Should we Nofollow Social Links?
-
I've been asked the question of whether if we should nofollow all of our social links, would this be a wise thing to do?
I'm not exactly getting a clear answer from search results and thought you guys would be best to ask
Thanks in advance.
-
Many social media pages link to businesses; for example, on LinkedIn, someone might link to your company's blog post; this is perfectly fine; it can help more people to discover your business's content marketing and products that you sell, so your website gets more shoppers on it.
We use Facebook to promote our garden office company within Bristol, England to help promote our summerhouses on Facebook, its helped us to sell many more of our products.
-
Google doesn't utilize or recommend using the rel="me" attribute, wouldn't ask anyone to try it out.
-
@swifttr Google does not use "rel me" microformats
-
Instead of using rel="nofollow" you should use rel="me" if you're linking to your own social media pages. This allows you to explicitly tell Google that you're not just linking to those pages, but you actually control them.
By placing ‘rel=me’ attributes on all your links to your social media profiles (from your own website), it will help search engines like Google understand and have confidence that your social profiles are actually your brand.
Source: [https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/52877/should-i-use-rel-nofollow-for-social-media-links](link url) -
I think all social media links should be nofollowed!
Do you think that your social media profile will benefit if you link to it with dofollow? No! Who will benefit from it? The social media platforms and your competitors! You and your website won't get any benefit from it, rather them!
In Google you will always want your website to be first, not your social media pages.
Anyone who want to find your social media pages will find it anyway.
You nofollow all external links except social media pages? Why do you give any credit to them? Then people wonder why Facebook rules the internet... -
Hey Matty @domain-matty that's a great test but I think in your scenario the social links are in the footer of the site passing the majority of the massive link juice.
If the same links are do-follow directly through some blog anchor text and posts from your site, it will have very little to no effect on the external link juice passed from your site to your social page.
-
@tir17 Google is not actually as smart as some may think in this respect. I tested the concept out on my own site. I had social links built into my site template and not as an addon or a plugin. When I did a link audit for the first time I found my site was passing off thousands of dofollow links off to social media sites and I was truly alarmed. I very rarely allow my site to pass off any of my domain authority so over 95% of my external links I had marked as nofollow. I have a DA40 site with some really good niche link pointing at me however, I was perplexed to find in testing if I actually gave a site a keyword targeted link it has very little effect. So I then nofollowed the thousands of external dofollow links my site was passing off to social media. It was then after a about a period of two weeks the sites I tested with keyword tagreted dofollow links actually jumped. An actual sign my link juice was in fact highly diluted.
-
@jh_offlimits as you can see here and from your own research, it's unlikely that you'll get a clear answer to this question. As with many SEO related questions, the answer usually starts with "Well it depends..."
It mostly depends on what your reasons are for doing it. Take a look at this article for more info about follow vs nofollow.
Another factor that might be worth considering is if the social links are the only external links on a given page or a site. Adding nofollow to them may not be the best idea...
"Nofollowed links are also part of a natural link profile and a site with no nofollowed links looks odd." source = https://www.searchenginejournal.com/when-to-use-nofollow-on-links/
...you could always link out to somewhere else with a "dofollow" to balance things out.
See this old thread for more thoughts about that.
Also think about the anchor text of those links and how/if that may affect things.
-
Google is smart enough to work these things out. That is a good point. However, remember the more dofollow links your site hands out. The less power each external dofollow link will give.
Best to nofollow your all your social links. And save the dofollow links for the sites you choose to pass your link juice to.
Lets talk a little bit more about this subject and give an example.
Here we have two identical websites with an identical backlink profile
Site 1 DA50
Site 2 DA50 SitesSite 1 is giving out 1000 dofollow links
Site2 is giving out 10 dofollow linksIf your website was to get a link from either of these sites. You will get more ranking power from site 2 because they are passing off less links.
Another example.
Site 1 DA50
Site 2 DA90Site 1 (DA50) is passing off 50 dofollow links
Site 2 (DA90) is passing off 10,000 dofollow linksWhich site would give you more ranking power?
Answer. Site 1 (DA50)
-
Hey,
I would suggest if you're linking to your own social links to you own accounts or property pages, you do not have to mark them as no-follow. Google is smart enough to figure out your site or brand presence on social media, you can even check the same in the knowledge graph.
If you're planning to link to other social accounts or channels outside of your property, for example to an author's social media channel page or account, who is not in your organization, such links should definitely be no-follow.
-
The problem here is link dilution. The more dofollow links your site gives out. The less powerful your site becomes.
So if you have 100 posts on your site with 4 different dofollow social links on each post. Your site is passing off a passive amount of your own authority and diluting the power of the links that you choose pass authority. Also, when your site is giving off heaps of dofollow links. It does not have as much ranking power. Its best to nofollow all social links on your website if you wish to preserve your own domain authority, SERP and link equity
-
I agree with Andreas explanation of Google rules on using nofollow /
-
Hi,
In my opinion that is not negative for the SEO of your website because you are linking to sites with more authority than your website. That's positive, besides being able to increase your social traffic, those are positive signals for Google. When you go to link to sites that do not want to transmit your authority or that you just do not see them safe to the user experience you can use the nofollow tag.
