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
-
I want to know about the Impact of Do-follow backlinks and No-follow backlinks for increasing DA.
Have Do-follow backlinks and No-Follow backlinks same value to increase Domain Authority in Moz? Recently, I have created 290 profile backlinks which was do-follow. But from yesterday I have seen all backlinks are no-follow now according to the decision of sites' owners. My site's DA has already increased up to 35. Will this DA fall gradually from now? Apart from it, if I have created same backlinks for my another site; will my DA be 35? Please try to clarify it. My site is: Homeworkpaper.net Thanks. Waiting for your valuable answer.
Link Building | | darrellpc1 -
What is the difference between anchor text and external links?
I understand you 'Pro's' may fins this a silly question. But I'm a visual learner and I can't seem to grasp this. I've read the pages MOZ has provided on anchor text and external links and my question is, how are they different? And which one is more important to seo? Can someone who has a great ability to simplify things, please help me understand this. They seem very similar to me but, I know there has to be more to it. External links: External Links are hyperlinks that point at (target) any domain other than the domain the link exists on (source) **Anchor Text: **Anchor text is the visible characters and words that hyperlinks display when linking to another document or location on the web. Thanks is advance, Lauren.
Link Building | | MissThumann0 -
Asking a site to remove a "nofollow" on a link to our client
Hello, We created a good infographic for a client of ours and a large tech site (DA 86) picked up and ran a story on it. We didn't contact this company asking them to feature it, they have just picked it up through other shares around the Web. I understand that, at the end of the day, it's their prerogative whether to "nofollow" their links or not, but surely they should be giving our client some credit as they have clearly deemed the graphic newsworthy and felt that it would appeal to their readership. I've emailed said tech site, but to no avail. Does anyone have any advice on this? Or is it just a case of they can do what the heck they want? I know that our client will still benefit from the additional referral traffic, but a follow link would have been nicer! Cheers, Lewis
Link Building | | PeaSoupDigital1 -
Internal Linking - Post links vs Side Bar Links behaving differently
Hi, I have a question regarding the internal linking behavior. My website is www.hindimeaning.com which is approx 3 years old. I have approx 450 posts. Now i have a widget on right sidebar "Popular posts". A widget below my posts "Related Posts". And a simple html CSS menu above the posts (I removed menu around 6 month before so currently it will not show.) I crawled my site with moz crawler (same are the result from google crawler as well) and it shows menus links as internal links. While sidebar widget "Popular posts" and "Related Posts" are not showing as internal links. If we talk theoretically what i learn till now is "every link on a page behaves as internal link". Then why the widget links are not showing as internal links. Thanks, Mahesh Kumar
Link Building | | chaudhary04890 -
Nofollow affiliate links
I am setting up an affiliate program using software built in to my shop already (x-cart). The links generated by the software do not have the rel="nofollow" in them. I'm assuming they should have? When looking at Amazon, there must be millions of links out there pointing back to Amazon and all those links are followed back to them for link juice. Am I missing something? Surely best practice here is to re="nofollow" so you're not seen to be manipulating Google PageRank?
Link Building | | sparrowdog0 -
What are "naked backlinks"?
Hello SEOmozers! I have a question for you all. What are "naked backlinks"? Can you also give an example? Thank you! woo aka STPseo
Link Building | | STPseo0 -
Nofollow links & content syndication
When syndicating content, I have heard/read that even if the piece you syndicate has a link back to your site (original post), the engines should be able to tell your post is the original because of the link that is pointing back. Is this the case when the links are "nofollow"? I think not, but I just would like to get someone else point of view. I think that if they don't want to follow the links, they should at least add noindex meta robots tags to the post so it doesn't create duplicate content... Any thoughts? Thanks!
Link Building | | bonnierSEO0