NOFOLLOW Links: Can we 100% ignore them for SEO purposes?
-
Some SEO articles say we can completely ignore NoFollow links. Other articles say they still matter - but then are very vague on what they count for or against. So which is it really?
I do realize that they can provide traffic, and for that they are worthwhile. But it is SEO I am asking about...
The SEO purpose I am most concerned with is the Link Profile. Separating the Follows from the NoFollows often gives really different anchor text distributions.
If they don't matter, why do MOZ and other SEO Analysis programs still include them in their standard reports? (I can see some benefit to having them as part of the in-depth reports)
So what's your thoughts? Can we 100% ignore the NoFollows for our SEO analysis?
-
Thanks everybody!
It looks I need to "sort of" consider them in my analysis
-
I've ranked a few sites with great onsite and nofollow links. There's some sort of trust/authority that is passed through them. That being said, dofollow links pass more authority.
The reason why all of the other SEO tools include them is because they work to show you as many links as the tool finds. They don't limit it based on what they perceive as valuable. They provide you the data to make the choice.
-
you're are going to need some keyword anchor text from followed links - but not an unnatural amount!
Yeah the ratio of what you need is crazily small right now - I've seen sites with some amazingly good rankings in competitive spaces with nearly blanket brand / miscellaneous anchors, but of course the sources from which they obtain these links are largely relevant to their competitive market / keyword. Like Mailchimp - 10,000 unique linking domains linking with "mailchimp" (plus many more variations below); 28 linking with "email marketing" (all from some questionable badges, mind you) / SERPs right now. The commercial terms will pop up naturally from time to time and that's fine, but to be honest, we'd stopped seeking or being happy about deliberate competitive anchor text a while ago.
-
Again I would say they both matter (follow and nofollow) but followed links are going to have a lot more value. It is interesting to look at the distribution of anchor text between followed and nofollowed links. If you want to rank high for a competitive keyword, you're are going to need some keyword anchor text from followed links - but not an unnatural amount!
-
I would look at them for the entire backlink profile, but pay more attention to the followed links when it comes to something like anchor text distribution. Here's why:
If I were Google and I were looking at a car insurance website, and I saw that it had 200 followed links with brand mentions, URLs as anchor text, "click here", etc., then that looks fairly good. However, if the site also has 400 links with "cheap car insurance" as anchor text, does that look somewhat like the site has been doing something like comment spamming? Yup, it does. They make up a telling part of the profile and Google would be silly not to take them into consideration, but they should not directly affect site authority in the way followed links do.
Keep in mind that DA scores are a Moz metric and whilst Moz attempts to replicate how Google operates to the best of its ability, it isn't a Google figure so can't be relied upon to show how Google views a site's authority.
If you've been penalised, I'd most certainly start with removing followed links that are poor in quality. I have not heard of a situation where someone has recovered from a penalty after removing nofollowed links (this doesn't mean it hasn't happened). It's the followed links that Google cracks down on if they dislike them, and the followed links that make a large difference to your rankings.
-
For what is it worth Gregory, I've built DA with almost entirely no-follow links. So I personally would say that it would be good piece of information to have regarding the anchor text of those links.
-
Thanks iStorm. I just looked at the Factors article and see NoFollowed in there as part of the grand total number of links.
What I still want to hear more about is if they should be included when looking at things like a site's Anchor Text distribution....
-
Nofollowed links still have value (especially in the fact that great traffic links can be nofollowed), but you want pure SEO value. Take a look at Moz's latest Search Engine Ranking Factors: http://moz.com/search-ranking-factors
This is their list of the highest correlated ranking factors which include link totals (follow and nofollow) - look at #12 on the list. So yes, they do correlate to ranking factors, but they are a much smaller factor compared to the value of a followed link.
