Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Does the ratio of external nofollow links to external "do follow" links matter in terms of SERPs ranking?
-
My site has an external link nofollow:dofollow ratio of approximately 1:1
That is, there are about as many nofollow external links as "do follow" external links.
I have an impression that the ratio of no-follow to "do follow" links is a factor in the way that our website shows up in SERPs.
I have the impression from reading a variety of sources, and from looking at Seomoz, that calculate "trust" factors as if they mattered (in SERPs), that seem to value a relatively low nofollow:dofollow ratio.
Am I correct about that?
Thanks,
TimPS - I don't know whether or not this matters, but our website is at: www.trustworthycare.com - Tim
-
No problem,
I'm more than glad to help. Enjoy your weekend.
-
Interestingly, there's a strong correlation between the number of nofollowed links to a domain and higher rankings, although the correlation isn't as high as with the number of followed links to a domain.
http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#metrics-1
Most well ranking websites have a natural amount of nofollowed links, but I've never seen any evidence that a 50/50 ratio would either harm or benefit you.
Regardless, you want to keep working to build good, mostly followed links. If you continue to do this, you should be in good hands.
-
Joel - Thank you for taking time to respond to my question. I appreciate your help!
Is anyone else interested in offering their input?
Thanks,
Tim
-
There are no concrete rules when it comes to ratio of no follow / do follow but a rule of thumb is that you should have an 80/20 ratio of do follow versus no follow.
It would be suspicious if you only had do follow but wouldn't look right if you only had no follow.
As you already know, do follow links hold a lot of value. No follow links just gives the impression that your link building is natural.
That being said I would't remove the no follow links to get a better ratio. Just make sure your link building strategy focuses on natural white hat strategies
Hope this helps.
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
-
Adding external links to other businesses
Hi,
Link Building | | LisaBabblebird
I'm looking to add some external links to a website. The homepage has a section showing the logos of clients the company has worked with. Is it worth making these logos links to the clients websites? Some of the clients are household names. However, I've noticed that very few websites do this. Would it add any value?0 -
Nofollow links with high spam score
Hi All, Is it worth setting co-operation with website that has incoming links with spam score 96% despite the fact they're mostly nofollow? From my understanding there's still connection set between websites bit no negative impact on my SEO profile. Am I right? Thanks for all opinions.
Link Building | | Optimal_Strategies0 -
Sudden drop in external links... why?
We had a lot of external links (2.5K, which was good compared to our competition), but in the last few weeks, it dropped 1.1K. I obviously did something wrong. What are the causes of such a dramatic drop like that? Questions, suggestions, ideas, anything is welcome at this point. Thanks!
Link Building | | brandon_lee0 -
Drop in Rankings After Removing Links
So I removed some links to a particular homepage for one of the sites we own, this page had A LOT of links pointing to it using exact match anchors. And for the most part the links were coming from low quality pages/content. After removing a good chunk of them I noticed are rankings went down from around 8-9th two weeks ago to 21 as of today. Has anyone else had a problem like this before? I'm thinking about restoring some of these links now to see if I can recover some of that. Any thoughts on doing this? Thanks
Link Building | | ThridHour0 -
What is a good ratio of total links to linking root domains?
Is 100 total links for every linking domain too high? I suppose I could also look at ratios of sites that are doing well in the rankings.
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
Text Link vs image link?
Which passes most link juice a text link or an image with the correct 'alt' attribute? Do the pass the same amount or is one more valuable than the other?
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
Outgoing links - internal vs. external
I thought that the important factor in the value of a link was how many outing links a page has total. Some tools seems to tell me that the important data point is how many EXTERNAL links a page has. Which number should I be paying attention to when looking at pages I want to get linked from? (Yes, I know there are many other factors that are important)
Link Building | | EugeneF0 -
What's the difference between follow and nofollow links?
I understand this may be a really dumb question and from my understanding there is a piece of code in some url's that tell search engines not to follow that link. I am interested in finding out what the purpose of nofollow links are and how they apply to search rankings. Thanks for the help
Link Building | | A2890