Are NoFollow Links a Waste of time?
-
I share links to my blog on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and Instagram. However, my links on social media sites are NoFollow Links. Do No Follow links help my Search Ranking or is it a waste of time to share my content on Social Media?
Ytellsocial
-
John Cross - thanks for providing with wonderful information and the slide share link.
-
Neal
Sharing links on social media is becoming more important to ranking as time progresses. So my view is the better you get at social now the more influence it will have on rankings now and down the track. EGOL has nailed its importance but I think social will only get more powerful on search/ranking influence.
Google is looking at ways to amplify social as it maybe the most pure (incorruptible) measurement tool for rankings. Earlier this year google & twitter announced they were re-connecting and google would have full access to the "firehose" or all tweets. Though yet we have not seen any significant changes in causation between ranking and tweets google will be working on something given the open funnel they now have into twitter.
Positive social shares validate a website and inform google your website is relevant, current and being talked about.
Moz published the slideshare below, which maybe helpful.
http://www.slideshare.net/jennifersablelopez/social-medias-influence-on-search-going-beyond-rankings
So I recommend think less about the technical side of nofollow links and more about the positive aspects of social media ie driving traffic to your website, creating links by sharing and then owning the space as the of power social to SEO is amped up.
-
Patrick Delehanty - Thanks for sharing great content with me to help me understand that no follow isn't bad.
-
Hi there
First, nofollow links are not a waste of time, if they pass the following questions:
-
Does this link help my website?
-
Is this link relevant to my website?
-
Would I trust this site (that's linking to me) if I landed on it?
-
Is the website or content in which I am being linked from topically relevant to my website?
-
If you check metrics - does anything about the metrics (domain authority, page authority,Majestic, SEMRush traffic/ranking data, etc) make me feel uneasy?
-
Are the links from directory templates? (example)
-
Inspect URLs with blatant spam words
-
Free
-
Porn
-
XXX
-
Submit
-
Directory
-
Paid
-
Links
-
URL
-
Sex
-
etc.
-
Check for multiple domains and URLs on the same IPs
-
This can usually show link farms or spam
...then that is a link I would consider obtaining.
Second, I would take a look at this resource from Moz. Going through this will help you in the following ways:
- What your user looks / act like
- What kind of content they like
- How they digest that content
- Where you should share that content
- How often you should be writing
- Where you should look to link build based on your audience
Here's another great resource on personas to help you. What it comes down to is knowing the type of content your audience wants/needs, and where to find them to get it to them. Once you get that figured out, the rest is just finding a way to keep up!
Hope this helps you! Good luck!
-
-
thanks for providing great insight to me EGOL
-
**.... is it a waste of time to share my content on Social Media? **
This is the real crux of the question.
If people see your postings on social media and click through to your website then that is a sign that you have something worth sharing. But, it also could be a sign that you are dropping clickbaity shares. You can check Google Analytics or Clicky or whatever you are using to monitor your incoming traffic.
If your shares are productive then you have to value your time compared to the amount of traffic and possible revenue or visibility that you are receiving from social sources. I don't share my content on social media because I am not a social media participant with a large number of people who interact with me. It is not a productive use of my time. It is more important for me to write content with that time.
However, all of the pages of my site have buttons that make it easy for my visitors to share in obvious ways and many visitors do that. I get traffic every day from social but occasionally I get enormous traffic from it. The best thing is that my visitors are doing the sharing for me.
Cultivating a tribe of people who like your website is the most effective way to take advantage of social media. For this to happen you must have strong sharable assets on your website.
Another thing that you can do to facilitate social sharing is to be sure that you are showing your best, most highly sharable content with all of your visitors. Obvious links to your most popular content, your most often shared content, what's hot today content can trigger content consumption and sharing.
Learn what content is winning for you and then play your strengths.
-
You are very welcome
-Andy
-
Andy Drinkwater - thank you for the response
-
They aren't a total waste, but they don't pass any page rank.
As for them being on social media sites, this is considered to be an emerging way to pass additional signals to Google around popularity, etc, so they could be useful in some way.
If you are looking for links that do something for you, then you need to get a bit more creative in where you try and share your content and how you perform your outreach. Target sites within your niche, make contact, introduce yourself and your article to them and explain why it might be of interest to their readers.
-Andy
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
-
Adding links to FB, Googleplus, pininterest, Twitter
HI everyday we are posting new product detail url to FB, Googleplus, pininterest, Twitter. 1. Will this have any value at all in SEO? and also we get question related to the products, we are thinking to post on FB/Google plus with urls and answer.. 2. wht do you think? Pls suggest.. thanks We have blogs in http://domainname.blogspot.in/ and domainname.wordpress.com
Social Media | | Rahim119
we are also pasting the links and some write is happening there as well..0 -
Is constant contact a good source for seo links? how about best of the web? Is tweet angels a smart move? anybody got a good list of strong DA and PA link companies you can do business with and also get strong follow links from? thanks...
