To Follow or Not to Follow | 6 Reasons to Use it
Posted By Melanie Prough on April 12, 2009
There have been many cool new things accepted by the major search players recently. I mean truly they have been giving us stronger and better weapons against all avenues of problems. The “nofollow” link attribute is one of the easiest and most highly effective method of limiting spam, controlling “link love”, controlling Page Rank transfer, and for some limiting following of links out to even their own pages.
Understand this, if you are using a “nofollow” to prevent a webmaster from knowing you have a link to their site, you are in error….They will certainly see the link in any respectable tool including Google Webmasters Tools. The “nofollow” will probably not prevent a page from being indexed, the page and the links anchor text are noted when you are crawled. Note this, there is much debate about whether a new page can get indexed by a “nofollow” link…My opinion is; if Google is noting the anchor text, and producing the link in the”links:” operator, then I would have to surmise it is probable. I think you can now guess, why you see so many broken (http: // www. Domain. com) in your travels. Especially associated with a problem where the webmaster doesn’t want the page to get indexed, or a bit of less than positive critiquing might be happening. Most webmasters with a basic level of experience are using a tool like Google Alerts to monitor certain phrases, and will most likely grab it anyhow. I would think included in these term they watch for are all, or part of their Domain name….
Reasons to use the “nofollow”:
- You are trying to control the amount and distribution or Page Rank transfer out of that page.
- The site is valuable to your users, but you don’t really want to necessarily be associated with it.
- You are controlling your “link love’. You just don’t give every Tom, Dick, and Harry a PageRank bleeding link!
- You are trying to limit the user generated content (USG) spam on your page. This is a effective deterrent.
- You are mad at the administration or owner of the site you are linking to, but think they won’t find out. I guess that would depend on the level of their expertise. =-)
- You are linking to a resource such as a forum, that you cannot guarantee the content will meet Google’s standards at all times, but you consider it to be a valuable link for your users.
Those are pretty much some basic reasons for using the “nofollow”, there are some more complicated ones…But I’m not going to get into individual situations for the purpose of this post. I think that used correctly its can accomplish some very useful things for you, but just like anything else……..Overuse just might be a problem. Mind you this is totally theoretical, but if you “nofollow” all or most of your outbound links on a page……..You might be creating a flag, or sending the wrong message to search engines and your users. Everything in moderation has always been my rule.
Currently the “nofollow” attribute is supported by Google, Yahoo, and MSN / Live. Ask.com, currently does not have support for it. If you need proper mark up and a visual have a peek here.
So draw your own conclusions, and use this tool when it is right for you. It really is a very personal matter. I was once questioned in my forum for providing a link to SEOmoz. I was commenting on Dan Crow’s SEMNE writeup about the “nosnippet” tag. This person had honest concern that I was offering backlinks to my competition. My reply was pretty simple, it was my law then…And continues to govern my behavior, if I cannot recognize the excellence around me….Will I ever be excellent myself. A valuable resource is a valuable resource, and that’s all there is too it! Many that have been here before know that I am not shy about providing someone else’s link to benefit the reader, why reinvent the wheel. Yes, there are some things in my Blog you can read other places..But I try to organize these posts in such a way to make them more easily absorbed by a less experienced webmaster, and explain them to make them easier to follow and execute. So, now you know……That’s the plan man..
Peace and SEO
Melanie Prough
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Interesting stuff, as always Melanie! Thank you.
I always say, if you give your ideas away you are forced to create new ones. Also the more you give the more you receive.
That’s a great rule.