Reciprocal links and nofollow tag
-
What happens if I link to a site using the nofollow tag and they are linking back to me with a dofollow link?
Will it give me as much power and link juice as if it was a one way link (to me) or will Google discount the link because it's reciprocal?
-
Bad idea in my book. It sounds like you're trying to cheat Google instead of win it properly, that never works out in the long-term.
-
Thanks guys. What I've done is to create a top-10 list of bloggers in one blog category. I link to each blog with a nofollow link and in return get links to my post from most of the bloggers (most will return a dofollow link). This will give my site traffic + potentially link juice (at least what I was hoping for).
I realize this is somewhat black hat borderline since most of the bloggers don't realize I've added the nofollow tag.
Good or bad idea?
-
In addition to what AndieF said, there's the possibility it could be seen like this too: Why should google give you any value for a back link from a site to which you're not going to attest to its credibility (via a do follow link)?
-
You certainly would have the upper hand in theory in that situation, however nofollow is just a rule of thumb and Google's algorithm may be smart enough to figure out it's a reciprocal link.
Ask yourself if the reciprocal link is adding value to your (and their) customers? Is it in relevant content, or is it on a "Links" page? If the link is there purely for SEO, don't bother risking it - I'd say.
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 do I do with these back links?
In the last two weeks, I've got 10 pingbacks from this http://caraccidentlawyer.cc/coroner-ids-berkeley-bodies-who-were-killed-in-recent-car-accident/ and sites like it. The featured attorney is a competitor of ours and, since the links aren't sex/drugs/rock&roll related, (and he's linked too) I doubt this is a negative SEO campaign, but I want it to stop. These blogs are basically pure spam. Any suggestions?
Technical SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
How do you perform your link audits?
What methods and tools do you guys use to perform link audits? Do you also use a traffic light system for links?
Technical SEO | | PurpleGriffon0 -
How to check Meta laguage tag
Hello, My website www.vietnamvisacorp.com only use english language. I have added the meta language as below: name="language" content="english"/> Is this correct and how to check this follow SEO condition?
Technical SEO | | JohnHuynh0 -
Internal followed links only 5
Dear members, As I understand the importancy of Internal Followed Links I want to increase them for www.ruijters.nl. What I do not understand that Open Site Explorer only counts 5 Internal Followed Links. These 5 Internal Followed Links must be the hypelinked images on the homepage? But the website in overall definately has more than 5? Any members who van help me out to fix this problem, so www.ruijters.nl can enjopy his linkjuice? Best Regards, Alain Nijholt
Technical SEO | | bmcinternetmarketing0 -
Whitespace INSIDE # tag harmful?
Hi, I understand that 'whitespace' in source code is absolutely fine and is stripped out. For example the following code is fine: Red Apples some text However, how is whitespace interpreted INSIDE html tags such as H1's? My Dev team have instructions to add H1's to a page, however they have done so like this: Red Apples (37 characters long) rather than this: Red Apples (10 characters long) Do you think this extra space will be harmful? The browser renders it fine, however if you use something like the mozbar plugin is shows the H1 length as 37 characters. I know the 10 character H1 is 100% relevant to the search term "Red Apples", however is the 37 character H1 only 27% relevant? (10/37) I've made the request to the Dev team to remove this whitespace because I'd rather err on the side of caution, but its been knocked back because the HTML spec specifies consecutive white-space should be interpreted as a single space and all browsers build the DOM by trimming a tags value - and they imagine search bots do the same so don't want to mess with the compiler. Anyone have experience of this? I've never had whitespace in a H1 before so don't know. Happy to leave the whitespace in if it's not going to be an issue. Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | FashionLux0 -
How to defend against link cloaking
Hi, I own a website where recently a lot of backlinks have been going to my old domain that 301's to my new domain. During the past 2 months I have noticed a massive amount of links pointing to my old domain. When I go to look at the links and go to the page all I see is a search bar which to me this seems like link cloaking. I am not sure what I should do. Obviously I am not doing the link building and someone is targeting anchor specific keywords from multiple domains that all look the same. My question is should I report it myself in google webmaster tools before I get hit with a filter or penalty, or would this force them to penalize me. And if I do get caught up in a penalty I would not know how to fix this since I doubt the webmaster is linking to me out of the kindness of his heart. Any advice? Thanks
Technical SEO | | dreamfire0 -
Nofollow link passing link juice
Can a link which is nofollwed pass link juice ? Please see the discussion at - http://www.seomoz.org/q/if-multiple-links-on-a-page-point-to-the-same-url-and-one-of-them-is-no-followed-does-that-impact-the-one-that-isn-t
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Nofollow internal links
Hi, we have problems with having too many links on page. Our website has a menu with 3 level sub-navigation drop down for categories which we want to maintain, for easy-navigation for the users. http://www.redwrappings.com.au/ After reading this article: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/questions-answers-with-googles-spam-guru, and some other articles, we came up with a solution. We can easily reduce the number of links per page by putting 'nofollow' on our categories links menu dropdown and create a separate 'landing page' that contains links to these categories (and allow 'follow' links for robots). Is it wise to do this? Or any better, easy solution that you can suggest? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Essentia1