Is there any significant benefit to creating online directory listings that only provide nofollow links to our domain?
-
Is there any significant benefit to creating online directory listings that only provide nofollow links to our domain?
For context, whilst doing link gap analysis I've found our competitors are listed on local government directories such as getsurrey.co.uk and miltonkeynes.co.uk. Whilst these aren't seen as spam directories, it's still highly unlikely we'll receive much traffic through them.
The links they provide to our domain have the nofollow tag. So I wonder whether there's any other benefit to investing the time in creating these listings?
Would be interested to hear your thoughts
Many thanks in advance
-
Thanks for your input Daniel, much appreciated.
-
The main takeaway for me would be not to focus too much on the NoFollow/DoFollow links ratio. If there are listings where you can put your site and you can get traffic and rank from, then just go ahead and add your site there. A site with (no-spam) nofollow links will always rank higher than a site with no links.
Having your site listed in those directories can in fact sometimes give you more credibility or even new leads, and if the directory has a high spam rating, you can always disavow the backlink.
Daniel Rika - Dalerio Consulting
https://dalerioconsulting.com/
info@dalerioconsulting.com -
Hi Daniel,
Thanks for taking the time to respond, really appreciate your reply.
The SemRush case study is an interesting read. My concern is that if we were to create listings with no follow links on all the directory sites that our competitors use, our nofollow link percentage would be much higher than 40%. In turn creating the unhealthy ratio of follow v nofollow which you mention.
If I can take away that the optimal % of nofollow links should be ideally between 20% - 40% then that gives us a good guideline of how many of these directory listings are a reasonable amount.
Thanks,
Will
-
NoFollow links are normal and have been proven to be healthy when it comes to ranking on Google. In fact, if you have an unhealthy ratio of DoFollow vs NoFollow links to your site, it could raise red flags for SEO.
As the NoFollow attribute was introduced in 2005, the entire web slowly began to switch to NoFollow because of fear that they would be penalized by Google if their user-generated content was linking to spam sites. That entirely defeated the purpose of introducing NoFollow in the first place, and because of that Google has recently introduced and has been pushing the use of "sponsored" and "ugc" tags.
In a case study by SemRush, it was noted that for the #1 ranking pages on Google, around 20%-40% of their links were NoFollow. In fact, the percentage of NoFollow links for the #1 ranking page was higher than the percentage of NoFollow links for the entire site.
To sum it up, NoFollow links are good for your site and you should continue building links on quality sites, with a bit less regard to whether they are DoFollow or NoFollow.
Daniel Rika - Dalerio Consulting
https://dalerioconsulting.com/
info@dalerioconsulting.com
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
-
Why site linking domain and backlink are differing.
My site https://www.planmymoment.com and Mobile version site https://www.planmymoment.com/?amp Why my desktop and mobile version site linking domain and backlink are differing.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moz12pro0 -
Expired Domains for Back Links - any good?
I've read that PBN's have been targetted by Google and a recent update may have been brought out targeting these. I was going to search for an expired domain with good backlink profile in a similar sort of niche to me. I was going to buy that domain and build a mini website. I would have registered with a paid shared host of £2-3 per month and have it as a site of its own. Then when ranked on Google so i know its not blacklisted I'd link one link back to my money site. I cant see how Google would be able to penalise this. Im presuming a PBN is a large network of these that are used to link to multiple sites rather than doing what I was planning. Is it a good idea to use the tactic I was going to use or am I asking for trouble?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | paulfoz16090 -
What is future of Link building ? Any link building experts Here ?
Hey Everyone, its Muhammad Umair Ghufran I have one question about Link Building ? As my Knowledge Google Love the Quality content but Link building rank some low quality website Right ? So, what is the future of link building ; please explain indeep with complete reference for better understanding Thanks Regards: Muhammad Umair Ghufran
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | muhammadumairghufran0 -
Promoting as Affiliate by Having Nofollow Links, can it hurt
Hello, we have a PR-5 site http://www.updater.in In it - we are promoting Hosting, Web development primarily acting as affiliate to these companies. All links to the best of info are marked as nofollow, but still can it hurt search rankings as visitors are been directed within seconds to the respective partner I mean - the time which a person spends is pretty low and every page is marked as Affiliate. If yes - How to get this corrected with sites acting of such nature thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi1 -
Google WMT Turning 1 Link into 4,000+ Links
We operate 2 ecommerce sites. The About Us page of our main site links to the homepage of our second site. It's been this way since the second site launched about 5 years ago. The sites sell completely different products and aren't related besides both being owned by us. In Webmaster Tools for site 2, it's picking up ~4,100 links coming to the home page from site 1. But we only link to the home page 1 time in the entire site and that's from the About Us page. I've used Screaming Frog, IT has looked at source, JavaScript, etc., and we're stumped. It doesn't look like WMT has a function to show you on what pages of a domain it finds the links and we're not seeing anything by checking the site itself. Does anyone have experience with a situation like this? Anyone know an easy way to find exactly where Google sees these links coming from?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingof50 -
Multiple domain level redirects to unique sub-folder on one domain...
Hi, I have a restaurant menu directory listing website (for example www.menus.com). Restaurant can have there menu listed on this site along with other details such as opening hours, photos ect. An example of a restaurant url might be www.menus.com/london/bobs-pizza. A feature i would like to offer is the ability for Bob's pizza to use the menus.com website listing as his own website (let assume he has no website currently). I would like to purchase www.bobspizza.com and 301 redirect to www.menus.com/london/bobs-pizza Why?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | blackrails
So bob can then list bobspizza.com on his advertising material (business cards etc, rather than www.menus.com/london/bobs-pizza). I was considering using a 301 redirect for this though have been told that too many domain level redirects to one single domain can be flagged as spam by Google. Is there any other way to achieve this outcome without being penalised? Rel canonical url, url masking? Other things to note: It is fine if www.bobspizza.com is NOT listed in search results. I would ideally like any link juice pointing to www.bobspizza.com to pass onto www.menus.com though this is a nice to have. If it comes at the cost of being penalised i can live without the link juice from this. Thanks0 -
What type of links should be followed and nofollowed internally?
We have submitted our sitemap.xml to search engines so now that they have that should we use a nofollow attribute on the sitemap.html? Do we even need a sitemap.html? For other links on the site such as: Contact us About Us Locations and other phrases that we are not trying to rank for should we set these to nofollow?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
Link Request Email on Site`s Link Pages
Hello I have assembled a list of web-sites that have "Links" section that has a list of persons` favorite tools. Those pages have a link to my competitor. I know my tool is just as good if not better and want to request a link. I`m thinking of sending an email asking for a link and offering a small amount of money for it. Questions: A) How much should I offer? Should I offer anything at all B) Is there an email style that someone can suggest that has been tested and proven to work for this type of situtation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hellopotap0