Are links still considered reciprocal if the link from one website is rel="nofollow" and the other isnt ?
-
Im working on a site that has some press coverage due in the next couple of days from quite a big site in the niche. The press outlet has requested that we link back to the content they post about us, they said the link can be
rel="nofollow"
if we'd prefer.Id really like to get the full benefit of the link back to our website, obviously if i did a straight link back to the 3rd party press site the links would be reciprocal and cancel each other out in terms of "link juice", but i was wandering if we make our link back to the 3rd party
rel="nofollow"
will we still get the full benefit of their link to us in terms of link juice ? ie. having the link back to them, but nofollow wouldn't been seen as a reciprocal link. ?(Obviously either way there is still benefit of having the link even if it reciprocal as it will send traffic to our site, but just no "link juice")
Note - Ive used the phrase"Link Juice" for lack of a better term, any ideas on how else to refer to this ?
-
That's a pretty big debate, actually. Google's Matt Cutts has said that they don't provide any SEO value, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they hurt you. In my opinion, they're still useful for their intended purpose—informing the press about newsworthy events.
By my understanding, best practices include 1) make sure the links in the press release are nofollowed, and 2) avoid posting the press release verbatim on your own site.
This actually came up in Q&A back in March. That thread might help clear things up for you. There are a few articles linked in the original post if you really want to get into things.
Sorry that's not a more definitive answer. As I said, it's definitely something that's debated.
-
Hi Matt, Its a press release that i submitted, but i believe they are taking the info in the press release and generating another piece of content from it rather than copy, pasting and publishing.
When we have submitted releases in the past i would say 80% if not more go for the copy, paste and publish approach, is this / could this content be seen as negative by Google ?
-
Hi there!
I don't believe that would be considered reciprocal linking, so you should be safe.
Patrick's advice on handling press releases is solid. Just to clarify, though, did you submit a press release, or is this organic press coverage?
-
Hi there
I would ask that all press releases that link to you be "nofollow" - Google has some thoughts on this sort of thing, because it will appear on multiple sites.
Keep in mind, a nofollow link still provides value if the site the link is on provides traffic and value to the users that see it. If it doesn't, then you shouldn't want the link to begin with. Don't be afraid of nofollow links, just make sure they are relevant and beneficial to your site and whoever will see the link.
Hope this helps - good luck!
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
-
Multiple CMS on one website / domain & SEO
For a client we would like to work with a content hub, but their website is build on a custom CMS so we are limited in our options and if we aks their web developers they ask crazy prices to help us. So now we have the idea to build the content hub with wordpress and implement it next to their current CMS. for example on www.website.com/contenthub/ . As far as i know this is technically possible and there are no negative effects regarding SEO as long as we link the two sitemaps together. Am i right or am i missing something here?
Technical SEO | | Siphoplait0 -
Do web design footer links of websites you build have value?
Hi everyone. I am trying to build up DA for my site and create linking opportunities with my clients sites but I am not seeing any link value. I just did a redesign with another firm and we built out www.denbow.com . We have links to our sites in the footer but for some reason it's not being indexed. Can someone help me understand if it is good to put built by a href link in the footer? I've built almost 12 sites in my first 1.5 years of being in business for myself and I thought the links would pass some sort of value. Thanks in advance for the help and education. Regards, Noob Gary
Technical SEO | | gdavey0 -
My seo company has a footer link that links to my site by keyword will this effect my rankings
My old SEo company has a footer link by keyword to my site so it acts like a site wide link will this effect my rankings. My site was in the top 5 for many keywords now page 2 and 3 so I am trying to see what has effected it as we havent changed what we do
Technical SEO | | Casefun0 -
Banklink tool says my website is still redirecting, but its not... wtf?
Seomoz banklink tool says that my piercelaw.com website is still redirecting to piercelawnc.com. It was but it certainly isnt doing it anymore.
Technical SEO | | jpierce1270 -
Penalization for Duplicate URLs with %29 or "/"
Hi there - Some of our dynamically generated product URLs somehow are showing up in SEOmoz as two different URLs even though they are the same page- one with a %28 and one with a 🙂 e.g., http://www.company.com/ProductX-(-etc/ http://www.company.com/ProductX-(-etc/ Also, some of the URLs are duplicated with a "/" at the end of them. Does Google penalize us for these duplicate URLs? Should we add canonical tags to all of them? Finally, our development team is claiming that they are not generating these pages, and that they are being generated from facebook/pinterest/etc. which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Is that right? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | sfecommerce0 -
Same URL in "Duplicate Content" and "Blocked by robots.txt"?
How can the same URL show up in Seomoz Crawl Diagnostics "Most common errors and warnings" in both the "Duplicate Content"-list and the "Blocked by robots.txt"-list? Shouldnt the latter exclude it from the first list?
Technical SEO | | alsvik0 -
Should I change these "Overly dynamic URLs" ?
Hello, My client have pages that look like this: www.domain.com/blog/index.aspx?blogmonth=1&blogday=10&blogyear=2012&blogid=256 Question 1: SEOMoz say they are overly dynamic. Is it really in this case as the numbers indicate the year, month and day and do not change? Question 2: Should we change the URLs to proper SEO friendly URLs such as www.domain.com/keywords1-keyword2? The pages are already ranking well and we worry that changing the URL may damage the ranking? Do we risk the page to go down in ranking by creating SEO friendly URLs? (and using a 301 to redirect from the old URL)
Technical SEO | | DavidSpivac0 -
Rel="canonical" and rewrite
Hi, I'm going to describe a scenario on one of my sites, I was wondering if someone could tell me what is the correct use of rel="canonical" here. Suppose I have a rewrite rule that has a rule like this: RewriteRule ^Online-Games /main/index.php So, in the index file, do I set the rel="canonical" to Online-Games or /main/index.php? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | webtarget0