There’s a pretty big debate being waged on websites today between the “no follow” link contingent and the “do follow” advocates. Which side of the camp are you on? Maybe you haven’t decided because you really aren’t sure how each type of link works.
No follow links were first developed by Google as a way to control spam links on blogs and other sites. There was a valid complaint that many legitimate sites were being penalized if they had a large number of links to other sites with little or no value. By adding the no follow tag to any links (rel=“nofollow”), blog publishers and forum owners were provided a tool to prevent spammers from posting endless useless comments simply to get a free link back to a site that you might not want to be associated with.
A “no follow” link gives Google and other major search engines specific instructions. When a “no follow” code is part of a link, the theory goes that Google will NOT follow the link to the other page and it will NOT include the link when calculating Page Rank for your web page.
On the other hand, it’s nice to share some link juice with those who take the time to comment on your blog, sign your guest book or otherwise contribute something of value to your site. After all, wouldn’t you like them to return the favor to you some day?
As a link builder, we often get requests to find only “do follow” links for our clients. But should they really insist on that? Should you count the ratio of no follow to do follow links to your site (or from your site) to try and figure out the perfect balance?
Three Good Reasons Not to Care
In our opinion, you really don’t need to worry too much about ratios or link counts. Here are three good reasons why:
1. The search engines expect to see a balance of “no follow” and “do follow” links to your site. What those exact ratios are can be debated, but it is clear that you should not be trying to get every link to your site as a “do follow”.
2. We haven’t seen any concrete proof that the three major search engines aren’t passing some link juice through “no follows”. In fact, we have seen some pretty good articles indicating that they feel they received some good link love from “no follow” links from authority sites.
3. Focus on getting links for traffic and you won’t have to worry about it at all. This is often lost with link builders. So much emphasis is placed on getting link juice for search engine rankings, that many forget that the best links of all bring real traffic to your site. If you get a link that sends you meaningful traffic, do you really care if it is “no follow” or “do follow”?
It all boils down to common sense – a balance of inbound links will generally do more to help your site when compared to concentrating on one method of link building. When in doubt, if it’s a quality site that wants to link to you, take the link, whether it is “do follow” or “no follow”.
[tags] no follow, do follow, link building [/tags]
Tags: do follow, Link Building, no follow
This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 at 12:10 pm and is filed under Link Building. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 24th, 2008 at 9:16 am
Thank you for the informative article. I have a blog promoting link building software and I was often asked by my customers whether it is worth to spend time to “nofollow” links. In order not give a proofless answer, I did a case study to find our if “nofollow” links help.
I managed to get a dozen of “nofollow” links and looked if my website position had changed somehow in Google, MSN and Yahoo. I noticed NO changes. I came to the conclusion that the search engines behaved as so those links didn’t exist at all.
Then I got a dozen of “dofollow” links and immediately my website got the top position in those three search engines. So, “dofollow” links really count.
Despite of the results of my case study, I always suggest people not to ignore “nofollow” links. As you wrote there must be “a balance of inbound links”.
April 24th, 2008 at 2:16 am
Thank you for the informative article. I have a blog promoting link building software and I was often asked by my customers whether it is worth to spend time to “nofollow” links. In order not give a proofless answer, I did a case study to find our if “nofollow” links help.
I managed to get a dozen of “nofollow” links and looked if my website position had changed somehow in Google, MSN and Yahoo. I noticed NO changes. I came to the conclusion that the search engines behaved as so those links didn’t exist at all.
Then I got a dozen of “dofollow” links and immediately my website got the top position in those three search engines. So, “dofollow” links really count.
Despite of the results of my case study, I always suggest people not to ignore “nofollow” links. As you wrote there must be “a balance of inbound links”.
April 24th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Basic incentive for getting links is good content followed and no followed. Traffic is the goal. So Id on’t really care about the follow/no follow business. I only care because Google made it an issue.
April 24th, 2008 at 5:10 am
Basic incentive for getting links is good content followed and no followed. Traffic is the goal. So Id on’t really care about the follow/no follow business. I only care because Google made it an issue.
April 28th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
That was good. I was trying to find the answer to this. Thank you.
April 28th, 2008 at 11:28 am
That was good. I was trying to find the answer to this. Thank you.
April 29th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Much as I love the do follow links, I don’t pay any attention to which is which when I comment on a site. The link building will happen however it happens.
The sites that I manage all practice do follow. I either use a tight set of anti-spam rules and/or moderate all comments. If someone can manage to leave an additive comment they deserve the link.