Thanks for all you guys do I am writing because I am trying to build a company's SEO link profile with links that have super high, and super stable Domain and Page Authorities (as well as solid Trust and Citation flows). I do this organically and even build my own sites using moz strategies - BUT, I am in need of your best advice: What are some links you can "buy" (as a result of using services from) that are strong and dofollow? Is Constant Contact good? Is Best of the Web good? tweetangels smart? I have seen several businesses with constant contact links (very high domain authority) on their profiles and as the head of business development for a mid-sized marketing firm, I want to see if constant contact, botweb, etc. are smart sources to put my clients on for the sake of the seo profile links - I am looking for strong, long-term perma-bumps for my companies and don't want to miss out on low-hanging fruit (that won't poison me in the end). Can you speak to that please? Do you guys have a list of directory links or 'whatever' links that are "get-able" by a regular guy like me that are not simply 2.0 nofollow? Thank you Ben
Social Media | | creativeguy0 -
What is regular link building plan ?
what type of link i need to build on regular basis? blog article directory any more ?
Social Media | | constructionhelpline0 -
Importance of Links and Social
I am putting together a presentation for my managers about why link building and social media is important for SEO so that we can get more resources allocated to these areas. Does anyone have advice/links of convincing arguments for me to include? Thanks!
Social Media | | theLotter0 -
Do twitter profile links in bio pass juice?
Links that are added in the "Website" field in a twitter profile are nofollow. However, links added to the "Bio" section are dofollow. This has to mean these links are passing juice correct?
Social Media | | eli.boda0 -
Question on RyanKent's Identifying Link Penalties 2012 Article
I have a question about this article: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/identifying-link-penalties-in-2012 Specifically the Section Titled: Other Google Link Penalties _"Google often manually penalizes sites and does not inform site owners of the penalty. Furthermore, Google makes many algorithm changes each year. Most people are aware of the major algorithm changes, but you should also know Google makes about 50 algorithmic changes each month which could lead to ranking changes or an "algorithmic penalty". With the Penguin update specifically, we are unsure if there will be further refinements and rollouts as has happened with Panda. On May 25th Google rolled out what Search Engine Land calls Penguin 1.1. _ What advice is available for a site owner who wants to know if they have received a link penalty or at risk in the future? Check your anchor text distribution to see if it appears natural. You can perform a fast check in Open Site Explorer of your top 20 links as follows: Go to http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/ Enter in the URL of your site and press <enter>or the SEARCH button</enter> Change your drop down box settings as follows: Show [followed + 301] links from [only external] pages to [pages on this root domain]…..then press the FILTER button. These settings will remove the “nofollow” and internal links which are not evaluated by Google as part of link penalties. You will now see a list of all links to your site which may cause you to incur a penalty. For now, focus only on the Link Anchor Text column. If 50%+ of your top 10 links show the same or very similar anchor text, that is a warning sign of a very unnatural link profile. Of course, a deeper analysis is desirable but this method offers you some idea of the problem in just a few seconds. Hopefully your anchor text distribution looks more natural than the below example. Notice how all the links show anchor text? A natural distribution would show a high percentage of links with simply the site URL. When anchor text is naturally used, it is often far less than ideal." Anyway, with anchor text looking the same - would this have a negative impact if i was syndicating content to 10-15 blogs, or if i used onlyshare and did it to 50 or something. Would this impact me eventaully in a long term sense. I tend to write articles at least weekly for these sites so that i make sure i have fresh content, if me syndicating them/sharing the excerpt to my blog pages w/ anchor pages back to my main article is hurting me by having multiple pages linking back w/ the same exact anchor text, that would be a good thing to know. Any input on this would be much appreciated. Keep in mind i'm not creating 10k blogs and having one blog post on them. They are actively posted to. With my established site they seem to work great- but with a new site, would popping 10-15 links real quick like that set off any alarms? thank you, -Travis Gross
Social Media | | choiceenergy0 -
How can I gain links by creating infographics and/or memes?
It seems that both infographics and memes seem to be popular methods of creating good quality links at the moment, but how can you actually gain links by using these? When people share the graphics they will need to put an extra link in back to you and obviously most will be via social media so will not be worth that much to Google? Do I need to email these out to blogs etc?
Social Media | | harrygardiner0 -
4 months continuous Link Building, still not getting up!
Hi.. Our page URL is : http://www.qubesys.com/psd-to-joomla-template/ And our keywords are : PSD to Joomla PSD to Joomla Template We need to get to the 1st position, and thats why, we have been doing a lot of social bookmarking and blog posting since 4 months. It was on 9th Page, but for this 4 months work, it now in the 1st or 2nd page. We need to get the #1 position, since from all of our competitors, we have the best website and everything in order . All others are either incomplete or doesnt look and work in a professional way. So, what are we lacking behind ? Got any recommendations, like what should be the plan and how to go about it ?
Social Media | | qubesys0