Can a reciprocal link turn into a one way if you no-follow?
-
If you create a list of links to top blogs in your industry but no-follow all the links, and they link to your list, will that count as a reciprical link or a one-way link by search engines?
-
I would be very hesitant to do something like this. If you want to link to something, use a followed link. If you don't trust it, don't link to it. Worrying about "reciprocity" of links in this fashion shouldn't be a concern for users or for search engines. Websites and pages link back and forth to each other all the time - it's a natural activity. It only gets troublesome when you intentionally try to manipulate rankings using "reciprocal link lists" (and I think that's why the word "reciprocal" in linking/SEO has become so maligned and misunderstood).
This WB Friday might help - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-sitewide-reciprocal-and-directory-links
-
It is a reciprocal link, no matter how you attribute it. nofollow works great to tell bots that the link is not recommended by you - for example on URL's in comments - but if you are trying to increase the influence of the inbound links I think you are selling google short. If I were them I would totally count that as reciprocal.
A better question is, if you are recommending those blogs, why NOT link to them? They are links you control, the fact you link to them tells Google what neighborhood you think you belong to. Not a bad thing.
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
-
Internal Linking - Post links vs Side Bar Links behaving differently
Hi, I have a question regarding the internal linking behavior. My website is www.hindimeaning.com which is approx 3 years old. I have approx 450 posts. Now i have a widget on right sidebar "Popular posts". A widget below my posts "Related Posts". And a simple html CSS menu above the posts (I removed menu around 6 month before so currently it will not show.) I crawled my site with moz crawler (same are the result from google crawler as well) and it shows menus links as internal links. While sidebar widget "Popular posts" and "Related Posts" are not showing as internal links. If we talk theoretically what i learn till now is "every link on a page behaves as internal link". Then why the widget links are not showing as internal links. Thanks, Mahesh Kumar
Link Building | | chaudhary04890 -
Do three way links still help in moderation?
do three way links still help in moderation? Have some friends with websites in the same genre as mine and was told three way links were better than reciprocal links. Thanks mozzers!
Link Building | | Ron100 -
How do I search for a link within a competitors website that is linking my website?
Hello, I have just been checking my link profile and according to webmaster tools a competitor is linking to my website. Is there anyway of finding this link besides looking at every page within their website? Many thanks
Link Building | | mblsolutions0 -
Internal linking anchor text with automated ASP.NET link building
Hi Everyone I really need some help here, the problem I have must be one that many have. I have a simple e-commerce style website so 1 product page can in fact get 40-50 internal links to it. These links come from a mixture of: 1. The parent category pages that the product sits on (Rugged PDA) and in turn the 10 filter pages of this category page (Rugged PDA, ordered by battery size). 2. Alternative product list on other product pages, So many products link to each other as alternatives. From Google analytics we can see that visitors like to browse product to product seeing 5 alternatives on each page with titles like "Smaller", "more rugged" etc. 3. Manufactuer pages, so we have a link to each product from each manufacturer home page where we talk lots about each manufacture we resell. We also have links from images used in the website. So its a nice usable website but we're finding that Google is still telling us in Webmaster tools that it thinks some links are dubious and we're trying to find out why. We only now have 190 external links to the website, most are internal and from the website or our blog on a subdomain. The problem we think is that we generate the category and products pages all dynamically so the anchor text is looking the same. Will this potentially create issues for us? Dave
Link Building | | Raptor-crew0 -
"gimme links" = easy to fill out profile/personal reputation links that offer a do-follow anchor text flexible link
I'm doing some SEO for small niche service sites...and aside from niche directories and some light article marketing and local search directories (yelp, etc) there really isn't a budget for content generation. I really only have a budget for profile/submission links. What are some sites where you can quite easily fill out a personal profile with an anchor text variable link that may not be THAT juicy but will stick (i.e. not a spam/fake profile type of link, but something like Linkedin). I'll start with giving away 1 www.istockphoto.com Any others that aren't obvious?
Link Building | | ilyaelbert0 -
Why does Open Site Explorer list Twitter and Facebook links for one of my sites and not others
One of my sites has the nofollow backlink listed for Facebook and Twitter while 2 other sites do not. All 3 sites have had accounts for over a year. Does the amount of interactivity with the social media profiles have to do with it? I know it is a nofollow link but I was just curious as those profiles might help with the brand signal etc.
Link Building | | 4wheelparts0