How effective are nofollow links today (2013) ?
-
Hi,
We had a question about the effectiveness of nofollow today. Nofollowing some links on pages was to make sure pagerank flows to content which is most relevant and useful to visitors on the site.
Looking at the 2009 article, http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-says-yes-you-can-still-sculpt-pagerank-no-you-cant-do-it-with-nofollow, it seems that adding the meta tag nofollow would no longer help us in ensuring this goal. We had a couple of questions:
1. Do you think Google today only passes pagerank to dofollow links
2. Are sites today using iframes/javascript to make sure googlebot passes pagerank to only relevant pages
3. Any other best practice you would suggestThanks
-
+1 to avoiding iframes altogether
-
Er... sorry if I wasn't clear. IFrames may or may not pass PageRank, but I would hardly ever recommend using them if you want to control your SEO variables.
Best practices would be to make the majority of your links followed, and consolidate lessor important links.
-
Thank you guys!
So the best practice would be to use iFrame in order to improve the PR juice flow to followed links? Like Jesse and the article said, the number of links is what is calculated for distributing the PR juice regardless of the nofollow tag? That's just so weird...
Thanks again!
-
bah! thanks Cyrus. I missed that announcement. Makes sense!
Can't say I blame them either. But... bummer
-
Jesse,
Just this week, Squidoo announced they are now making all external links "nofollow".
http://hq.squidoo.com/squid-news/changing-link-status-on-squidoo/
Links to squidoo.com will still be followed (internal links)
OSE is based on data a few weeks old. The changes on Squidoo.com will be updated in a few weeks.
-
Okay I don't know what to believe anymore. I just added a Squidoo page and a few links on there, the source reads nofollow on all even though I completed all necessary fields in the Squidoo guide but still it's showing up on OSE as a followed link..
wtf
-
This is a complex issue, but let me share with you:
- What we know to be true &
- What most consider best practices
1. Google has stated many times in the past that nofollow link pass neither PageRank nor anchor text.
2. That said, many SEOs believe nofollow links do play some roll in search engine rankings, although the relationship is elusive and difficult to define. The 2011 SEOmoz Ranking Factors did show a correlation between nofollow links and higher rankings (but now I'm getting off topic)
3. Most good SEOs believe that PageRank sculpting either doesn't work, or is generally such a low ROI activity that it isn't worth it. (However, not everyone holds this opinion)
4. Google is getting better at parsing javascript links (although we don't know what kind of link signals are passed through them) and there is even evidence that Google passes link signals through iframes, but again we can't quantify what signals/how much.
**5. Best Practices - **Generally, you don't want too many links on a page, and you want your important links in prominent places.
If you have too many links that you don't want followed, you should consider consolidating them into a single link. For example, you can put your Contact, Privacy, Info and FAQ into a single link/landing page that leads to a better experience for users and search engines.
See this article by Rand on link consolidation. It's also from 2009, but just as relevant today: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-consolidation-the-new-pagerank-sculpting
Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.
-
no it won't make a difference to followed links all it will do is not follow or pass juice to links you chose to nofollow.
google does not parse or split up link juice it either passes on or doesn't.
-
1. Google stated it repeatedly and sticks to its decission: nofollow links are meant to tell crawlers not to follow the links. They don't pass pagerank and they won't influence your SERP rankings directly. Nevertheless, most nofollow links (comments, mentions etc) are great techniques for networking. Even if they won't have any impact on your SEO campaign, later on they can help you build partnerships, friendships and, eventually, they can lead to some pretty powerful dofollow links as well.
-
The article from 2009 points out that nofollow links will be ignored concerning the PR juice flow. To clarify the question - if we use nofollow on some of our links will we get more of the PR juice to the followed links?
Thanks for your comment!
-
It seems to me like you are suggesting that your PR can be spread out thin by too many followed links from your subdomain... I don't think this is true.
1.) Google does not follow nofollow links..
2.) iframes and javascript are concoctions of the devil himself.
3.) build links from high DA sites organically. Make sure they're relevant.
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
-
What is the feeliing of "Here's where our site can help" text links used for conversions?
