NOFOLLOW Links: Can we 100% ignore them for SEO purposes?
-
Some SEO articles say we can completely ignore NoFollow links. Other articles say they still matter - but then are very vague on what they count for or against. So which is it really?
I do realize that they can provide traffic, and for that they are worthwhile. But it is SEO I am asking about...
The SEO purpose I am most concerned with is the Link Profile. Separating the Follows from the NoFollows often gives really different anchor text distributions.
If they don't matter, why do MOZ and other SEO Analysis programs still include them in their standard reports? (I can see some benefit to having them as part of the in-depth reports)
So what's your thoughts? Can we 100% ignore the NoFollows for our SEO analysis?
-
Thanks everybody!
It looks I need to "sort of" consider them in my analysis
-
I've ranked a few sites with great onsite and nofollow links. There's some sort of trust/authority that is passed through them. That being said, dofollow links pass more authority.
The reason why all of the other SEO tools include them is because they work to show you as many links as the tool finds. They don't limit it based on what they perceive as valuable. They provide you the data to make the choice.
-
you're are going to need some keyword anchor text from followed links - but not an unnatural amount!
Yeah the ratio of what you need is crazily small right now - I've seen sites with some amazingly good rankings in competitive spaces with nearly blanket brand / miscellaneous anchors, but of course the sources from which they obtain these links are largely relevant to their competitive market / keyword. Like Mailchimp - 10,000 unique linking domains linking with "mailchimp" (plus many more variations below); 28 linking with "email marketing" (all from some questionable badges, mind you) / SERPs right now. The commercial terms will pop up naturally from time to time and that's fine, but to be honest, we'd stopped seeking or being happy about deliberate competitive anchor text a while ago.
-
Again I would say they both matter (follow and nofollow) but followed links are going to have a lot more value. It is interesting to look at the distribution of anchor text between followed and nofollowed links. If you want to rank high for a competitive keyword, you're are going to need some keyword anchor text from followed links - but not an unnatural amount!
-
I would look at them for the entire backlink profile, but pay more attention to the followed links when it comes to something like anchor text distribution. Here's why:
If I were Google and I were looking at a car insurance website, and I saw that it had 200 followed links with brand mentions, URLs as anchor text, "click here", etc., then that looks fairly good. However, if the site also has 400 links with "cheap car insurance" as anchor text, does that look somewhat like the site has been doing something like comment spamming? Yup, it does. They make up a telling part of the profile and Google would be silly not to take them into consideration, but they should not directly affect site authority in the way followed links do.
Keep in mind that DA scores are a Moz metric and whilst Moz attempts to replicate how Google operates to the best of its ability, it isn't a Google figure so can't be relied upon to show how Google views a site's authority.
If you've been penalised, I'd most certainly start with removing followed links that are poor in quality. I have not heard of a situation where someone has recovered from a penalty after removing nofollowed links (this doesn't mean it hasn't happened). It's the followed links that Google cracks down on if they dislike them, and the followed links that make a large difference to your rankings.
-
For what is it worth Gregory, I've built DA with almost entirely no-follow links. So I personally would say that it would be good piece of information to have regarding the anchor text of those links.
-
Thanks iStorm. I just looked at the Factors article and see NoFollowed in there as part of the grand total number of links.
What I still want to hear more about is if they should be included when looking at things like a site's Anchor Text distribution....
-
Nofollowed links still have value (especially in the fact that great traffic links can be nofollowed), but you want pure SEO value. Take a look at Moz's latest Search Engine Ranking Factors: http://moz.com/search-ranking-factors
This is their list of the highest correlated ranking factors which include link totals (follow and nofollow) - look at #12 on the list. So yes, they do correlate to ranking factors, but they are a much smaller factor compared to the value of a followed link.
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
-
Spam links - which link is most damaging to my rankings.
I have just started using Open Site Explorer and discovered a lot of spam links to my website.
Technical SEO | | A.Ronny
(I have mostly ranked on page for many years one but in the last two weeks ranking have dropped to page two)
The links have Anchor Text such as Scam - Dishonest - Drugs. Most of the of the links are "nofollow".
Will links with "nofollow" affect my ranking and if so which of the links should i priorities to remove?
Do I look at Link Equity - Domain Authority - Page Authority or other criteria? Many thanks
Ronny0 -
Too Many Links?
Search Term is Indianapolis Wedding Photographers. Site is http://www.tallandsmallphotography.com/ Their metrics are through the roof compared to everyone else's. They've dropped from 27 in May to 40 Now. 'A' Grade on-site optimization. Either there's too many links, or there's some bad links involved... I don't know which it is...