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
-
"Equity sculpting" with internal nofollow links
I’ve been trying a couple of new site auditor services this week and they have both flagged the fact that I have some nofollow links to internal pages. I see this subject has popped up from time to time in this community. I also found a 2013 Matt Cutts video on the subject: https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2298312/matt-cutts-you-dont-have-to-nofollow-internal-links At a couple of SEO conferences I’ve attended this year, I was advised that nofollow on internal links can be useful so as not to squander link juice on secondary (but necessary) pages. I suspect many websites have a lot of internal links in their footers and are sharing the love with pages which don’t really need to be boosted. These pages can still be indexed but not given a helping hand to rank by strong pages. This “equity sculpting” (I made that up) seems to make sense to me, but am I missing something? Examples of these secondary pages include login pages, site maps (human readable), policies – arguably even the general contact page. Thoughts? Regards,
Technical SEO | | Warren_Vick
Warren1 -
Disavowing links, Is it effective?
Looking for your experiences with disavowing back-links? We've been flooded with new clients who need spammy link removal services and wanted to hear more about your experience with the disavow tool. For sites that have been penalized, how long did it take for them to come back using the disavow tool? Did you see sites come back after the next algo update? Here's the basics of our services for link deletion: 1. Find all the spammy links
Technical SEO | | Keith-Eneix
2. Contact webmasters to delete them
3. Disavow all spammy links that are part of an obvious network
4. Implement a content plan for new quality links to get the site healthy again.
5. Report on all links removed and new links attained Just want to make sure our processes are in line with what everyone else is doing?0 -
Meta-robots Nofollow
I don't understand Meta-robots Nofollow. Wordpress has my homepage set to this according to SEOMoz tool. Is this really bad?
Technical SEO | | hopkinspat1 -
Page for Link Building
Hello guys, My question is about link building and reciprocal links. Since many directories request a reciprocal link, makes me wonder if is not better to create a unique page in the website only for this kind of links. What do you guys recommend? Thanks in advance, PP
Technical SEO | | PedroM0 -
Can I optimize two different pages with very similar keywords without hurting SEO?
Hi there, I have often heard that you cannot have multiple pages rank for the same keyword. My question here is more about long tail keywords who have the same keyword phrase repeated on different pages. For Example: I have two webpages with different content. I want to have one page (Homepage) rank for the more generic term such as "innovation management" and another supporting page rank for "innovation management software". Will Google see these two different webpages as competing? Should I avoid repeating the more general term in the phrase? Has anyone ever seen your SEO results decline when doing this? I don't believe this is duplicate content since the pages hold completely different copy and assets but I am not sure if the repeating phrase in the title tags will flag anything to the search engines.
Technical SEO | | Scratch_MM0 -
Too many links on your blog?
In all of my campaigns, I have a lot of URLs with too many links on the page (defined loosely as around or over 100 links per page); these links are virtually all found on blog pages. The link count shoots up quickly when you start using things like tag clouds, showing all the tags/categories a post is in, in addition to all the cross linking thats typical of blog posts. My question is: Does this matter? Do you work to get blog pages down under that 100 link limit, or just assume most blogs are like this and move along? If you think it does matter, what strategies have you used to cut down the number of links while still keeping popular elements like tag clouds?
Technical SEO | | AdoptionHelp0 -
Used SEOMOZ top 100 Directories, my site ranking lowered, what can we do to fix this?
We have made a big mistake.... So what can we do to fix this? A trainee member of staff has used the seomoz 100 top directories and added to sites from PR10 to PR6 approx about 25 sites, using keywords were possible instead of using the website URL "which i now was stupid!. Our website ranking have been lowered big time for all keywords used!, eg from 1st to 10th and even disappeared from the top 100 We are contacting all directories asking for the Title link to be changed to the URL instead of a keyword.. Will this help? I understand that Google give sites a penalty for this!!, but what can i do to put this right and how long would this penalty last for? Any advice would be highly appreciated... Thanks Dean
Technical SEO | | deanpallatt0 -
If two links from one page link to another, how can I get the second link's anchor text to count?
I am working on an e-commerce site and on the category pages each of the product listings link to the product page twice. The first is an image link and then the second is the product name. I want to get the anchor text of the second link to count. If I no-follow the image link will that help at all? If not is there a way to do this?
Technical SEO | | JordanJudson0