How important is a good "follow" / "no-follow" link ratio for SEO?
-
Is it very important to make sure most of the links pointing at your site are "follow" links? Is it problematic to post legitimate comments on blogs that include a link back to relevant content or posts on your site?
-
Like Gian says, you are looking at it a little backwards. It's not problematic at all to get backlinks from comments, just make sure you're not being spammy or overdoing it.
If you really want to look at follow/nofollow ratios, look at your competitor's backlink profiles in OSE or similar.
-
Mmm...
I think you are looking at this issue from the wrong perspective.
I mean, even though it quite obvious that having a percentage of followed links bigger than the nofollowed ones (link equity), that doesn't mean that you should not do - for instance - good comments to great posts in amazing posts (both authoritative and not).
Those links in comments, if editorially justified and with a natural anchor text are not a problem at all, if they are in site where the overall quality is high, also considering all the other comments.
Linking out to your own site within a comment, though, should be done just if it really means adding value to the post you are commenting... then, if it is considered spam or less, it is also depending on the judgement of the blog owner. So, I repeat, using natural anchor text or even the same URL as anchor, can be somehow as you were telling him: "Ok, I'm linking to my content, but I swear it adds value to your content and improves it". Usually the comment doesn't end in the spam folder.
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
-
Setting up the right Geo targeting/language targeting settings and not to brake the SEO
Hello the great Moz Community! Gev here from BetConstruct, a leading gaming and betting software provider in the world. Our company website is performing great on SERP. We have 20+ different dedicated pages for our 20+ softwares, event section, different landing pages for different purposes. We also run a blog section, Press section, and more... Our website's default language is EN. 4 months ago we opened the /ru and /es versions of the website! I have set the correct hreflang tags, redirects, etc.. generated correct sitemaps, so the translated versions started to rank normally! Now our marketing team is requesting different stuff to be done on the website and I would love to discuss this with you before implementing! There are different cases! For example: They have created a landing page under a url betconstruct.com/usa-home and want me to set that page as the default website page(ie homepage), if the user visits our website from a US based IP. This can be done in 2 different ways: I can set the /usa-home page as default in my CMS, in case the visitor is from US and the address will be just betconstruct.com(without /use-home). In this case the same URL (betconstruct.com) will serve different content for only homepage. I can check the visitor IP, if he is from US, I can redirect him to betconstruct.com/usa-home. In this case user can click on the logo and go to the homepage betconstruct.com and see the original homepage. Both of the cases seems to be dangerous, because in the 1st case I am not sure what google will think when he sees different homepage from different IPs. And in the 2nd case I am not sure what should be that redirection. Is it 301 or 303, 302, etc... Because Google will think I don't have a homepage and my homepage redirects to a secondary page like /usa-home After digging a lot I realised that my team is requesting from me a strange case. Because the want both language targeting(/es, /ru) and country targeting (should ideally be like /us), but instead of creating /us, they want it to be instead of /en(only for USA) Please let me know what will be the best way to implement this? Should we create a separate version of our website for USA under a /us/* URLs? In this case, is it ok to have /en as a language version and /us as a country targeting? What hreflangs to use? I know this is a rare case and it will be difficult for you to understand this case, but any help will be much appreciated! Thank you! Best,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | betconstruct
Gev0 -
Value in adding rel=next prev when page 2-n are "noindex, follow"?
Category A spans over 20 pages (not possible to create a "view all" because page would get too long). So I have page 1 - 20. Page 1 has unique content whereas page 2-20 of the series does not. I have "noindex, follow" on page 2-20. I also have rel=next prev on the series. Question: Since page 2-20 is "noindex, follow" doesn't that defeat the purpose of rel=next prev? Don't I run the risk of Google thinking "hmmm….this is odd. This website has noindexed page 2-20, yet using rel=next prev." Even though I do not run the risk, what is my upset in keeping rel=next prev when, again, the pages 2-20 are noindex, follow. thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
New Website Look/Structure - Should I Redirect or Update Pages w/ Quality Inbound Links
This questing is regarding an ecommerce website that I hand wrote(html) in 1997. One of the first click and buy websites, with cart/admin system that I also developed. After all this time, the Old plain HTML look just doesnt cut it. I just updated to XHTML w/ a very modern look, and believe the structured data will index better. All products and current category pages will have the identical vrls taken from the old version. I decided to go with the switch after manual penalty, which has since been removed... I figured now is the time to update. My big question is that over the years, a lot of my backlinks came from products/news that are either no longer relevant or just not available. The pages do exist, but can only be found from the Outbound Link Source. For SEO purposes, I have thought a few things I can do but can't decide which one is the best choice. Any Insight or suggestions would be Awesome! 1. Redirect the old link to the most relevant page in my current catalog. 2. Add my new header/footer to old page(this will add a navigation bar w/ brands/cats/etc) 3. Simply add a nice new image to the top of these pages linking home & update any broken/irrelevant links. I was also considering adding just the very top 2 inches of my header(logo,search box, phone, address) *note, some of these pages do receive some traffic. Nothing huge, but consider the 50+ pages, it ads up.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants0 -
What is the difference between link rel="canonical" and meta name="canonical"?
Hi mozzers, I would like to know What is the difference between link rel="canonical" and meta name="canonical"? and is it dangerous to have both of these elements combined together? One of my client's page has the these two elements and kind of bothers me because I only know link rel="canonical" to be relevant to remove duplicates. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Linking to urls with Query Parameters good for SEO?
Hey guys, I am currently buying link ad spots on sites (hardcoded, not using ad networks). I track the each link I buy and the sales they generate with query parameters such as : http://www.mydomain.com/?r=top_menu_nav_on_seomoz My question is : do these links still pass link juice? I have my canonical already set to http://www.mydomain.com Also, in Webmaster tools I have it set to ignore anything after /?r= The way I see it, a link is a link. Naturally I would prefer to send directly to my root domain, however, these links cost a lot of money and I like to track my results. Does anyone have experience with SEO and working with query parameters?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CrakJason0 -
Is there an optimal ratio of external links to a page vs internal links originating at that page ?
I understand that multiple links fro a site dilute link juice. I also understand that external links to a specific page with relevant anchortext helps ranking. I wonder if there is an ideal ratioof tgese two items
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Apluswhs0 -
"Iffy" Question
Hi Guys and Girls, I have been studying SEO for a few years now. I have learned quite a bit along the way. One thing that I have had BEAT in my head is "Create Quality Content". When I used to ask "What Should I do to get more visits?" I was told, "Create QUALITY CONTENT". That was great advice, and I have done that. I have created over 600 pages since then. I went from 200 visits per month to now just over 5,000. Even more importantly, I have increased my lead conversions. I say all of this because, about two years ago I told a competitor basically how you rise up in the search engines. He turned around and bought a domain that was 3 years older than mine and had a main keyword in the domain. He then just started building links with a bunch of blog comments and forum posts (The blog comments have like 2,000 comments on them). In other words, he did what I would NOT do yet he is #5 for this keyword and I am #9. (Although, I turned around and built another site and now I am at #13 for that and it has been up for a year now. I say all this, not to bore you but to tell ask you, DOES IT WORK IF YOU DO BLOG COMMENTING, FORUM POSTING, LINK WHEELS, ETC. Do you obtain higher rankings? Should I be doing a bit of video marketing? I know a lot of people will say, "Why would you spend your time on things that may slightly impact your rankings, but obviously it did something for this guy. Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | blake-766241 -
Disabled/Accessibilty vs SEO?
Can anyone point me to resources that helps website owners balance these two issues? Or how to SEO a site meant for disabled users? or how to make an SEO'd site more accessible? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mjcarrjr0