I do commenting for traffic building and to be part of the conversation on interesting blogs because it makes the whole internet marketing game more fun. The link building is a nice side benefit.
April 29th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Much as I love the do follow links, I don’t pay any attention to which is which when I comment on a site. The link building will happen however it happens.
The sites that I manage all practice do follow. I either use a tight set of anti-spam rules and/or moderate all comments. If someone can manage to leave an additive comment they deserve the link.
I do commenting for traffic building and to be part of the conversation on interesting blogs because it makes the whole internet marketing game more fun. The link building is a nice side benefit.
May 1st, 2008 at 7:32 am
do follow dont follow, still on the fence
May 1st, 2008 at 12:32 am
do follow dont follow, still on the fence
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:27 am
[...] No Follow vs. Do Follow – Should You Care?, Link Building Best Practices [...]
May 5th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
The no-follow tag I found out doesn’t always work. A friend of mine is an SEO and has tested backlinks and some no-followed links are actually passing in Google. Of course most aren’t but its interesting to notice.
May 5th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
The no-follow tag I found out doesn’t always work. A friend of mine is an SEO and has tested backlinks and some no-followed links are actually passing in Google. Of course most aren’t but its interesting to notice.
May 6th, 2008 at 12:48 am
I have yet to see any added benefit of having nofollow on outbound links from my site. Neither the toolbar PR or the site’s rankings in search experienced any notable increase during my experimentations with this attribute.
May 5th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
I have yet to see any added benefit of having nofollow on outbound links from my site. Neither the toolbar PR or the site’s rankings in search experienced any notable increase during my experimentations with this attribute.
May 17th, 2008 at 11:49 am
It is solve my general query about ” nofollow – dofollow”. But it is complete when you show also an example of this. I think this will be easier for a newbie.
May 17th, 2008 at 4:49 am
It is solve my general query about ” nofollow – dofollow”. But it is complete when you show also an example of this. I think this will be easier for a newbie.
June 5th, 2008 at 3:15 am
I think the majority of people are just trying to gain exposure for their site rather than boost page rank. However soem people like to show off their page rank because it makes them feel better.
June 4th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
I think the majority of people are just trying to gain exposure for their site rather than boost page rank. However soem people like to show off their page rank because it makes them feel better.
June 12th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
My understanding was that google does not attribute much value to them, but Yahoo and MSN do.
June 12th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
My understanding was that google does not attribute much value to them, but Yahoo and MSN do.
June 26th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
I’m just really learning about nofollow vs. dofollow. Thanks for this article. It was informative. After reading it sounds like you shouldn’t worry about nofollow vs. dofollow and just continue commenting and exchanging links. Great stuff.
June 26th, 2008 at 8:07 am
I’m just really learning about nofollow vs. dofollow. Thanks for this article. It was informative. After reading it sounds like you shouldn’t worry about nofollow vs. dofollow and just continue commenting and exchanging links. Great stuff.
August 12th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Google will always show the lesser backlinks, if it compare with the Yahoo and MSN…
By the way, thanks for the wonderful post and it did help me to understand the different between dofollow and nofollow links.
August 12th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Google will always show the lesser backlinks, if it compare with the Yahoo and MSN…
By the way, thanks for the wonderful post and it did help me to understand the different between dofollow and nofollow links.
September 22nd, 2008 at 8:37 pm
thanks for sharing you knowledge.
September 23rd, 2008 at 3:37 am
thanks for sharing you knowledge.
September 28th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
I’m currently waffling between using a nofollow plugin or not. It seems right to reward commenters, but I’m just worried about spending time screening spam. Although Akismet seems to do a pretty darn good job of catching most stuff.
September 28th, 2008 at 8:17 am
I’m currently waffling between using a nofollow plugin or not. It seems right to reward commenters, but I’m just worried about spending time screening spam. Although Akismet seems to do a pretty darn good job of catching most stuff.
November 5th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
spamming is one thing but as my man said above it does seem right to reward commenters.
November 5th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
spamming is one thing but as my man said above it does seem right to reward commenters.
January 3rd, 2009 at 12:18 am
A good tool to find nofollow websites is http://www.followtopia.com . They have an index as large as yahoo’s, and let you know if the results have the no follow tag.
Optimize away.
January 2nd, 2009 at 5:18 pm
A good tool to find nofollow websites is http://www.followtopia.com . They have an index as large as yahoo’s, and let you know if the results have the no follow tag.
