What are no followed links?
-
Hi there,
probably this is so self explaining that I didn't find it described in the tutorial about learning to use PRO or here in Q&Α. But remember, there is no dumb question What are the followed vs no followed links? I understand followed links as backlinks to my site, but what is a no followed link?
Thank you in advance!
-
SEOmoz linkscape presents both, that's why you can filter them to see just external nofollowed links or just internal ones.
-
thanks, but I am still confused about what the no followed links SEOMOZ talks about are. Are they external backlinks to my site that I submitted to no follow policy directories? Or internal links I put a no follow on? Or both?
-
Linkscape doesn't crawl and "index" all the links existing in the web. Just those that they consider having a real value.
If you want to see if you link building in directories is working, I suggest you to use Majestic SEO, that has a larger but less "selected" links' crawling.
-
Follow and NoFollow are commands you can give to bots about a link they find in a page:
- follow > follow the link and visit the page linked.
- nofollow > don't follow the link and don't visit the page linked.
Please note that I'm not talking about external site or the same sites, but both.
Then, followed links are likes opened pipes through which a % of link juice of the page where the link is pass to the linked pages. Nofollowed links have that "pipe" closed and do not pass link juice (that evaporates, as stated long time ago by Matt Cutts: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/
Related to the SEOmoz tools, for instance with Open Site Explorer you can filter followed links and nofollowed one, and also at the same time "internal links" and "external links".
When an internal link is nofollowed (being links by default followed), that is because of your own decision when creating the internal navigation of the site, and it does not depend by external factors
When an external link is nofollowed, is because the site that links to you maybe use a nofollow policy. That is a classic in blogs'comments.
-
Well, I actually searched on the Internet for directory catalogues and submitted my site on over 100 of them. Now if I type "www.freegamesonline.gr" on Google I find about half of them linking to my site, and Seomoz pro only shows 20 of them, which is rather confusing. Why does this happen?
Also I find my competitors got their links on sites like fcc.gov which seems to contain no links to external sites - i have no idea how on earth they did that - some king of hack? Even more unanswered questions!
Anyway, I will keep exploring seomoz for builgind linking strategies but still I have no clue how to interpret the metrics, I have attached a screenshot again. So what are the no followed links pro reports and how did I manage to do that while my competitors were more clever? It seems so self-explaining but it confuses me. None of the tutorials helped.
-
Great questions.
The response I offered pertained to outbound links from your site to other sites. If you are looking at your SEOmoz PRO tools, I need to ask which tool specifically to understand whether you are looking at outbound links from your site, or other sites linking to you.
For example, your crawl report covers all links that exist on your site. This report would cover your internal links and links you create to other site.
The Open Site Explorer tool shows only inbound links to your site from other sites. Your campaign tool works with both OSE and the crawler.
Many free directories will add your listing as a nofollow'd link, but if you pay them they will then change the link to a follow'd link. This practice is against Google's terms and I strongly recommend you avoid most directories. The overwhelming majority of directories provide no benefit to your site whatsoever. I recall a recent report where someone created 100 directory links and exactly one of them actually registered as having any value.
Many forums and blogs automatically nofollow any user generated content. If a user types a post and says "hey, visit xyz.com, it's a great site" then a nofollow link will be generated to that site.
A huge part of SEO is working to generate followed links. There are many people employed full-time as link builders. It is basically a form of marketing. The more authentic links you earn, the better. The problem is there are so many scams and worthless links it can be challenging to learn the process.
In short, ask yourself if a link looks legitimate. If a real gaming site such as IGN.com provides an honest link to your site saying "hey, we offer pay-to-play games but if you are only interested in free-to-play then visit xyz.com because it is a great site", then that is a good link. Likewise, if you get mentioned by cbs.com or other credible sites, that is great as well.
On the other hand, if a free directory will link to any site "just enter your URL and we will link to you", clearly that type of link farm has no value.
-
Thanks Ryan, I now understand what a no followed link is, but how does this apply to my site? I mean are the no followed links mentioned in PRO (followed vs no followed) external backlinks to my site not followed by search engines because, for example, I submitted them to directories that put a no follow on the links? All of my competition seems to have followed links and I have a lot no followed, so I am trying to understand which links are these and what I have done wrong.
-
As a site owner, when you offer a link to another site you are endorsing the site. If I recall, your site is focused on gaming. You may link to ncsoft.com since they create many online games. You also might link to the developer or distributor of many games as well such as lineage2.com. When you create those links, you are encouraging your site's readers to click on those links which can drive traffic to the site. If you leave those as follow links, you are basically saying "this is a good site, feel free to visit them".
Sometimes you are unsure about a site. For example, you may offer a forum on your site where you ask members to "post your favorite sites here". Since anyone can post a link, you don't know if the site they will link to can be trusted. Some people may post links to porn or other bad sites. If you allow those links to be followed, a search engine will believe you approve of the site. If you link to a "bad" site, then you can be penalized. For that reason, it is recommended site owners nofollow any links which they do not trust.
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
-
How Long Do The Link Tracking Lists Take To Update?
