using All-In-One-SEO plug-in to address part of this issue. Sage advice or discussion on this is appreciated!
Technical SEO | | TheARKlady0