Should event write-ups be nofollow?
-
Hi guys,
tl:dr - Should articles discussing a company's event (offline content) be nofollow?
My company hosts a number of events across the year, during which we invite a selection of bloggers, journalists and interested parties from across the UK. During these events we show them the "behind the scenes" of our company as well as the manufacturing process and give them an amazing experience surrounded by our products.
We never (ever) ask for write-ups or links, and leave the day entirely open every time. If people ask about articles or links, we always say it's entirely up to them if they wish to talk about their experiences.
So, my question is: should any follow-up articles (for example reviews of the day, which bloggers will want to talk about) be nofollow? They're not reviewing any products, nor have they been paid or incentivised to talk about their experience.
One could argue the event itself is incentive, however if this is the case then surely providing content is equally incentivising... The only difference is that the content we're providing is offline?
Would be good to get people's thoughts on this!
-
During these events we show them the "behind the scenes" of our company as well as the manufacturing process and give them an amazing experience surrounded by our products.
I believe that that qualifies as promotional--you are giving them a perk that others don't normally get. So, those links should probably be tagged as nofollow links. The post or article that is written should include an explanation that the writer was invited to the event--which would be clear when reading what they posted.
Keep in mind nofollow links aren't always a bad thing--it's logical that your site have both links that have nofollow them and links that don't have nofollow on them. It's ultimately up to the individual blogger or author/site to decide, though, and I wouldn't obsess over these links.
-
In my opinion, people have been way too quick to slap nofollow on just about everything - out of envy ("do not give them juice!"), out of fear ("I cannot influence that great content on that page - it might change and even be illegal!") or various other reasons.
Would you say you have to nofollow a link given from a football fan who was invited to a VIP lounge for one game (after some raffle or whatever)? Would you say, you have to nofollow links from fair visitors who were given some goodie, enjoyed it and mentioned you with link?
I feel rather strongly about the - pardon my directness - idiocy to slap nofollow on just about anything. In my opinion they belong on exactly two links: those you directly paid for; and those you want to actively distance yourself from.
Then again, the real question might be how google sees those links, their context etc.. If you get punished for those links, I'd think that was a misjudgement - which does not help you in that moment; so if those links look very much paid for ... But as I said: you did not pay or ask for them, they are freely given. Stated generally, I see no problem from those links being just normal links. Let us not forget that there used to be just "links" - and that few people overall have ever heard of "nofollow" and "follow".
Regards
Nico
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
-
Should internal links in my table of contents be tagged as nofollow?
Hi All, I have the LuckyWP Table of Contents plugin installed. I recently noticed that you can tag your internal links with and nofollow. I understand that it's always a good idea to link internally and to pass link juice to my own content. But with detailed posts that have over 20 headings, I'm thinking that internal linking for headings may actually hurt me because it takes my links well above 100. Any ideas what the best practises are in this scenario? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | nomad_blogger0 -
Instance IDs on "Events" in wordpress causing duplicate content
Hi all I use Yoast SEO on wordpress which does a pretty good job of insertint rel=canonical in to the header of the pages where approproate, including on my event pages. However my crawl diagnostics have highlighted these event pages as duplicate content and titles because of the instance id parameter being added to the URL. When I look at the pages head I see that rel=canonical is as it should be. Please see here for an example: http://solvencyiiwire.com/ai1ec_event/unintended-consequences-basel-ii-and-solvency-ii?instance_id= My question is how come SEOMoz is highlighting these pages as duplicate content and what can I do to remedy this. Is it because ?instance_id= is part of the string on the canonical link? How do I remove this? My client uses the following plugins "All-in-One Event Calendar by Timely" and
Technical SEO | | wellsgp
Google Calendar Events Many thanks!0 -
"nofollow pages" or "duplicate content"?
