Disavow & nofollow from same IP
-
I'm a web developer, and as such, we run a bank of half a dozen dedicated servers.
I have 2 questions with regards to nofollow links
-
There's half a dozen sites linking back to us from the same bank of servers (across 3 different IP's but all in the same facility) because we have donated our web design services and we're a sponsor. It's not a paid link, it's a sponsorship. Should I still nofollow the link?
-
I run a couple of personal blogs on the same bank of servers. There's an absolute tonne of original content and a handful of links back to my shop. Because I own both sites, should I nofollow these links as well?
I am doing a massive cleanup before the Penguin pops his head out again.
-
-
Thanks. I'm going to err on the side of caution and nofollow ALL of the links from my personal blog to my business. In the grand scheme of things, it makes up such a small percentage of links to our store. Our pagerank won't suffer. The sponsorships are literally 10 or 12 logos on a sporting club or surf club website. For those we made ourselves that I have easy access to, I have also done the nofollow as they're all living on the same bank of servers. (we donated the hosting space and websites as our sponsorship deal).
Others where we have just given money or time and have no control over, I'm comfortable that they're legit and wont' get penalised. Asking a volunteer at a surf club to nofollow a hyperlink will be met by strange looks
Staying away from dodgy $5 deals with a 40-foot pole.
-
Very interesting question. No one really knows whether Google takes into account links from your own sites via the Penguin algorithm. If you have an obvious network for links then I've seen that penalized via MANUAL review, but can Penguin get that?
Bill Slawski writes here about a patent that Google may use to detect paid links. Part of the patent describes ways that Google could determine which sites are owned by you and devalue links between those sites.
Are sponsorship links unnatural? It really depends on the nature of the sponsorship. There are pages where you can donate $5 to sponsor some software and in return you get listed on a PR5 page along with other sponsors who have names like "cheap payday loans" and "online casino". Those are unnatural sponsors.
Technically, according to the quality guidelines all sponsored links should be nofollowed. However, if you have links from places that you have sponsored and you legitimately would have sponsored these businesses even if there was no followed link in it for you, then IMO it's very unlikely that you'll get in trouble. With that being said, if you had hundreds of these links then a manual reviewer could probably pick up quite easily that something unnatural is going on. The other factor to help you with making your decision is whether the other links on the page make sense. Again, if they have a link to you and then other links that are obviously there so that people can get a link (and not because they make sense as sponsors) then I'd get the link nofollowed.
Your personal sites kind of follow the same rules. If the links are ones that you would have placed even if they were nofollowed then they're probably ok. Are they keyword anchored? If so, then this can be seen as an attempt to manipulate Google so that's not good.
It's hard to give an exact answer, but in each case if you ask yourself whether the link was made with the intention of helping your Google rankings then you know that you probably should be nofollowing it.
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
-
How long does it take Google to remove links after using disavow tool?
Hi guys, So we're currently in the process of removing some of the less useful and more suspect links from our profile, and used the Google disavow tool to do so. We uploaded the .txt file to the search console on 7th July this year, 2 months ago now, and according to our most recent site crawl, the suspect links are still showing up on our link profile. Do we have any idea how long this is roughly supposed to take? The ideas I've found online are conflicting - anything from 3-4 weeks to 6-9 months. Which is it? Is there any way of fast-tracking this process? Thanks!
Link Building | | rawdog0 -
My Domain has a couple of badlinks decreasing my rankings, will disavowing them reduce my Domain Authority on Moz?
Good day Every Body, I have a heart aching issue, my site (nightwatchng.com) amassed a number carnivorous backlinks, I have lost rankings, i studied my search traffic and discovered that I have been hit by Google Penguin Algorithm Penalty, I was forced to believe that those backlinks were built to my site on purpose just so my rankings will drop, I know the importance of link building and thats why i follow the white hat technique. Now the big question is, IF I DISAVOW THESE TERRIBLE LINKS FROM GOOGLE SEARCH, WILL MY MOZ DOMAIN AUTHORITY DROP FROM WHAT IT CURRENTLY HAS?? I also want to know if the Algorithm Penalty will affect the subdomain (news nightwatchng.com) of my site?
Link Building | | Newswatchng0 -
Followed and nofollowed links
Hi all, When we should add followed links and when no followed? How this will affect to our site? Should all our links to other sites be no followed? Which sites we should give value? Thank you for your time Miško Macolić Tomičić
Link Building | | Eurasmus.com0 -
DISAVOW domains by error
Dear all, On jun 20 I have uploaded a disavow file including some domains by error (good links), my question is could I remove from the Disavow file these domains and update it again, so Google will take the removed domains again as good links? Thank you
Link Building | | SharewarePros0 -
Do NoFollow links count at all?
Does anyone really know whether or not links with rel=nofollow provide any value for link building at all? Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | dan.backowski1 -
Google disavow DMOZ/ODP spam sites?
Hello Looking into links to my one of my sites (over 10 years old) I've found that along with some bad spammy links, around 80% of my inbound links are from directories that are exact copies of ODP. Should I be concerned about / asking for removal / disavowing these links? Normally I would be trying to get rid of low quality links like this, but since they are ODP clones I'm not sure it's worth the effort. The sites openly state that their data is from ODP (Open Directory Project), but does this mean Google ignores them? I could spend my whole life swatting these links. Thoughts? Edit: I'm hoping for suggestions that specifically reference the ODP clone site situation. I did not create these links, I guess I should have made that more clear.
Link Building | | droo0 -
How to make directory submission & link building easy
Hi guys, sometime ago I found a website who submits my website to few 100 directories for lessthan $100. I cant find the link anymore. Can you guys please tell me how to get my site submitted to many directories easlilly? and if someone can think of a service provide? Thanks guys.
Link Building | | Uds0 -
How many nofollow links should we build to have a natural link profile
Hi guys, As with many link builders we have been building lots of dofollow links for our site, so many that mainly our incoming links are dofollow. Some pages have 99.5% dofollow external links which I know is not very natural. In your experience in terms of percentage how much should you have in terms of nofollow external links in your link profile. I noticed SEOMoz has about 12-13% nofollow external links, shall I go with this figure? Thanks guys. David
Link Building | | sssrpm0