If you have an ecommerce site that is using editorial content on topics related to the site's business model to build organic traffic and draw visitors who might be interested in using the site's services eventually, what is the SEO (page ranking) impact -- as well as the impact on the visitors' perceptions about the reliability of the information on the site -- of using phrases like "Here is where [our site] can help you." in nearly every article. Note: the "our site" text would be linked in each case as a conversion point to one of the site's services pages to get visitors to move from content pages on a site to the sales pages on the site. Will this have an impact on page rankings? Does it dilute the page's relevance to search engines? Will the content look less authoritative because of the prevalence of these types of links? What about the same conversion links without the "we can help" text - i.e., more natural-sounding links that stem from the flow of the article but can lead interested visitors deeper into the ecommerce section of the site?
Algorithm Updates | | Will-McDermott0 -
Blog-posts pages are dominating in search console "Internal Links". Only home-page at top!
Hi all, Ours is WordPress website and we have a blog...website.com/blog/. All the important pages in the website are well linked from top and footer menu. But in our webmasters...internal links section, only homepage is at the top. Blog-posts are others followed by homepage. I wonder why blog pages are dominating our website pages. Please give your suggestions on this. Do you think Google will give more priority for the blog-posts than website pages as they are more linked technically? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz1 -
Ecommerce SEO: Is it bad to link to product/category pages directly from content pages?
Hi ! In Moz' Whiteboard friday video Headline Writing and Title Tag SEO in a Clickbait World, Rand is talking about (among other things) best practices related to linking between search, clickbait and conversion pages. For a client of ours, a cosmetics and make-up retailer, we are planning to build content pages around related keywords, for example video, pictures and text about make-up and fashion in order to best target and capture search traffic related to make-up that is prevalent earlier in the costumer journey. Among other things, we plan to use these content pages to link directly to some of the products. For example a content piece about how to achieve full lashes will to link to particular mascaras and/or the mascara category) Things is, in the Whiteboard video Rand Says:
Algorithm Updates | | Inevo
_"..So your click-bait piece, a lot of times with click-bait pieces they're going to perform worse if you go over and try and link directly to your conversion page, because it looks like you're trying to sell people something. That's not what plays on Facebook, on Twitter, on social media in general. What plays is, "Hey, this is just entertainment, and I can just visit this piece and it's fun and funny and interesting." _ Does this mean linking directly to products pages (or category pages) from content pages is bad? Will Google think that, since we are also trying to sell something with the same piece of content, we do not deserve to rank that well on the content, and won't be considered that relevant for a search query where people are looking for make-up tips and make-up guides? Also.. is there any difference between linking from content to categories vs. products? ..I mean, a category page is not a conversion page the same way a products page is. Looking forward to your answers 🙂0 -
Dofollow Links on Press Releases: Good or Bad?
Hello, I know that Google says that you are supposed to make anchored text links nofollow on press releases, but what about just putting the site url itself (example.com) and making it dofollow? Is that okay?
Algorithm Updates | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Anyone notice a 25% + drop in Google Traffic since the 23/24 August 2013?
Hi Guys, My site has seen a 25% drop in Google Traffic since Saturday the 24th August 2013. I see it being mentioned here: http://www.seroundtable.com/google-update-17268.html but not anywhere else really. I want to find out if there is anyone else that has been hit and what it is we have been hit by. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | joblife0 -
301 Or Canonical, Which one is more effective for eCommerce Website ?
I have my own eCommerce website. I want to avoid duplicate category pages so which method is more useful 301 redirection or Canonical url?
Algorithm Updates | | yuvastyle0 -
Since authorship markup requires a domain email, how can a community website allow users to link their Google+ profile?
It seems that Google now requires authors to have a valid email on the domain. This is easy for the traditional web publication. But what about community websites like SEOmoz? How can a community website allow users to link their Google+ profile? Will community websites like SEOmoz be required to 1. Give all users a domain email 2. Ask users to validate the email address with Google? Seems overly complicated.
Algorithm Updates | | designquotes0 -
Today all of our internal pages all but completely disappeared from google search results. Many of them, which had been optimized for specific keywords, had high rankings. Did google change something?
We had optimized internal pages, targeting specific geographic markets. The pages used the keywords in the url title, the h1 tag, and within the content. They scored well using the SEOmoz tool and were increasing in rank every week. Then all of a sudden today, they disappeared. We had added a few links from textlink.com to test them out, but that's about the only change we made. The pages had a dynamic url, "?page=" that we were about to redirect to a static url but hadn't done it yet. The static url was redirecting to the dynamic url. Does anyone have any idea what happened? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | h3counsel0