Links to Social Media accounts, rel=nofollow/follow and rel=me
-
Hi guys,
I just saw this rel="me" attribute and I can't find any reputable recent (within last year) information. I never heard of this and wonder if it's any beneficial in any way.
At the same time, should I use nofollow or follow on links from website to social accounts? I've heard different opinions but, again, no recent relevant and trustworthy information.
Please, kick me into right direction. However, when kicking, please give me some proof, rather than thoughts
Thanks!
-
I'd recommend linking to all your own properties using rel="me". You can see the tag in common usage on Twitter and Instagram profiles, where the user's website link is tagged using rel="me". You can basically connect up all your online properties as belonging to the same person/brand/entity - and who wouldn't want that. You're indicating to Google that all those webpages are related to you. By linking to your social profiles from your website using rel="me", you're confirming that those profiles are officially yours.
-
Now, what's about rel="me"?
Anybody has any insight?
-
Good article, but as you said, statements sometimes conflicting and self-contradicting. I guess the best way is to test and see what works and what doesn't.
-
Thanks! I'll look into it tomorrow.
-
You might be interested by this article from Marie Haynes on footer links (follow or not follow) which gives a recap of the (sometimes conflicting) statements from Google regarding footer links- and some advice on how to deal with it.
It's a pretty long article - but worthwhile reading; Marie is also member of Moz & specialised in link penalties & unnatural links.Dirk
-
Thanks.
What about too many follow links from the same website?
Example: as a webdesign company we have a backlink from every client's footer. So, we used to have them all follow, therefore from large ecommerce websites we were getting 10k+ follow links. We decided to try to do all those links nofollow. Pretty much next week we saw significant enough jump in rankings.
There are lots of articles/discussions about topical relevance of follow interlinked websites as well.
What's your take on this?
-
Basically nofollow links should be used for
- links to site with untrusted content
- paid links
You could use nofollow as well for crawl prioritisation (not leading Google bot to pages on your site that can't or shouldn't be indexed like loginpages) -although this is not the recommended usage (according to Google: "a solid information architecture is likely to be a far more productive use of resources than focusing on crawl prioritization via nofollowed links".
Source: Google
For links to Facebook you have the choice - a big chunk is not being indexed by Google (source: https://www.facebook.com/robots.txt?_rdr=p) - so you could put the links nofollow (but you could leave them follow as well). For the other ones - it could be interesting to have links to your Instagram / Twitter account to push these as well.
I would just keep all these links follow. It will certainly not hurt you.Dirk
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
-
Pinterest Link Value
Hello, First of all I know that all the links which come from Pinterest are no follow. However about 4 years ago we made a campaign to pinterest for one of the websites we are managing. Although the thing was going well we had to stop it for various reasons. Right now, 4 years later, this thing has grown big without any move for us! All these years our pins, which were great in many aspects, were continuously reppined. This has lead to the point where the Google Search Console is reporting that about 500.000 links are linking to our website from Pinterest. We know how this has helped us or not concerning the actual refferring traffic from Pinterest but our main question, and this where we want the Moz's community help, is how is this helping from a SEO aspect. Thank you!
Social Media | | Tz_Seo1 -
Language Specific Social Account
We have a managed server company http://www.centerserv.com in 3 languages. The 3 languages are international and not country specific. Should we open 3 different social media account/page for each languages (facebook, twitter, pinterest, linkedin, google+,tumblr)?
Social Media | | groupemedia0 -
3 month intern plan, thoughts/opinions appreciated
Just looking for some opinions here. I'll be hiring a summer intern to help with marketing, spreading the word, and link building. Just wanted to get some feedback on what I'm thinking of having them do. 1. Run back link checks on all competitor websites and ask the owner/webmaster if they'd consider linking to us. 2. Directory submit to any relative directories that pass link juice. 3. Find relevant websites or forums and ask for links, run broken link checker while on their site as well. Maybe offer their audience some sort of freebee or special product/e-book. 4. Create hang outs on Google +, groups on Linkedin.com, Quora etc. Follow relevant Twitter followers and post content regularly. Trying to think of a few other things as well. Looking forward to your opinions. Thanks.
Social Media | | arkana0 -
Is it possible to get high page ranking with no social media activity?