Hi, How long do the link tracking lists take to update? It's been over a week and each is still showing a red cross. The reason I created it was because I migrated to a new domain name and Moz is still showing the backlinks on the old property and not the new (the domain swap happened in December 2020). I can see that Ahrefs has picked up all of the links - Both new and redirected - but Moz has not. When will this be reflected in Moz as it has already been over three months? Is there a reason for the above questions? I appreciate any response here. 🙂
Moz Pro | | Smarter_Finances3 -
Crawl Diagnostics saids a page is linking but I can't find the link on the page.
Hi I have just got my first Crawl Diagnostics report and I have a questions. It saids that this page: http://goo.gl/8py9wj links to http://goo.gl/Uc7qKq which is a 404. I can't recognize the URL on the page which is a 404 and when searching in the code I can't find the %7Blink%7D in the URL which gives the problems. I hope you can help me to understand what triggers it 🙂
Moz Pro | | SebastianThode0 -
How reliable are the external link metrics found in the Open Site Explorer research tool?
I have noticed huge discrepancies with the external link metrics of one of the websites that I have been tracking since the launch of the website. Shortly after launch I captured a screenshot of the external link metrics to the website to track the progress. As I look at the same Open Site Explorer metrics now (2 months later) it has increased by 900% which is very inconsistent with the amount of link building done for the client. Thanks!
Moz Pro | | michaeleagar0 -
Competitive Link Analysis Tool?
Hi, I ran a competitive link analysis report today and back came quite a few domains that 2 or more of my 5 main competitors link from. Is it worth me submitting links to these sites? And would i be best served submitting my homepage URL or submitting a brand page such as Creative Recreation Trainers? I want to target that brand but don't want to do it if my main URL is better? Any ideas? See below my report. | Subdomain | Subdomain mR | Subdomain mT | # Competitors | # Linking Pages | Link Acquired |
Moz Pro | | YNWA
| t.co/ | 8.05 | 8.04 | 2 | <a>2</a> | |
| ww2.cox.com/ | 5.99 | 6.50 | 2 | <a>3</a> | |
| www.littlewebdirectory.com/ | 5.90 | 5.59 | 2 | <a>2</a> | |
| www.amazines.com/ | 5.69 | 5.66 | 2 | <a>3</a> | |
| svpply.com/ | 5.66 | 5.53 | 3 | <a>20</a> | |
| www.jayde.com/ | 5.64 | 5.68 | 3 | <a>4</a> | |
| www.pearltrees.com/ | 5.58 | 5.81 | 2 | <a>2</a> | |
| www.businessseek.biz/ | 5.52 | 5.51 | 2 | <a>3</a> | |
| www.a1articles.com/ | 5.50 | 5.22 | 3 | <a>9</a> | |
| www.linksilo.de/ | 5.48 | 5.23 | 2 | <a>15</a> | |
| www.alistsites.com/ | 5.46 | 5.24 | 2 | <a>38</a> | |
| www.the-free-directory.co.uk/ | 5.37 | 5.07 | 2 | <a>20</a> | |
| www.walhello.com/ | 5.30 | 4.97 | 2 | <a>2</a> | |
| www.quarkbase.com/ | 5.14 | 5.12 | 2 | <a>2</a> | |
| snipsly.com/ | 5.13 | 5.20 | 2 | <a>21</a> | |
| www.counterdeal.com/ | 5.12 | 5.07 | 2 | <a>2</a> | |
| www.01webdirectory.com/ | 5.03 | 5.03 | 2 | <a>2</a> | |
| www.2addlink.info/ | 4.92 | 4.58 | 3 | <a>4</a> | |
| www.fuk.co.uk/ | 4.64 | 5.00 | 3 | <a>20</a> | |
| www.final-fantasy.us/ | 4.63 | 4.77 | 2 | <a>2</a> | |
| oyax.com/ | 4.42 | 4.61 | 2 | <a>4</a> | |
| www.touchretail.co.uk/ | 4.33 | 4.21 | 2 | <a>4</a> | |
| tptbtv.cold10.com/ | 4.27 | 4.86 | 3 | <a>1</a> | |
| www.mastbusiness.com/ | 4.23 | 4.34 | 2 | <a>2</a> | |
| www.competitionhunter.com/ | 4.16 | 4.21 | 2 | <a>6</a> | |0 -
What Exactly Does "Linking Root Domains" mean??
What Exactly Does "Linking Root Domains" mean?? And how does it affect your ranking for certain Keywords?? Thanks
Moz Pro | | Caseman57 -
About Links API
I'ma Japanese, So, I'm sorry in poor English.
Moz Pro | | flaminGoGo
Question about the API.
Will be returned as unauthorized api 'links' to the following request. http://lsapi.seomoz.com/linkscape/links/domain/blog?Scope=page_to_page&Sort=domain_authority&AccessID=xxx&Expires=xxx&Signature=xxx Is it OK in the request parameters?0 -
How long does it take for a link to appear in ose ?
HI, So how long does it take for ose to index a link ? Say from a pr 9 site like yahoo cheers, vishal
Moz Pro | | vishalkhialani0 -
Moz Toolbar Analyzer - Links
On the moz toolbar there is an Analyze tool. The third tab is for viewing Page Attributes. That page contains a section called On Page Links. I can see the External Link count, but I need to drill down further to look at these external links. I have viewed a page and don't see the external links this tool is seeing. I have searched the page, the source code, and used other tools on the page. The numbers don't match up. Is there a tool which lists all the external links on a given page?
Moz Pro | | RyanKent0