How can I check a website to see if it is "nofollow"?
-
I'm a little new to SEO, so maybe this is obvious to some . . .
I'm attempting to build backlinks by submitting articles, posting on forums etc. I just wrote my forst article for ezine and submitted it.
I was feeling pretty good about myself until I mentioned it to someone trying to sell me their SEO services and he said that ezine articles are considered "nofollow" on all their links.
Well, that was pretty frustrating to hear! It got me wondering, how many of these other sites have all their posts and blogs listed as "nofollow"? Is there a way for me to figure it out ahead of time? Obviously, there are only so many hours in the day and I would rather focus on posting on sites that will actually help me build backlinks!
Thanks for your help in advance!
-
Hey Domaon,
This happened to me once and I was furious. I would contact the publisher and show them this article.
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/
Basically it explains that the site gains no additional PR to it's other links by nofollowing your links. Who knows maybe they'll chance their stance on nofollowing links to use submitted articles.
That said there are good reasons why a link can have a nofollow attached to it. However, if you contributed an article to an ezine that selectively publishes user submitted content you deserve a "dofollow" link.
-
Ain't it fun?
-
Thanks everyone, very helpful! I DO have the toolbar, and now I know how to use it!
My head is swimming learning all this stuff!
-
Will still require a manual check before hand but 'Right Click > Properties' will give you a link relationship.
For FF you'll need - https://addons.mozilla.org/af/firefox/addon/element-properties/
Alternatively you can get a nofollow highlight plugin
FF - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nodofollow/
Chrome - http://floridaventureblog.com/2009/03/highlight-nofollow-links-chrome-plugin.html - (Not tested)
Then you can see at a glance if a page comment does give followed or unfollowed links, though you still have to visit the page first.
-
Never had used before their toolbar but its just great, i was using the SEO Site Tools but just turned that off now
-
Hi Damon,
Get the SEOmoz Toolbar, it has a function to highlight NoFollow links. very handy!
http://www.seomoz.org/seo-toolbar
Regards
Aran
-
There are a few ways. If you have the SEOMoz toolbar installed, you can click the nofollow button and it will highlight all of the nonfollowed links in pink for you.
Or, you can check the source code. To do this right click on the page, and select "view source". then, do Ctrl-F and search for "nofollow". This will show you if the whole page is set to be nofollowed (i.e. meta robots noindex, nofollow) and if an individual link is nofollowed.
As a side note, I don't do much article submission. I do believe that the links from ezine are followed, but the link juice you get from them is usually minimal. The way that an article would have more link juice on ezine is if other people from high PR sites linked to it. But, if it's that good an article that it deserves links then it would be much better to have it on your site.
Similarly, forum sigs are usually not terribly helpful for ranking unless you are targetting a really,really non competitive term.
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
-
Can I include "commissioned" posts in my link building strategy?
Ok "Commissioned Posts" meaning industry influencers/bloggers etc writing about your brand, products or services and possibly "linking" to your website (in exchange for money, or not) a) I'm contacted by a blogger who wants to write a piece about our product and naturally links back. b) A blogger says, yes, we can write a fantastic article about your brand and link to you for $$$..$ - is this ok if not at scale? What is deemed as ethical? I want to make sure our link building campaign is done within Google's guidelines. Here is currently what we are doing, or intending to do; 1. We're producing unique content on our site and sharing this with key influencers organically on Twitter, Facebook and G+ communities. This so far is working well for a new start up. 2. Writing guest posts on authoritative sites (with only our author bio at the bottom, branded link to our site, social links) sharing knowledge or interesting content which readers will want to read. Sites like HuffPost, The Guardian would be great although we're starting on authoritative well maintained blogger sites within the industry to begin. 3. Reaching out to industry influencers who may like to review our products. Many of them have got back to me stating that they "can" run commissioned posts (normally requires a large fee) which carries a followed link, branded or unbranded. Although we may have initially contacted them, and money could be exchanged, in the eyes of Google wouldn't this appear as a natural post? Please let me know your thoughts on this? It would be great to gain more of an understanding exactly what I can or cannot do when it comes to developing high quality links for our business! Your feedback (sharing any examples if possible) would be truly appreciated. Thanks Gary
Link Building | | GaryVictory0 -
Nofollow affiliate links
I am setting up an affiliate program using software built in to my shop already (x-cart). The links generated by the software do not have the rel="nofollow" in them. I'm assuming they should have? When looking at Amazon, there must be millions of links out there pointing back to Amazon and all those links are followed back to them for link juice. Am I missing something? Surely best practice here is to re="nofollow" so you're not seen to be manipulating Google PageRank?
Link Building | | sparrowdog0 -
Penalty? NoFollowed Link Profile
Could an abnormal ratio of nofollow links cause a drop in rankings? Our "Followed Linking Root Domains vs. NoFollowed Linking Root Domains" is 50/50... while our competitors have an average ratio of 90/10. The reason for our abnormal ratio is that: A) We're a relatively new site, with a small link profile so far. B) We have a WordPress plugin that allows other publishers to add our content to their site (which has a nofollow backlink included). And, as a followup question... if we removed the nofollow backlink completely, but still left the branded text there... could we potentially still benefit from it (our brand name being near targeted keywords that appear in the plugin content)?
Link Building | | JABacchetta0 -
Where can I get a list of broken links to my client's website?
I have a client who owns a website that attracted a large number of links to internal pages of their sites. Without realising the value of those links, they removed every page of their website other than the home pages that now reads, "new website coming soon". How can I get a list of every website still linking to the (now broken) internal pages of their site?
Link Building | | richdan0 -
Why does my infographic rank better on other websites than my own?
I recently created an infographic that was quite popular in my niche and a lot of people linked to it and embedded it on their own sites. Now, if you search the term I was trying to rank for, everybody who linked to me ranks higher than the page that everyone is linking to and it's the page where the original graphic was posted. According to SEOmoz, I have the highest Domain and Page Authority than everyone else in front of me. How the hell is this possible? If you want to see for yourself, just type in "hot tub yoga" into Google and I'm on the second page, http://www.swimuniversity.com/blog/hot-tub-yoga-infographic I would love some help on this and I thank you all in advance.
Link Building | | mattgiovanisci0 -
Drop in "Links to your site" in Google Webmaster Tools
Last week I noticed a substantial drop in "Links to Your Site" in Google Webmaster Tools on several of my websites. Upon further investigation the reduced links were from our sister sites. It appears that Google has reduced the number of links they are counting from links in our headers and footers from these sites to our main websites. It is not affecting our rankings or traffic. Is Google doing some clean up with what they are showing in webmaster tools for links from related, owned sites? Any cause for concern?
Link Building | | tdawson090 -
Does the feature "Competitive Domain Analysis " include subdomains?
Hey guys, I have set our domain as www.domain.com at the campaign settings, but i'm not sure if the link analysis ("Competitive Domain Analysis") does include subdomains? Does anybody know this? Greez Chris
Link Building | | lordcyphon0 -
What can be blocking the link juice?
Hey all, I recently found an issue on the website of one of my clients, so I want to hear what could be the reason for it. We are working with that client since September last year and we had created around 300 links to it. However, I recently found out using Majestic SEO and Open Site Explorer that for every page there are like 3-4 links passing value... I checked the whole report immediately, but the thing is that all links are in place and they have relevant URLs and anchortext as wel. I am thinking about an onsite issue, which can be blocking the links (I checked the robots.txt and the http header to see if they return any errors, but no luck). Any suggestions.... Any help is greatly appreciated 🙂 Best Regards
Link Building | | GroupM0