I'm curious to know how much social media effects the chances of being more highly ranked on Google. I appreciate it's important to 'be seen' by Google, but if articles/newsletters are being written, does it really matter if a business isn't using Twitter or Facebook, etc?
Social Media | | lindsayjhopkins0 -
Social Media updating
Hi, I was wondering if anyone would be able to tell me how SEOMoz records social media statistics. Namely when does SEOMoz record new: Facebook Likes Tweets Facebook Shares Google+ +1's I was wondering this because for campaigns that I am running the social media statistics displayed on SEOMoz are different to what is actually there. Thank you for any help.
Social Media | | SueCook_TAOS0 -
Does buying thousands of Facebook Fans/Likes affect SEO?
To begin with, please pardon me if this question is ignorant. I'm completely new to this whole social media thing, and somewhat feel it is overhyped. I find it really difficult to believe that social media will actually help the majority of small business owners out there like me, and that most of them are probably being misled about the powers of social media to increase sales. Because it's mentioned so frequently, I've decided to delve into it a bit more to see how this could possibly help me business. Over the past few weeks, I've become familiar with a company that sells Facebook Likes, Twitter followers, as well as YouTube and SoundCloud plays. Since my official Twitter and FaceBook accounts really didn't have that many followers, I decided to buy a few thousand followers for each account. Initially, I bought them because I wondered what would happen if a customer that visited my online store happened to go to those Twitter and Facebook pages. If I personally see a Facebook page with few followers, I probably wouldn't give them my business. I would want to go with a company that seems to generate a bunch of traffic to their pages. Originally, I only had about 200 Facebook followers (now called Likes, it seems) and maybe 25 Twitter followers. I now have over 12,000 Twitter followers and 2,000 Facebook Likes. I may end up buying more since the service was pretty quick and affordable. I'd like to know if Google factors Likes and followers into it's formula for creating SERPS. Will my website rank higher if I have 10,000 likes, rather than only 200? If so, would it be a notable increase? FWIW, I found that more people organically started following my Facebook and Twitter accounts once I had more followers. I didn't change anything about how I maintained the page; I just had more people following them. One other thing of note: these companies are almost certainly using fake/hacked accounts to like various pages around Facebook/Twitter. You can tell because my Facebook page says some city in Croatia has the most amount of 'likes' of my page. Do you think this might come into play at all? Thanks for any and all help!
Social Media | | CHEATERS0 -
Facebook Account Architectures (Pages, Groups, etc)
I'm looking for help with how to setup/manage a community on Facebook. Here is the scenario: You have a bike store owner. Out of the store he also organizes different biking training groups, for people who want to be able to meet certain personal goals. These groups like to interact with the other members inside their groups, but not across groups. Does the following architecture make sense? The business would have 1 Company Page. Then for for various different training groups, the company admin would create Facebook 'Groups' which allow for interaction amongst members that way. Does that make sense? Or is there a smarter way to do this? It seems like this isn't very unified, because there could be a bunch of different groups. Is there a way to set this up inside the business' page itself? Any other thoughts?
Social Media | | brianspatterson0 -
Social Media and Reporting
Hello All, I am looking for some opinions regarding social media plans. We are looking to provide plans as follows: plan a Facebook/Twitter setup 1 hour training Google Local set up Slideshare 4 facebook posts/mo 4 tweets/mo (original, not syndicated) content brief 2 downloadable objects (slideshows, pdfs, brochures ect) and submitted to slideshare 2 press releases and submitted to pr outlets Plan b Acct set up 1 groupon or living social deal squidoo scribd. flickr setup 2 hour training on tools 8 facebook posts/mo 8 tweets/mo google local 3 press releases 2 downloadable pieces submission to slideshare (with lead generation) content brief Plan C Acct set up 1 groupon or living social deal squidoo hubpages scribd. flickr setup 2 hour training on tools 12 facebook posts/mo 12 tweets/mo google local yahoo local 4 press releases 2 downloadable pieces submission to slideshare (with lead generation) content brief Plan D Choose your own adventure this will be where a client can choose up to 4 of the aforementioned services with a 2 hour training session and the price will be custom. I really appreciate your assistance and look forward to your wise responses!!
Social Media | | imageworks-2612900