We have a huge site with lots of geographical-pages in this structure: domain.com/country/resort/hotel domain.com/country/resort/hotel/facts domain.com/country/resort/hotel/images domain.com/country/resort/hotel/excursions domain.com/country/resort/hotel/maps domain.com/country/resort/hotel/car-rental Problem is that the text on ie. /excursions is often exactly the same on .../alcudia/hotel-sea-club/excursion and .../alcudia/hotel-beach-club/excursion The two hotels offer the same excursions, and the intro text on the pages are the exact same throughout the entire site. This is also a problem on the /images and /car-rental pages. I think in most cases the only difference on these pages is the Title, description and H1. These pages do not attract a lot of visits through search-engines. But to avoid them being flagged as duplicate content (we have more than 4000 of these pages - /excursions, /maps, /car-rental, /images), do i add a nofollow-tag to these, do i block them in robots.txt or should i just leave them and live with them being flagged as duplicate content? Im waiting for our web-team to add a function to insert a geographical-name in the text, so i could add ie #HOTELNAME# in the text and thereby avoiding the duplicate text. Right now we have intros like: When you visit the hotel ... instead of: When you visit Alcudia Sea Club But untill the web-team has fixed these GEO-tags, what should i do? What would you do and why?
Technical SEO | | alsvik0 -
Navigating The New Rules - Clarification on NoFollow Usage
I posted some of this elsewhere but would like feedback from some of SEOMoz community. An author. Lets say she has a book out on Relationship Advice.
Technical SEO | | CarlosFernandes
Lets say her book was even called Relationship Help, Advice and Tips. She promotes it for years on her website and implements an affiliate program to get wider reach. Affiliates link to it by the name of the book. One day she even gets a mention or two on a few Yahoo editorial type pages that reviewed said book. A few other very big name websites also link to her and even link to her (without her asking) to her domain no less and make the link say simply Relationship Advice. The links were in the body of the pages. Again, these were unsolicited reviews that she did not even ask for. In the old world - that was ok - in as much as unharmful to her site. In the new world she's toast. She has taken down the book pages she worked 7 years to build up. I don't even think that will help. People linked to her website and put "relationship Advice" in the links because that's what she gave and was an expert at. She didn't ask for those links.
2) A large well known web directory that many have heard of - choose to charge for inclusion into their directory. BUT - you can get a free link if you include some code on your website. A reciprocation that is well known. I have read many many articles and posts by many people over the years on this - and as far as I can tell that reciprocation model for free submission was OK. As long as directories didn't have search functions that served search results that were biased to paid link submissions they seemed to be ok. In terms of the free submission - I read a post way back by Matt that said as long as the directory wasn't asking for the reciprocal link in addition to charging for the submission - that was OK. So, scoot forward to 2012. Said directory has hundreds of thousands of links to it - due tot he reciprocal code that was on many of the free links. The code on the websites that got free links obviously promotes the directory by putting the main keyword in the link. ie "Web Directory". In this new world - is this OK ? That's what they do. They are after all a web directory? The company in scenario 2 with hundreds of thousands of links all saying virtually the same phrase - with the vast majority of the backlinks being from generated reciprocal links for free advertisers in its directory - they are doing FINE. Not hurt at all. The small business owner / author in scenario 1 - who had unsolicited natural links coming to her with anchor text detailing something she did and was an expert at - has gone from the SERPS. Should the company in Scenario 2 - that COULD DO something about the anchor text in the reciprocal links back to their website - now change the recip code so that it just says their brand name instead of "web directory" ? Should the author - if she ever regains from this hell - now have some kind of policy clearly stated on her website - that if any person is ever to link to her website ever again - they MUST only link to it with her name in the anchor text - and never link up words she is an authority on? How can she prevent that? So now is it up to the advertiser or the publisher to ensure we are all safe? If small business person Billy Bob inquires about a paid link on a website and the publisher dosn't tell him that the link may hurt his site and he does not not request a NOFOLLOW on it (because he is just a clueless business owner) - are they (the publishing website) liable for Billy Bob's site tanking if it does? Or is it the advertiser's job to be aware of all said issues - because I know the vast majority of Billy Bob's wouldn't be. How long has everyone got to "get in line"? There are many in the search community offering paid links on their websites in "Sponsored Links" sections - without the use of NOFOLLOWS and i don't see any devaluing of their advertisers websites. If rules are rules let everyone play them. Getting sick of the hypocrisy. I aim to get to Journeyman though just so I can get a DOFOLLOW link on this site 🙂 Incentives eh! Carlos1 -
