Reciprocal links and nofollow tag
-
What happens if I link to a site using the nofollow tag and they are linking back to me with a dofollow link?
Will it give me as much power and link juice as if it was a one way link (to me) or will Google discount the link because it's reciprocal?
-
Bad idea in my book. It sounds like you're trying to cheat Google instead of win it properly, that never works out in the long-term.
-
Thanks guys. What I've done is to create a top-10 list of bloggers in one blog category. I link to each blog with a nofollow link and in return get links to my post from most of the bloggers (most will return a dofollow link). This will give my site traffic + potentially link juice (at least what I was hoping for).
I realize this is somewhat black hat borderline since most of the bloggers don't realize I've added the nofollow tag.
Good or bad idea?
-
In addition to what AndieF said, there's the possibility it could be seen like this too: Why should google give you any value for a back link from a site to which you're not going to attest to its credibility (via a do follow link)?
-
You certainly would have the upper hand in theory in that situation, however nofollow is just a rule of thumb and Google's algorithm may be smart enough to figure out it's a reciprocal link.
Ask yourself if the reciprocal link is adding value to your (and their) customers? Is it in relevant content, or is it on a "Links" page? If the link is there purely for SEO, don't bother risking it - I'd say.
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
-
Link Anchor Text
When we have run a Open Site Explorer analysis on our own site, it says that for all our internal links the Link Anchor Text is 'Help with logging in' I am a bit confused as to why it shows that. That text does appear in the header of the page, but is not the first piece of text. Why is it happening on our site?
Technical SEO | | MattAshby
Why do I not see this on other sites?
What affect does this have on our ranking?
What's the best fix? Example page that we ran on Open Site Explorer: www.rightboat.com/search?manufacturer=Beneteau&model=Antares+9.800 -
Links from Instructables.com?
This is a silly newbie question. But will posting on www.instructables.com with some valuable content and url link back to my site help with "linking"? Or do they put a no-follow on all links on their site? Thanks for answering! Ron
Technical SEO | | yatesandcojewelers0 -
External Links Discrepancy
Hello folks Apologies for my ignorance, but a SEO novice here… One of our competitors boasts over 300,000 external links, however when we analysed their links via http://www.opensiteexplorer.org we can only see around 10,000 in there “Number of Domains Linking to this Page” section. Can someone please assist and point out something which I assume is painfully obvious! Cheers, Chris
Technical SEO | | footyfriends0 -
Link Detox
Hey guys, I'm currently working on cleaning up our link profile and have been looking at several tools. Has any one used this from http://www.linkresearchtools.com do you think its worth investing in? Matthew
Technical SEO | | EwanFisher0 -
If I get a natural link for a great site and I have my keyword with anchor text in this link, how should I proceed?
If I get a natural link for a great site and I have my keyword with anchor text in this link, how should I proceed? I need to contact the site and ask to remove the link or request the removal of the anchor text and leave only the site URL? Or yet do not I need to worry about this issue?
Technical SEO | | soulmktpro0 -
Inter-link Optimization for Pages
Hi Guys, How much interlinking is okay for between pages? Can i start link my internal pages like Wikipedia does? 20,30 interlink per page? OR is it all depends on Page Authority? Can i go inter-link crazy on 1 year old legitimate site? Big Thanks?
Technical SEO | | DigitalJungle0 -
Value of Twitter Links
Let's ignore the "social metric" value of Twitter links and mentions and look at it from the pure link juice point of view. Twitter accounts such as http://twitter.com/randfish used to have their own PageRank and were treated as separate URLs. Twitter changed that to http://twitter.com/#!/randfish consolidating all their content to a single URL. When I search for "randfish" in Google, however, the result is the first URL version. Some clarification on this matter would be much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Dan-Petrovic0 -
Link Juice flow control
Hi, I'm really interested in a good explanation of how to control the flow of link juice. Most of my inbound links currently go to my home page, and I was just wondering how to maximise the link juice flow to those pages that I want ranking. Is there any benefit to nofollowing pages in my navigation that I don't need to rank? As above, but with links in my footer, such as privacy policy and the like (can i not waste link juice on these pages?) Does more link juice flow to pages higher up in my code? These are just some of the questions I'm concerned with. Basically, I'd really like to know the best-practices for sending link juice to where it is needed most. Thanks, Matt - No Yelling Driving School
Technical SEO | | strilliams0