Navigating The New Rules - Clarification on NoFollow Usage
-
I posted some of this elsewhere but would like feedback from some of SEOMoz community.
- An author. Lets say she has a book out on Relationship Advice.
Lets say her book was even called Relationship Help, Advice and Tips.
She promotes it for years on her website and implements an affiliate program to get wider reach. Affiliates link to it by the name of the book. One day she even gets a mention or two on a few Yahoo editorial type pages that reviewed said book. A few other very big name websites also link to her and even link to her (without her asking) to her domain no less and make the link say simply Relationship Advice. The links were in the body of the pages. Again, these were unsolicited reviews that she did not even ask for.
In the old world - that was ok - in as much as unharmful to her site. In the new world she's toast.
She has taken down the book pages she worked 7 years to build up. I don't even think that will help. People linked to her website and put "relationship Advice" in the links because that's what she gave and was an expert at. She didn't ask for those links.
2) A large well known web directory that many have heard of - choose to charge for inclusion into their directory. BUT - you can get a free link if you include some code on your website. A reciprocation that is well known.I have read many many articles and posts by many people over the years on this - and as far as I can tell that reciprocation model for free submission was OK.
As long as directories didn't have search functions that served search results that were biased to paid link submissions they seemed to be ok. In terms of the free submission - I read a post way back by Matt that said as long as the directory wasn't asking for the reciprocal link in addition to charging for the submission - that was OK.
So, scoot forward to 2012. Said directory has hundreds of thousands of links to it - due tot he reciprocal code that was on many of the free links.
The code on the websites that got free links obviously promotes the directory by putting the main keyword in the link. ie "Web Directory".
In this new world - is this OK ?
That's what they do. They are after all a web directory?
The company in scenario 2 with hundreds of thousands of links all saying virtually the same phrase - with the vast majority of the backlinks being from generated reciprocal links for free advertisers in its directory - they are doing FINE. Not hurt at all.
The small business owner / author in scenario 1 - who had unsolicited natural links coming to her with anchor text detailing something she did and was an expert at - has gone from the SERPS.
Should the company in Scenario 2 - that COULD DO something about the anchor text in the reciprocal links back to their website - now change the recip code so that it just says their brand name instead of "web directory" ?
Should the author - if she ever regains from this hell - now have some kind of policy clearly stated on her website - that if any person is ever to link to her website ever again - they MUST only link to it with her name in the anchor text - and never link up words she is an authority on? How can she prevent that?
- So now is it up to the advertiser or the publisher to ensure we are all safe?
If small business person Billy Bob inquires about a paid link on a website and the publisher dosn't tell him that the link may hurt his site and he does not not request a NOFOLLOW on it (because he is just a clueless business owner) - are they (the publishing website) liable for Billy Bob's site tanking if it does?
Or is it the advertiser's job to be aware of all said issues - because I know the vast majority of Billy Bob's wouldn't be.
How long has everyone got to "get in line"?
There are many in the search community offering paid links on their websites in "Sponsored Links" sections - without the use of NOFOLLOWS and i don't see any devaluing of their advertisers websites.
If rules are rules let everyone play them. Getting sick of the hypocrisy. I aim to get to Journeyman though just so I can get a DOFOLLOW link on this site
Incentives eh!
Carlos
- An author. Lets say she has a book out on Relationship Advice.
-
I agree, Google is being even more vague than usual on this one. Funny that you mention the Journeyman link... I posted this question right before reading yours. I'll think you'll get a kick out of it. Same basic premise... WTF do we now? The answer is always the same though, in a couple of months we'll have enough research and analysis to have a good understanding of the update, at which point Google will change it again. Gotta love gettin paid to play a game
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
-
Should we re-use our old re-directed domain for a new wesbite ?
Hi One our clients has an old domain that has been redirected to another website of his. Now he is asking us to build a new website for that domain and direct it back. This is new website will be very relative to it's own old content and where it has been re-directed recently. I guess the only benefit of this would be taking advantage of the age of this domain. Do you recommend doing that or getting him a new domain ?