I hope it helps
Regards
-
Thats a really good question and I can only tell you my own point of view. Even in SEO-world in done and not done. I just think like this:
According to Google, use nofollow for
- not trustworthy pages you link to
- paid links
- crawl prioritization
So one and two is not the case (hopefully I can trust your socials).
To Point three, some webmasters really want to safe "PR" or "DA" with not passing it to pages using nofollow. This is not working, the PR is just send to nirvana. You can't save it, it is divided by links - no matter if the are followed or not. So the only reason in point 3 is - you don't want Search Engines to notfollow and notindex your socials (last is done if you nofollow them or not) - so my Point of View:I just use nofollow in cases Google says I should (you can btw read it here https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/96569?hl=en). Socials is not one of these cases, so I use Follow .
Add: Comments and User-Generated-Content is also a good Idea of using nofollow - dont know if Google mentions that on the given Page)
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 link? Links from linguee
Hi Everyone My site received a notification of unnatural links in Webmaster Tools and the site has had a penalty applied. I can see there are a lot of links from a site : linguee.com .de. nl. ect ..more than 30k of them! I am not sure where did those links come from! The suddenly appeared over the weekend. Does anyone has similar experience before and any suggestion? Thanks Ricky
Technical SEO | | SEO-SMB0 -
Do Sitespect links get indexed?
I put a link on one of my websites using sitespect because the next release is not for a few weeks. The reason for the link is to pass domain authority (SEO Juice) to the linked site. In my next release I will add the link in the actual code, but am hoping that from now till then google will crawl and index this link. So the question is, will google crawl and index links adding to webpages via sitespect? Here is the code: | * [http://www.](<a class=)yourdomain.com" class="" >YourDomain |
Technical SEO | | AlyssaN
| | | Link to Sitespect: http://www.sitespect.com/0 -
Paid links that are passing link equity from a blog?
We have a well-known blogger in our industry with whom we've had a long-standing relationship. We've had inbound links from his blog for many, many years. Today I noticed that we are running a banner ad listed on all pages of his blog under a heading that says "Sponsors." He has dedicated an entire page of his site giving full disclosure of all advertising. However, all of the links on his site pointing to us are passing link equity. To my knowledge they've been this way ever since they were first established years ago. I am fairly certain this fellow, with whom we have an excellent relationship, neither knows nor cares what a "nofollow" attribute is. I am afraid that if I contact him with a request that he add "nofollow" attributes to all of our links that it will damage our relationship by creating friction. To someone who knows nothing and cares nothing about SEO, asking them to put a "nofollow" on a link could either seem like a technical request they don't know how to handle, or something even potentially "shady" on our part. My question is this: Considering how long these links have been there, is this even worth worrying about? Should I just forget about it and move on to bigger fish, or, is this a potentially serious enough violation of Google Webmaster guidelines that we should pursue getting those links "nofollow" attributes added? I should add that we haven't received any "unnatural" link notifications from Google, ever, and haven't ever engaged in any questionable link-building tactics.
Technical SEO | | danatanseo1 -
Page for Link Building
Hello guys, My question is about link building and reciprocal links. Since many directories request a reciprocal link, makes me wonder if is not better to create a unique page in the website only for this kind of links. What do you guys recommend? Thanks in advance, PP
Technical SEO | | PedroM0 -
Google Links
I am assuming that the list presented by Google Webmaster tools (TRAFFIC | Links To Your Site) is the one that will actually be used by Google for indexing ? There seem to be quite a few links that there that should not be there. ie Assumed NOFOLLOW links. Am I working under an incorrect assumption that all links in webmaster tools are actually followed ?
Technical SEO | | blinkybill0 -
Link Building - Quality,Quantity, or both?
Hello SEOMozzers, As I embark on yet another client's link campaign I ask myself where best to spend resources(time and money) on link building. Typically I provide a mix of blogroll links, article syndication contextual links, social media posting and high PR one way links. I would like to know if anyone here finds one form of link to carry weight over the rest. I have my suspicion and my own theory on it but I would like to know what the moz concensus is.
Technical SEO | | TheGrid0 -
Competition links make no sense
Hello everybody, I used the open site explorer to check where my competitor has links and try to put mine there too. However I am extremely confused with the results. Eg the first link to my competitor coming from a domain with authority 91, is a download file. The other one is a link from ups, the courier service. When I click on it I get an access denied.The other one comes from samsung and when I click on it, I download an swf file. Next one, fcc.gov and it downloads a wp file. If I keep clicking on these links, in the end I am going to get a virus or something and learn nothing about what my competitor does. Any one have a clue how they managed to get linked like that?
Technical SEO | | polyniki0 -
What should i do with the links for "Login", "Register", "My Trolley" links on every page.
My website ommrudraksha has 3 links on every page. 1. Login 2. Register 3. My trolley My doubt is i do not want to give any weightage to these links. does these links will be calculated when page links are calculated ? Should i remove these as links and place these as buttons ? ( with look a like of link visually ? )
Technical SEO | | Ommrudraksha0