Event Landing Pages not ranking
Hi there I need to optimize the website of a club/concert venue. The site isn't bad and has authority, but the event pages don't seem to rank and I'm unsure about the reason. There is an overview page of the events: http://www.kaufleuten.ch/events/ What happens currently when clicking on a specific event (on "WEITER", top right of each event) is that users get redirected to a hashtag page by jQuery. The href of "WEITER" itself links to another landing page (which is IMO the one we should see ranking for the specific event). Here is a concrete example: Look at the event "Tanz & Konzert: Andreas Vollenweider, Seven & ROKPA-KIDS" on /events by clicking on "WEITER", you get directed to http://www.kaufleuten.ch/events/#2790/andreas-vollenweider the actual "WEITER" link in the source code though, points to the landing page http://www.kaufleuten.ch/event/andreas-vollenweider/ This seems to be done by an AJAX load: jQuery loads a DIV with the ID "ajax-content". Apparently, this is the code responsible for it: $(„.link“, click(function() {
Technical SEO | | zeepartner
el.find('.wrapper').load(target+' #ajax-content', function() {
});
return false;
}); I know the site has good authority and should rank well. however, the event landing pages never seem to appear, but only the page /events is ranking: SERP
(Strangely, when using the site command, the event page suddenly appears above: SERP. (But I have never seen this in a "normal search query", even though we are the organisers and should at least be among the top 5). Now my question: Does Google consider this AJAX load to be some sort of cloaking? (because the href in the code is different to you actually end up by clicking "WEITER"). Will the landing pages begin to rank if we disable this AJAX load? Or should we stick to hashtags and not even create landing pages? (but then, we will have no control over title tags of specific events, right?) Thanks for your help, I'm a bit lost here as my JS knowledge is meagre... Cheers,
Phil0 -
How do i implement event tracking
Hi, Please excuse me for being too simplistic or dumb. I haven't had any experience in Event tracking so far. So, Please help me out I want to track how many persons have clicked on "subscribe for Newsletter" button on website - http://bit.ly/w7iwdh Pls can anyone paste here the code to implement this ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Can URL re writes fix the problem of critical content too deep in a sites structure?
Good morning from Wetherby UK 🙂 Ok imagine this scenario. You ask the developers to design a site where "offices to let" is on level two of a sites hierachy and so the URL would look like this: http://www.sandersonweatherall.co.uk/office-to-let. But Yikes when it goes live it ends up like this: http://www.sandersonweatherall.co.uk...s/residential/office-to-let Is a fix to this a URL re - write? Or is the only fix relocating the office to let content further up the site structure? Any insights welcome 🙂
Technical SEO | | Nightwing0 -
Browser Pop Ups - Can it be SEO Friendly and how?
Hi The designer of the company I work for is re-designing Pop Up browsers as well as inline Pop up and Drop down menus. He needs SEO requirements - how can they be SEO friendly? Thanks a lot for your help! SL. Please see below the detail: Browser Pop Ups all include:
Technical SEO | | charsimona
• a browser title,
• a logo and title in the title bar,
• a close window button and
• a call to action (that closes pop-up when clicked). Usage:
Use when you'd like to offer additional information to the
user but, not take the user away from the main page. Inline Pop up and Drop down menus. The inline pop-up & drop down is used to display additional menu options, functionality
or content on the page without dedicating real estate in the page layout. It's a part of the page HTML to retain SEO value and thus does not trigger pop-up blockers. A title bar displays when content of the pop-up or drop down is not in context of
the trigger. When used as a drop down, it is attached to the the bottom of it's trigger and left-aligned (unless it would exceed beyond the browser chrome, then it's right-aligned). When used as a pop-up, it is centered vertically/horizontally in the users browser window.
The inline pop-up/drop down can be triggered differently per instance (e.g. onclick, onhover with delay). It can be closed by: clicking on link/location that triggered the pop-up/drop down (a.k.a. close icon) clicking anywhere outside the pop-up/drop down There are 5 widths to choose from, based on the needs of the content: 196px (3 columns) 266px (4 columns) 406px (6 columns) 546px (8 columns) 658px (10 columns)0