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  4. Can too many NoFollow links damage your Google rankings?

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Can too many NoFollow links damage your Google rankings?

Intermediate & Advanced SEO
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  • benners
    benners last edited by Sep 25, 2013, 12:07 PM

    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?

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • SandyPardal
      SandyPardal last edited by Oct 24, 2013, 7:28 AM Oct 24, 2013, 7:28 AM

      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.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • topic:timeago_earlier,28 days
      • benners
        benners last edited by Sep 26, 2013, 6:46 AM Sep 26, 2013, 6:46 AM

        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?

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Jonathan1979
          Jonathan1979 last edited by Sep 26, 2013, 6:44 AM Sep 25, 2013, 12:29 PM

          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):

          speeddatingcardiff.co.uk

          yachtibis.com

          whenthemusicstops.com

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • Chris.Menke
            Chris.Menke @benners last edited by Sep 25, 2013, 12:21 PM Sep 25, 2013, 12:21 PM

            In the sense you're  talking about, yes. Google won't count those nofollowed links against you.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • zoicaremus
              zoicaremus last edited by Sep 25, 2013, 12:21 PM Sep 25, 2013, 12:21 PM

              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?

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • Chris.Menke
                Chris.Menke last edited by Sep 25, 2013, 12:28 PM Sep 25, 2013, 12:20 PM

                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.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                • benners
                  benners last edited by Sep 25, 2013, 12:20 PM Sep 25, 2013, 12:20 PM

                  So if you can't have too many nofollow links to upset Google, does Google respect the nofollow 100%?

                  Chris.Menke 1 Reply Last reply Sep 25, 2013, 12:21 PM Reply Quote 0
                  • MikeRoberts
                    MikeRoberts last edited by Sep 25, 2013, 12:17 PM Sep 25, 2013, 12:17 PM

                    NoFollows on links in your blog that point off the site are not hurting you.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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