Technical SEO | | Dynamo-Web0 -
Site Navigation
Hello, I have some questions about best practices with site navigation & internal linking. I'm currently assisting aplossoftware.com with its navigation. The site has about 200 pages total. They currently have a very sparse header with a lot of links in the footer. The three most important keywords they want to rank for are nonprofit accounting software, church accounting software and file 990 online. 1. What are your thoughts about including a drop down menu in the header for the different products? (they have 3 main products). This would allow us to include a few more links in the header and give more real estate to include full keywords in anchor text. 2. They have a good blog with content that gets regularly updated. Currently it's linked in the footer and gets a tiny amount of visits. What are your thoughts about including it as a link in the header instead? 3. What are best practices with using (or not using) no follow with site navigation and footer links? How about with links to social media pages like Facebook/Twitter? Any other thoughts/ideas about the site navigation for this site (www.aplossoftware.com) would be much appreciated. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | stageagent0 -
Webmasters tools - Need to update every time you add a new product/page to an ecommerce
Hi guys, I run an ecommere store and we are constantly receiving and uploading new products. Do we need to update the sitemap every time we upload a product? Google Webmasters tools shows that the number of URLs received is higher than the number of indexed URLs. They should match right? Thanks and regards
Technical SEO | | footd0 -
Forum website rel="nofollow" is this Good?
Hi, Forum website rel="nofollow" is this Good? We have a Q & A site and have all links as Nofollow. Would this be a good way? Thanks
Technical SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
When to 301 a No1 ranking site to the new domain?
I have a site [company.com] that ranks number one for the products of my brand but I'm moving all the efforts to a dedicated brand domain. The old site covered a number of small brands and we had no dedicated brand sites, but we now focus on just this one brand and it doesn't belong on the old company domain name. BRAND belongs on the new brand.com Because of the age of the old company site and because it had the first copy about the brand, it's still ranking well for the brand product names, and the new site has some duplicate content issues that I'm in the throws of resolving. RANKS Company.com : number one for all product names Brand.com : nowhere for product brand names but top for the brand name (as I say, the product pages on this site have duplicate content issues which is likely keeping them ranked low - Hades low. I would rather not maintain two websites and I want to give brand.com every bit of available oomph , so should I at some point 301 the old company site to the new one? If so, is now the time? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Brocberry0 -
New to rich snippets, help needed
Hi, I have an online store selling mens business attire in Australia. I have had my developers add the required code to allow rich snippets. You can see the result here http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=http%3A%2F%2Fjsshirts.com.au%2Fmens-business-shirts%2Fclassic-fit%2Fsky-blue-poplin-classic-fit-shirt.html&view=cse I have few questions 1.How can I change the product description? Is it possible to use the product Meta Tag as the description? 2.Under the stars and the review count is this text. The excerpt from the page will show up here. The reason we can't show text from your webpage is because the text depends on the query the user types. Should whateever product description I have used show up here? 3.Is there anything else I need to do to get SERP's to show the snippet? Many thanks for any answers, Jason
Technical SEO | | mullsey0 -
Is there a great tool for URL mapping old to new web site?
We are implementing new design and removing some pages and adding new content. Task is to correctly map and redirect old pages that no longer exist.
Technical SEO | | KnutDSvendsen0 -
Secondary Menu - nofollow or other strategy?
We have a "secondary main menu" on a site that displays some popular pages of the site. They are in the main navigation of the site as subpages but we wanted to highlight them on every page of the site through this secondary menu. so this secondary menu is the same on every page of the site. So we have the main menu on the top of the site, subpages on the left and this secondary menu below the subpages (in a blue box so they stand out). Is this secondary menu confusing for the structure of the site or negative at all (in relation to robots, not UX)? Should we nofollow these links in the secondary menu? thanks for replies!
Technical SEO | | Motava0