Can too many NoFollow links damage your Google rankings?
-
I've been trying to recover from a Google algorithm change since Sep 2012, so far without success. I'm now wondering if the nofollow on external links in my blog posts are actually doing me damage. http://www.smartdatinguk.com/blog/
Does anyone have any experience of this?
-
Impact of nofollow links from a technical perspective
Matt Cutts is a distinguished engineer at Google, and as per him; the simple answer is: No, too many nofollow links have no effect on your website’s PageRank. These links were created to ensure that generating direct traffic to a website could be used as much as needed without compromising the overall quality of the website’s SEO. Therefore, from a technical perspective, the PageRank algorithm will ignore any and all nofollow links. These links are automatically dropped from the link graph as the web crawlers index the web. However, there are exceptional cases where nofollow links will have an effect on the website ranking.
Special cases where too many nofollow links have an impact
It is possible to use nofollow links to spam websites on the internet trying to generate traffic for whatever product you are promoting. This tactic was once used on blogs where a spammer would post outrageous or absurd comments so as to attract attention and generate traffic. This is deception and manipulation, and where it is done on a large scale, Google will take notice. If many people report you for using nofollow links to spam, Google reserves the right to take action with intent of stopping you. In such cases, they will downgrade the PageRank the offending website gets.
-
I've done 2 link cleaning exercises and disavow requests so far but haven't removed those. I can see they are bad links but they're actually from decent, relevant sites in most instances which is why I haven't touched them yet.
What do you think is most damaging, run-of-site links or keyword link text?
-
Having checked your link profile it is very spammy. 25% of your backlinks are for the term "speed dating", 9% for "singles holidays", and thats just a start.
But that is not all. You have alot of domains sending many links back to your site for the same keyword. Sitewide links can cause penalties, and will need to be cleaned up.
I recommend using ahrefs \ majestic to find those links and dissavow \ get them to change to no follow etc.
A few examples of sites causing you problems are (but there are many others):
-
In the sense you're talking about, yes. Google won't count those nofollowed links against you.
-
Usually nofollow links don't hurt your website. But there are some extreme cases in which they could.
For more info check this video by Matt Cutts from Google -> Can nofollow links hurt my site's ranking?
-
You don't want to nofollow every outbound link from your site but even if 99% of them are nofollowed, it won't hurt your rankings and I wouldn't consider that to be holding back your recovery.
-
So if you can't have too many nofollow links to upset Google, does Google respect the nofollow 100%?
-
NoFollows on links in your blog that point off the site are not hurting you.
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
-
What should I do if same content ranked twice or more on Google?
I have a Bangla SEO related blog where I have written article like "Domain Selection" "SEO Tools" "MOZ" etc. All the article has been written in Bengali language. I have used wp tag for every post. I have submit xml site map generated by Yoast SEO. However I kept "no index" for category. I know well duplicate content is a major problem for SEO. After publishing my content Google ranked them on 1st page. But my fear is that most of the content twice or more. The keywords are ranked by post, wp post tag and Archive. Now I have a fear of penalty. Please check the screenshot and please suggest me what to do. uRCHf yq7m2 rSLKFLG
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AccessTechBD0 -
Why is Google ranking irrelevant / not preferred pages for keywords?
Over the past few months we have been chipping away at duplicate content issues. We know this is our biggest issue and is working against us. However, it is due to this client also owning the competitor site. Therefore, product merchandise and top level categories are highly similar, including a shared server. Our rank is suffering major for this, which we understand. However, as we make changes, and I track and perform test searches, the pages that Google ranks for keywords never seems to match or make sense, at all. For example, I search for "solid scrub tops" and it ranks the "print scrub tops" category. Or the "Men Clearance" page is ranking for keyword "Women Scrub Pants". Or, I will search for a specific brand, and it ranks a completely different brand. Has anyone else seen this behavior with duplicate content issues? Or is it an issue with some other penalty? At this point, our only option is to test something and see what impact it has, but it is difficult to do when keywords do not align with content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lunavista-comm0 -
How to recover google rank after changing the domain name?
I just started doing SEO for a new client. The case is a bit unique as they build a new website and for some reason lunched in under another domain name. Old name is foodstepsinasia.com and new one is foodstepsinasiatravel.com OLD one is a respected webites with 35 in MOZ page authority and with +15000 incomming link (104 root domains) NEW one is curently on 0 The programmer has just that build the new website has set it up so that when people write or find the old domain name it redirect to the front page of the new website with the new domain name. this caused that my friends lost a lot of their rankings was so I believ it was a very bad solution. But I also think I can get most of the old rankings back, but my question is what to do now to get as much back of the rankings as fast as possible?? A) I believe I must change the domain name back to foodstepsinasia.com on the new website ? O B) Should I on the old website try finding the url of the pages with most page authority and recreate these urls on the new website or should i redict them to a page with related content? Looking forward to feedback from someone who have experience with similar cases. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nm19770 -
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 -
Can you recover from "Unnatural links to your site—impacts links" if you remove them or have they already been discounted?
If Google has already discounted the value of the links and my rankings dropped because in the past these links passed value and now they don't. Is there any reason to remove them? If I do remove them, is there a chance of "recovery" or should I just move forward with my 8 month old blogging/content marketing campaign.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Beastrip0 -
GOOGLE Rankings
We built a site for one of our clients about 3 years ago and added Meta tags to each page of the site. But when you do a google search on the keywords the site still does not come up. I thought it would be spidered into the system by now. Web Site - www.specialtysealgroup.com Let me know what we can do to improve our GOOGLE rankings.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | thine1230 -
Links on Google Notebook
I have used OSE to look at links of a competitors site and notice they have dozens for links from Google Notebook pages eg http://www.google.pl/notebook/public/05275990022886032509/BDQExDQoQs8r3ls4j This page has a PA of 48 Is this a legitimate linking strategy?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seanmccauley0 -
How Many Results Does Google Show From The Same Domain?
Hi, From a few years ago I know 'double listings' were considered prime real estate. These days I can see triple listing, google places, PDFs all from the same domain. Im confused as the what the standard is now. I have been asked for some reverse SEOing to push down some bad press (keyword is the brand name) and am curious to know whether I still can get some high results by making a sub domain, optmising some more internal pages etc. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DigitalLeaf0