Links to Social Media accounts, rel=nofollow/follow and rel=me
-
Hi guys,
I just saw this rel="me" attribute and I can't find any reputable recent (within last year) information. I never heard of this and wonder if it's any beneficial in any way.
At the same time, should I use nofollow or follow on links from website to social accounts? I've heard different opinions but, again, no recent relevant and trustworthy information.
Please, kick me into right direction. However, when kicking, please give me some proof, rather than thoughts
Thanks!
-
I'd recommend linking to all your own properties using rel="me". You can see the tag in common usage on Twitter and Instagram profiles, where the user's website link is tagged using rel="me". You can basically connect up all your online properties as belonging to the same person/brand/entity - and who wouldn't want that. You're indicating to Google that all those webpages are related to you. By linking to your social profiles from your website using rel="me", you're confirming that those profiles are officially yours.
-
Now, what's about rel="me"?
Anybody has any insight?
-
Good article, but as you said, statements sometimes conflicting and self-contradicting. I guess the best way is to test and see what works and what doesn't.
-
Thanks! I'll look into it tomorrow.
-
You might be interested by this article from Marie Haynes on footer links (follow or not follow) which gives a recap of the (sometimes conflicting) statements from Google regarding footer links- and some advice on how to deal with it.
It's a pretty long article - but worthwhile reading; Marie is also member of Moz & specialised in link penalties & unnatural links.Dirk
-
Thanks.
What about too many follow links from the same website?
Example: as a webdesign company we have a backlink from every client's footer. So, we used to have them all follow, therefore from large ecommerce websites we were getting 10k+ follow links. We decided to try to do all those links nofollow. Pretty much next week we saw significant enough jump in rankings.
There are lots of articles/discussions about topical relevance of follow interlinked websites as well.
What's your take on this?
-
Basically nofollow links should be used for
- links to site with untrusted content
- paid links
You could use nofollow as well for crawl prioritisation (not leading Google bot to pages on your site that can't or shouldn't be indexed like loginpages) -although this is not the recommended usage (according to Google: "a solid information architecture is likely to be a far more productive use of resources than focusing on crawl prioritization via nofollowed links".
Source: Google
For links to Facebook you have the choice - a big chunk is not being indexed by Google (source: https://www.facebook.com/robots.txt?_rdr=p) - so you could put the links nofollow (but you could leave them follow as well). For the other ones - it could be interesting to have links to your Instagram / Twitter account to push these as well.
I would just keep all these links follow. It will certainly not hurt you.Dirk
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
-
How to fix external links with missing anchor
Hello, My SEO audit on my site shows we have 858 external links with missing anchor, report shows Target URL and Source URL. How I can fix external links with missing anchor? None of them looks like spam, my target URL is all from our Social Media. Twitter, Google Plus, Linkedin, Pinterest, Facebook ... Here is the link to the the excel spread shit report and you can see it yourself. https://na53.salesforce.com/sfc/p/60000000IcOQ/a/f2000000UVi7/hBZ6Z1tGEFcJOTvVtfjYtYhi_HTw8fRqe9SMjuWcdOA We use ''Hootsuite'' to shrink the URL and post in to our social media, is that maybe we having this problem now? Thank you,
Social Media | | Kiakh19870 -
Using BUFFER in Social Sharing
Hello everyone, I am inclining to use a platform from which to post my social content. I use mainly facebook, twitter, linked in, google +. I used Hoot, but found it difficult to include Linked In, and several other social media sites. Somebody has experience using BUFFER? Ive read about it, and it seems great! Would you recommend it? Thanks for your comments,
Social Media | | JesusD0 -
Follower Wonk Did You Forget To Add Sentiment Tracking?
