How can I check a website to see if it is "nofollow"?
-
I'm a little new to SEO, so maybe this is obvious to some . . .
I'm attempting to build backlinks by submitting articles, posting on forums etc. I just wrote my forst article for ezine and submitted it.
I was feeling pretty good about myself until I mentioned it to someone trying to sell me their SEO services and he said that ezine articles are considered "nofollow" on all their links.
Well, that was pretty frustrating to hear! It got me wondering, how many of these other sites have all their posts and blogs listed as "nofollow"? Is there a way for me to figure it out ahead of time? Obviously, there are only so many hours in the day and I would rather focus on posting on sites that will actually help me build backlinks!
Thanks for your help in advance!
-
Hey Domaon,
This happened to me once and I was furious. I would contact the publisher and show them this article.
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/
Basically it explains that the site gains no additional PR to it's other links by nofollowing your links. Who knows maybe they'll chance their stance on nofollowing links to use submitted articles.
That said there are good reasons why a link can have a nofollow attached to it. However, if you contributed an article to an ezine that selectively publishes user submitted content you deserve a "dofollow" link.
-
Ain't it fun?
-
Thanks everyone, very helpful! I DO have the toolbar, and now I know how to use it!
My head is swimming learning all this stuff!
-
Will still require a manual check before hand but 'Right Click > Properties' will give you a link relationship.
For FF you'll need - https://addons.mozilla.org/af/firefox/addon/element-properties/
Alternatively you can get a nofollow highlight plugin
FF - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nodofollow/
Chrome - http://floridaventureblog.com/2009/03/highlight-nofollow-links-chrome-plugin.html - (Not tested)
Then you can see at a glance if a page comment does give followed or unfollowed links, though you still have to visit the page first.
-
Never had used before their toolbar but its just great, i was using the SEO Site Tools but just turned that off now
-
Hi Damon,
Get the SEOmoz Toolbar, it has a function to highlight NoFollow links. very handy!
http://www.seomoz.org/seo-toolbar
Regards
Aran
-
There are a few ways. If you have the SEOMoz toolbar installed, you can click the nofollow button and it will highlight all of the nonfollowed links in pink for you.
Or, you can check the source code. To do this right click on the page, and select "view source". then, do Ctrl-F and search for "nofollow". This will show you if the whole page is set to be nofollowed (i.e. meta robots noindex, nofollow) and if an individual link is nofollowed.
As a side note, I don't do much article submission. I do believe that the links from ezine are followed, but the link juice you get from them is usually minimal. The way that an article would have more link juice on ezine is if other people from high PR sites linked to it. But, if it's that good an article that it deserves links then it would be much better to have it on your site.
Similarly, forum sigs are usually not terribly helpful for ranking unless you are targetting a really,really non competitive term.
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
-
Would a link from an unrelated website, that is popular, help me ?
I have a website that gets 200,000 visitors a month. It is a very popular financial tool. I have another website that sells widgets, but honestly, not really related to the financial tool. I would like to help out the unpopular website by giving it a link. What's the professional opinion?
Link Building | | sonic220 -
Can this be done?
Hi, Suppose, a page from Wikipedia ranks on 1st position in Google for "keyphrase1". But when you investigate further, there are no backlinks to that page that have "keyphrase1" as the anchor text. Then how come the page ranks for that keyphrase? Regards
Link Building | | IM_Learner0 -
Appropriate way to do the "Link to us" stuff.
We have just developed a nice web app, and we are excited how quickly its getting popular (based on facebook likes, shares etc). Everybody just loves it! Now, majority of the traffic to our website comes from Google Adwords, and the website is quite new. I was just wondering if I place a snippet about "Link to us" with a HTML code. What are your thoughts? If 200 people link to us, they will be using the same anchor text, isn't this unsafe? I would really appreciate some expert advice on the above. Thanks!
Link Building | | TheSEOGuy10 -
Duplicate contents with competitors websites
Hello, I have use the http://copyscape.com to check the duplicate content and found that my website have some errors duplicate contents with other competitors website. But a problem is, I could not define the reason of this (my website copied the competitors website or they copied of mine) To solve this issues, should I modify a unique my contents (this is difficult) or anyone have a good solution for this problem? Please give me advice? Thank you!
Link Building | | JohnHuynh0 -
Is there any good tools for toxic link checking.
I have done a manual link audit and made a good, bad and not sure list. Is there any tools I can run over the list to see if I missed anything and help me decide what to do with the not sure list?
Link Building | | mark_baird0 -
How to add website to Dmoz?
Hello all, i'm a webmaster, i need add my website : http://itvseo.com to dmoz, before i add some website to dmoz but unscuccessfull, please help me thank all
Link Building | | ITVSEO.COM0 -
How can I find and fix my broken links
There are a number(110) links that SEOmoz has found to have 404 errors. I have been able to find and fix many of them but there are links that are coming from our home page that do not seem to exist. I cannot even find the links in our system in wordpress. Is there something obvious that I am missing? Is there a way to locate where the links are originating from?
Link Building | | careerealism0 -
Does Website Design Matter?
I've got a new site officially launching next month (just waiting on a few inner page designs to be finished up). But if I'm looking to get a head start on backlinks, would it be okay to start publishing content now on one of the default WordPress themes? And then start publishing guest posts immediately to get backlinks? Or would Google look at the site as not being unique?
Link Building | | JABacchetta0