Optimize away.
February 10th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Really interesting subject and balanced article. I’ve got the default “nofollow” on my blog but am increasingly tempted to change to dofollow. But then I believe you need hardcore culling policies – I wouldn’t want dofollow to non-webdev-related sites because they’re just not related. Also you end up with stupid names like the one I used above, (I hope you like it). Normally I don’t do that even on dofollow pages because it does look a little silly, but today I thought I’d slip it in because it demonstrates the point
.
February 10th, 2009 at 9:22 am
Really interesting subject and balanced article. I’ve got the default “nofollow” on my blog but am increasingly tempted to change to dofollow. But then I believe you need hardcore culling policies – I wouldn’t want dofollow to non-webdev-related sites because they’re just not related. Also you end up with stupid names like the one I used above, (I hope you like it). Normally I don’t do that even on dofollow pages because it does look a little silly, but today I thought I’d slip it in because it demonstrates the point
.
February 19th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
How about links without any tag (nofollow nor dofollow)?
This article does give a good point, though.
February 19th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
How about links without any tag (nofollow nor dofollow)?
This article does give a good point, though.
March 16th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Thanks for the article, it's food for thought – like you say a balanced approach is probably the best bet, and will mean that you won't be triggering any filters that exist to check for too high a ratio of dofollows.
March 16th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Thanks for the article, it's food for thought – like you say a balanced approach is probably the best bet, and will mean that you won't be triggering any filters that exist to check for too high a ratio of dofollows.
March 18th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Exactly, links that bring traffic should be the number one priority but then there are lots of SEOs out there who are struggling with sites which dont have good content. For them, finding juicy links is one of the few things they can do (as well as content creation).
March 18th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Exactly, links that bring traffic should be the number one priority but then there are lots of SEOs out there who are struggling with sites which dont have good content. For them, finding juicy links is one of the few things they can do (as well as content creation).
April 11th, 2009 at 1:56 am
This article is a little old but after reading it I'm falling in love with whoever wrote it. It seems to me that seo is afraid of the nofollow tags and try and stay away from it. As you said, search engines expect to see a ratio between 'nofollow' and 'dofollow' links and if the majority of your website is linked by 'dofollows', then well, isn't that suspicious activities. I'd said it once and I'll say it again, search engines can be manipulated, but google isn't stupid.
Thanks for the article, I loved it.
April 11th, 2009 at 1:56 am
This article is a little old but after reading it I'm falling in love with whoever wrote it. It seems to me that seo is afraid of the nofollow tags and try and stay away from it. As you said, search engines expect to see a ratio between 'nofollow' and 'dofollow' links and if the majority of your website is linked by 'dofollows', then well, isn't that suspicious activities. I'd said it once and I'll say it again, search engines can be manipulated, but google isn't stupid.
Thanks for the article, I loved it.
April 17th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
I am trying to increase my backlink manually through guestbooks. Notice quite a number of the sites are nofollow type. I will monitor and report back if I have concrete data to show if nofollow is really not useful. I am not targeting thousands of BL, so, should be able to manage. Wish me all the luck.
April 17th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
I am trying to increase my backlink manually through guestbooks. Notice quite a number of the sites are nofollow type. I will monitor and report back if I have concrete data to show if nofollow is really not useful. I am not targeting thousands of BL, so, should be able to manage. Wish me all the luck.
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:59 am
Sorry for my ignorance, but how can you tell if a blog has a no follow tag or a do follow tag?
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:59 am
Sorry for my ignorance, but how can you tell if a blog has a no follow tag or a do follow tag?
April 30th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Any link is still a link, so I believe in terms of traffic it is hugely advisable to make your presence in the web by any means available. If these count, then good, but if they don't, it's not that big a deal and won't prevent me from posting a comment whenever I feel like doing so.
April 30th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Any link is still a link, so I believe in terms of traffic it is hugely advisable to make your presence in the web by any means available. If these count, then good, but if they don't, it's not that big a deal and won't prevent me from posting a comment whenever I feel like doing so.
May 15th, 2009 at 9:39 am
I think no follow and do follow are both good. It always depend on blog owners. What do you think?
May 15th, 2009 at 2:39 am
I think no follow and do follow are both good. It always depend on blog owners. What do you think?
June 10th, 2009 at 11:36 am
I’m not a fan of spammers. I feel if your going to link to your site from someones blog at least have the respect to read there article and add a related comment.
