What's the news on sitwide nofollow links and anchor text penalties
-
Is it possible to be penalized for sitewide nofollow links because of anchor text penalties, even if you use branded anchor text?
-
You shouldn't receive any kind of penalty for doing so.
The premise of the nofollow tag is tell Google that "Hey, these links might be paid advertising, or could look a bit unnatural, so I'm going to whack a nofollow tag on them so you don't pass any link juice". It then ceases to become a tool to manipulate the SERPs, so you're not doing anything wrong in Google's TOS.
I think that's pretty clear cut. It's this scenario that nofollow was pretty much designed for. I'd never bet the mortgage with Google, but this comes close!
If we're talking site-wide links like footers to show that you worked on the site, from a personal POV I think that's a bit much and that a homepage link would achieve the same effect, but that's just me.
Hope this clears things up.
-
Good question, I don't know the answer - but it does apply to our business, so I'll follow this discussion for insight. Thanks for asking this Bob.
-
That does help. However, I was asking if it is a problem in your backlink profile to receive nofollow backlinks that are sitewide.
-
I posted a similar question the other day that may help a bit.
Dr. Pete posted a very good answer -
http://www.seomoz.org/q/too-many-noindex-follow-tags
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
-
Can 'follow' rather than 'nofollow' links be damaging partner's SEO
Hey guys and happy Monday! We run a content rich website, 12+ years old, focused on travel in a specific region, and advertisers pay for banners/content etc alongside editorial. We have never used 'nofollow' website links as they're no explicitly paid for by clients, but a partner has asked us to make all links to them 'nofollow' as they have stated the way we currently link is damaging their SEO. Could this be true in any way? I'm only assuming it would adversely affect them if our website was peanalized by Google for 'selling links', which we're not. Perhaps they're just keen to follow best practice for fear of being seen to be buying links. FYI we now plan to change to more full use of 'nofollow', but I'm trying to work out what the client is refering to without seeming ill-informed on the subject! Thank you for any advice 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO_Jim0 -
Is the flow of page rank through anchor text links diminished if hidden using tabs
Hi there, Whilst there is plenty of information online regarding the devaluation of hidden content using tabs, it seems to be more difficult to get a clear answer as to how page rank is impacted when anchor text links are hidden. If an anchor text link is hidden using tabs, will the flow of page rank to the page the anchor text leads to be negatively impacted? If so, why? To add further context, whilst the anchor text link would be visible in the HTML, the tab would be dependant on JavaScript to function. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEONOW1230 -
Multiple H2 with no direct links to content and invisible body text - is this an issue?
OK, so we've lost pagerank and I think it's because of the way our site works (and we operate it). We have a videofolio, which shows on most of our pages, showcasing our work. Over time, we have tended to unpublish these pages and created new videofolio pages to show on our home page and relevant pages. The videofolio is a set of pages, each with a title, body text and a place to insert a link to the video, which is played through a videofolio showcase on our website (www.curveball-media.co.uk). Each is set a category, e.g. film, and when the user clicks the tab for 'film', the thumbnails pop up and the user can play the video. We have to work it this way as it's the only way to remove the videos from showing on our home page and to show new content instead. Simply deselecting a category still allows the videos to be seen when the 'all' category is selected by the user. Last week, I found a way of bringing back these unpublished pages by removing the 'all' tab from the videofolio. Then I turned each one into a blog like structure instead. Essentially, instead of the video link being played through the videofolio, we deselected a category (e.g. animation, film etc) and left the page floating. The only way you can access it without being attached to a videofolio category is through the direct link. By turning off the 'all' category and deselecting the page from any other categories, we were able to properly SEO these pages. NB: If they are created for use with the videofolio, you can have only extremely limited body text and no H2, as this is the text that appears when you hover over the video thumbnail. That's just the nature of the template. What I didn't anticipate is that now the code on the home page shows all these now (un)published pages and their corresponding H2 tags. Without a category selected, there is no way to get to these pages unless I create a direct link. I plan to do this through a blog post. In the home page code, the entire videofolio page shows, including the body text and link to the video. **This text doesn't show on the home page though, i.e. the user never sees this text. ** 1. Is it an issue to have so many similar H2 tags on the homepage? 2. Is it an issue that the code has text which is essentially invisible on the home page? 3. Is it an issue that the content is not linked to through the home page visibly? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | curveballmedia0 -
Google's Stance on "Hidden" Content
Hi, I'm aware Google doesn't care if you have helpful content you can hide/unhide by user interaction. I am also aware that Google frowns upon hiding content from the user for SEO purposes. We're not considering anything similar to this. The issue is, we will be displaying only a part of our content to the user at a time. We'll load 3 results on each page initially. These first 3 results are static, meaning on each initial page load/refresh, the same 3 results will display. However, we'll have a "Show Next 3" button which replaces the initial results with the next 3 results. This content will be preloaded in the source code so Google will know about it. I feel like Google shouldn't have an issue with this since we're allowing the user action to cycle through all results. But I'm curious, is it an issue that the user action does NOT allow them to see all results on the page at once? I am leaning towards no, this doesn't matter, but would like some input if possible. Thanks a lot!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kirmeliux0 -
What's the Best Host For WordPress sites
Our site has gone down twice in a week...hosted by Fat Cow. So we're going to switch hosts this week. We currently have 2 WP sites on a Fat Cow VPS. 8 GB file size and 2 GB data transfer monthly. We use a CDN and video hosting company (Wistia) so the file sizes are small. I've contacted several hosts and narrowed it down to WP Engine, Rack Space and A Small Orange. I care about fast page load time (1 second), 99.999% up-time and great support. Price is a secondary concern. I'm leaning towards WP Engine, but wanted to ask Moz community before making a decision. Any other hosting companies I should call?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Branden_S0 -
What is a "Bad Link" in Google's eyes? Low DA?
Hi there, I'm going through my link profile and I noticed I have a few links that are from <10 DA sites. One has a DA of 6. Should I remove these? Aside from any referral traffic I receive from these links (I know there is none), are these links hurting me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W
What should I look out for in a site I may guest post on? Thanks!
Travis0 -
Impact of simplifying website and removing 80% of site's content
We're thinking of simplifying our website which has grown to a very large size by removing all the content which hardly ever gets visited. The plan is to remove this content / make changes over time in small chunks so that we can monitor the impact on SEO. My gut feeling is that this is okay if we make sure to redirect old pages and make sure that the pages we remove aren't getting any traffic. From my research online it seems that more content is not necessarily a good thing if that content is ineffective and that simplifying a site can improve conversions and usability. Could I get people's thoughts on this please? Are there are risks that we should look out for or any alternatives to this approach? At the moment I'm struggling to combine the needs of SEO with making the website more effective.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RG_SEO0 -
There's NO reason these sites should be beating mine...Or is there?
Hi Over the past 10 months, my internal page rankings (previously excellent) have plummeted. I'm now trying to recover them. I haven't received an unnatural links warning in Google Webmaster Tools. Also, I used to have hundreds of internal links to each of these 21 pages using the same exact-match anchor text eg, Tuscany real estate, Umbria real estate, etc. I changed this about 6 months ago. So why am I still ranking poorly for these (only moderately competitive keywords) behind sites with poorer metrics? 1) Keyword: lake como real estate My page here – **http://tinyurl.com/d34k8m ** -- used to rank No1 or No2 neck-and-neck with this page www.immobiliarevacanzelago.com/. He's still No1 but I’m down to about No13. Yet when I look in Open Site Explorer virtually all my metrics beat his.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jeepster0