Buongiorno from Wether by UK Latitude 53.92705600 Longitude -1.38481600 Ok after 20 mins or clicking around https://followerwonk.com/ I couldnt find any way of measuring sentiment tracking. For example i wanted to know how many users where mentioning @PhilpottsLtd but all i could get was a salvo of follow data. Whilst I know this is of some use sentiment tracking i.e being able to measure users dissing or loving your brand would be more usefull. So my question is please..."In follerwonk how can you measure whats being said about a brand" Grazie Tanto, David
Social Media | | Nightwing1 -
Good idea to include links in Facebook posts teaser-text?
Hi guys, I'm wondering; is it a good idea (for the engines primaliry) to include links with targeted keywords in facebook posts. From a user perspective I would say it's not desirable. But I'm wondering how Google and co treat links which they find there. They are nofollowed, yes. They are indexed however but when I want google to show me the text-only version of the cached page I receive an 404 error which is odd. Anybody else getting the 404 from google? Eg. clicking on this cache-URL: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:jsC_26QVKbgJ:www.facebook.com/echoonline/posts/156674087731661+site:facebook.com/echoonline&cd=3&hl=de&ct=clnk&gl=de&client=firefox-a and then on "text only" leads to this page which does not exist: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/echoonline/posts/156674087731661?_fb_noscript=1 Looking forward to your ideas on this topic.
Social Media | | jmueller0 -
Youtube SEO: Does your channel name / user name matter?
My predecessor left me a gift of what is arguably the worst kind of Youtube channel name: Our company's name condensed to an acronym with some additional gibberish that may or may not have meant something to her. In short: Our channel name will never be searched for, will never provide any ranking boost. Now our Youtube success has been very marginal so far: 31 subscribers, 7,300 video views. Given that situation, should I seriously consider scrapping my channel and starting something new with a keyword targeted channel name? Or does channel name matter so little that I should hold on to my 7300 video views?
Social Media | | AdoptionHelp0 -
What's the best way to get links from images?
I have a few images that I have taken recently and I was wondering what might be the best way to use them. Ideally I would like to get a few links or some interest via social networks. I know I've a few options including: adding images directly to the website adding images to Flickr or similar adding images to Google+ adding images to Facebook adding images to twitpic or similar I was also intending in keeping some images to include directly in posts. Should I concentrate posting images directly on the site or use social networks? Which social networks work well for images? How can I use images to get links?
Social Media | | andywozhere0 -
How do you make multiple Facebook Like/Welcome pages?
I have one running here http://www.facebook.com/pages/Podium-Magazine/174645832595027?sk=app_190322544333196 I want to add a different discussion piece, behind the "like us" form each month and not have to replace what I have Does anyone know how I can set up multiple different Like pages? Cheers Stephen
Social Media | | firstconversion0 -
Quality link building methods??
I am getting more and more confused by the messages out there about "post Panda" link building methods. Apparently Google has devalued many of the old methods such as Article Marketing, Profile Linking, Web 2.0 content etc. But all I hear is that instead of that you must create "quality content" that users want to link to naturally. But hey.... how do users find your quality content if you don't already rank in the search engines?? Isn't it a bit chicken and egg? So, if I write what I think is a really good blog post or product page now, I can not really do anything to help it along in getting some decent rankings so that people will actually find the page and maybe link to it?? I also hear that "Social Signals" are becoming more important for rankings. Facebook likes and Google +1's Can anybody tell me how you encourage people to like and +1 the standard info pages of your website, like "Home Page" or "Service Page"? or is the future of search all about "commentary". Do I need to write a witty interesting blog post that appeals to masses that then links to my service or product page. Do I need to tweet to my non existent followers about a page I cant get ranked in the search engines? or blog "quality content" to no-one because I have no traffic coming to my website?? As you can probably tell, I am very confused with the messages, post panda. I would greatly appreciate it if someone could help me with the order of the new Search Marketing strategies. If I write a quality web page, then what? If I don't already have a traffic source either in Social Media or other related web pages, what is the best way to go about gaining rankings and traffic from search? Thanks
Social Media | | websearchseo0