Would you "nofollow" links from a column on HuffingtonPost?
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Hi all,
So, I've read a lot of posts about guest posting being dead, but what about if you have a regular column on a well-regarded site? Stop? Nofollow links?
We have a regular column on the Huffington Post and each piece has historically had at least one link (or more) back to our site. Yes, early on (like last year) we did use optimized anchor text in our links, and then calmed down on that a bit. But regardless, the links have always been relevant to the topic covered, and the topic is always in our niche (namely: budget travel in Europe).
I saw Matt Cutts' recent video in which he recommends using the "nofollow" tag on guest posts when linking to one's own site, and specifically mentions HuffPo. Thus, I'm prepared to go back to my old posts and "nofollow" those links, but I just wanted a sanity check from the fine folks at SEOMoz. Would you go back and nofollow them?
Many thanks!
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Thanks, Ruth. I think I'll do this -- double check to make sure authorship is correct (which is, quite frankly, not easy to do!) and just take it easy on the links I put back to my site in any upcoming HuffPo columns.
I appreciate the helpful feedback!
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+1 RB.
RB is a boss.
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I don't want to advise you to ignore Matt Cutts' advice but honestly in the same situation I'd probably just leave them be. I think Chris' suggestion of making sure you've got authorship set up is a good one. If you want to nofollow your links going forward you should do so, but there are probably better things you could do with your time than go back and change the existing links - especially if your inbound link profile is already pretty diverse and on-topic.
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Thomas,
I'd cut the followed links back to just a few, make sure the rest are nofollowed, and make sure that you've got your google authorship set up correctly to link back to your profile and that your profile shows you're an author at that domain. Google's already made a decision about those links and how to count them towards sites. I don't think changing the anchor text is a good idea--even if you nofollow them afterwards.
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Its a tough one, because you know they should be nofollow but they are good links on a good site so you don't want to.
Only you can make that call, but one thing I would do for sure is go back to any of them with anchor text and change them to your brand or your domain.
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