Technical SEO | | WilliamBay0 -
Links in Webmaster Tools that aren't really linking to us
I've noticed that there is a domain in WMT that Google says is linking to our domain from 173 different pages, but it actually isn't linking to us at all on ANY of those pages. The site is a business directory that seems to be automatically scraping business listings and adding them to hundreds of different categories. Low quality crap that I've disavowed just in case. I have hand checked a bunch of the pages that WMT is reporting with links to us by viewing source, but there's no links to us. I've also used crawlers to check for links, but they turn up nothing. The pages do, however, mention our brand name. I find this very odd that Google would report links to our site when there isn't actually links to our site. Has anyone else ever noticed something like this?
Technical SEO | | Philip-DiPatrizio0 -
Google Shows 24K Links b/w 2 sites that are not linked
Good Morning, Does anyone have any idea why Google WMT shows me that i have 24,101 backlinks from one of my sites ( http://goo.gl/Jb4ng ) pointing to my other site ( http://goo.gl/JgK1e ) ... These sites have zero links between them, as far as I can see/tell. Can someone please help me figure out why Google is showing 24k backlinks? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Prime850 -
We registered with Yahoo Directory. Why won't this show up as a a linking root domain in our link analysis??
Recently checked our link analysis report for 2 of our campaigns who are registered in the dir.yahoo.com (yahoo directory). For some reason, we don't see this being a domain that shows up as linking to our website - why is this?
Technical SEO | | MMP0 -
Reciprocal links / seo satellite
Hi guys, I am reasonably new to SEO. We operate a site. Lets call it brand.com. I would like to build up SEO juice and traffic for our site reasonably quickly, but with a view to not harming us in the long term. There are a large number of very small blogs in our space (> 100). Many of them are private blogs. I would like to gain links from these blogs. None of these blogs will send large amounts of traffic to our site on an individual basis, but in sum they provide both decent traffic and SEO juice. Leaving SEO out of mind I would offer them all returning links in exchange for linking to our blog (brand.com/blog) or our main domain (brand.com). They are decent quality sites that may be of interest to our users. They are not competitors and will not take any of our business away. Problem: I want to avoid being punished by Google for link exchange. In an ideal world I would event like to profit from these links from a SEO perspective. I have thought of a work around, but am not sure whether this will work at all. I will create 3 satellite pages: brand-partners.com, brand-tips.com and brand-blog-roll.com. I will feature links to these three sites prominently on my main site and my blog. This will provide these three sites with some SEO juice and trust from bloggers. In return for linking to my site, I will offer the small blogs links from these three "satellite" pages. I will try to diffuse the picture by adding some random links and obtaining some random links that I don't link back to. My approach is to always provide value to our users. Apart from the diffusing bit above I would say that creating these small hubs provides value (as we recommend valuable sites), while still enabling us to have some SEO effect. As I am reasonably new to SEO, I don't know whether the above is already a standard tactic employed or whether it contains some horrible pitfall that I should be aware of. I would be very thankful for any tips or feedback! Thank you and all the best, Daan
Technical SEO | | daan.loening0 -
HTTP301 or link ?
We have a page on a website (let's name it ABC) which ranks very well on Google for a specific keyword but this keyword is not the main activity of website ABC. For this reason we created website XYZ for offering the services related to the specific keyword. How shall we redirect the visitors from website ABC to website XYZ so XYZ gets all the weight ? Is it best to do an HTTP301 from the specific page on site ABC or from site ABC, remove nearly all content related to the keyword and create a link to website XYZ ? Your advice is well appreciated.
Technical SEO | | netbuilder0 -
Browser Pop Ups - Can it be SEO Friendly and how?
Hi The designer of the company I work for is re-designing Pop Up browsers as well as inline Pop up and Drop down menus. He needs SEO requirements - how can they be SEO friendly? Thanks a lot for your help! SL. Please see below the detail: Browser Pop Ups all include:
Technical SEO | | charsimona
• a browser title,
• a logo and title in the title bar,
• a close window button and
• a call to action (that closes pop-up when clicked). Usage:
Use when you'd like to offer additional information to the
user but, not take the user away from the main page. Inline Pop up and Drop down menus. The inline pop-up & drop down is used to display additional menu options, functionality
or content on the page without dedicating real estate in the page layout. It's a part of the page HTML to retain SEO value and thus does not trigger pop-up blockers. A title bar displays when content of the pop-up or drop down is not in context of
the trigger. When used as a drop down, it is attached to the the bottom of it's trigger and left-aligned (unless it would exceed beyond the browser chrome, then it's right-aligned). When used as a pop-up, it is centered vertically/horizontally in the users browser window.
The inline pop-up/drop down can be triggered differently per instance (e.g. onclick, onhover with delay). It can be closed by: clicking on link/location that triggered the pop-up/drop down (a.k.a. close icon) clicking anywhere outside the pop-up/drop down There are 5 widths to choose from, based on the needs of the content: 196px (3 columns) 266px (4 columns) 406px (6 columns) 546px (8 columns) 658px (10 columns)0