I’ve only known about dofollow blogs for a couple of weeks and i have enjoyed reading peoples views on a range of subjects and it benefiting my site at the same time.
I’m strongly thinking about setting my own blog up.
June 10th, 2009 at 4:36 am
I’m not a fan of spammers. I feel if your going to link to your site from someones blog at least have the respect to read there article and add a related comment.
I’ve only known about dofollow blogs for a couple of weeks and i have enjoyed reading peoples views on a range of subjects and it benefiting my site at the same time.
I’m strongly thinking about setting my own blog up.
June 24th, 2009 at 10:46 am
hi every one so many of them try to send No follows that is no use …please try to avoid…
June 24th, 2009 at 3:46 am
hi every one so many of them try to send No follows that is no use …please try to avoid…
July 10th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
This answered a lot of questions I’ve had regarding the exact behavior of nofollow attributes, and kudos for posting it! I find it interesting that some comments on this post have nofollow on the names while others don’t, though. Why is that? I have a nofollow highlight in my Firefox user CSS, and I see that some names haven’t been nofollowed. I’m curious.
July 10th, 2009 at 10:28 am
This answered a lot of questions I’ve had regarding the exact behavior of nofollow attributes, and kudos for posting it! I find it interesting that some comments on this post have nofollow on the names while others don’t, though. Why is that? I have a nofollow highlight in my Firefox user CSS, and I see that some names haven’t been nofollowed. I’m curious.
July 10th, 2009 at 10:38 am
Jody,
We have a plug in on our blog that rewards active users with a “do follow” link. After you have your 2nd comment approved, your links will become dofollow.
September 10th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Hi Arnie.
Thanks for leaving a comment on my blog post. I think your words at the end of this post say it all: common sense. But people often get too wrapped up in Google’s algorithm to do link-building based on common sense.
September 10th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Hi Arnie.
Thanks for leaving a comment on my blog post. I think your words at the end of this post say it all: common sense. But people often get too wrapped up in Google’s algorithm to do link-building based on common sense.
September 14th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Great informative post, getting both nofollow and dofollow links makes your link profile looks natural, and both is great for human traffic.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Great informative post, getting both nofollow and dofollow links makes your link profile looks natural, and both is great for human traffic.
September 15th, 2009 at 3:52 am
Links were made to transfer people from one html document to another… Sounds simple because it is. First quality of a link we should search for is the traffic it might bring.
September 14th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Links were made to transfer people from one html document to another… Sounds simple because it is. First quality of a link we should search for is the traffic it might bring.
October 30th, 2009 at 12:12 am
@Arnie and David,
Common sense aside, google is constantly changing their algorithm. Good business for SEO!
October 29th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
@Arnie and David,
Common sense aside, google is constantly changing their algorithm. Good business for SEO!
January 2nd, 2010 at 11:24 pm
Dear Eric,
what about trying to get a link from Wikipedia? is it worth the effort?
January 2nd, 2010 at 4:24 pm
Dear Eric,
what about trying to get a link from Wikipedia? is it worth the effort?
February 18th, 2010 at 2:23 pm
i think a lot of seo just blast as many do-follow links as they can at sites and don’t think about how it will look to google.
February 18th, 2010 at 7:23 am
i think a lot of seo just blast as many do-follow links as they can at sites and don’t think about how it will look to google.
March 13th, 2010 at 7:50 pm
Thanks sir for this article.I go0gled for do follow vs no follow and got your article.Pretty good article this is.Regards
March 14th, 2010 at 1:06 am
Spam, spam, spam… all about spam. But I’m a real man. And I can’t leave my url in comments. It’s not good for me, but what can I do?..
P.S. Taking your url to bookmarks. Like it.
May 15th, 2010 at 10:16 am
I think that dofollow is most important, but you also need to have nofollow links so that the search engines sees that you are most natural. So in order to have high PR you have to be as natural as possible.
May 15th, 2010 at 7:33 am
Wouldn't it be nice not to worry about all that mess and just write post and let the search engines sort out where it all goes? The system is bent because of all the blackhat garbage. Too bad. Good writers should just be able to write, post and forget. LOL. Good luck bloggers. Thanks for the good article on nofollows vs. follows.
July 24th, 2010 at 7:39 pm
Dofollow vs. nofollow is still a big debate. I am not sure why this is, because there is overwhelming evidence that the links count regardless. I believe that the only difference is the fact that the bots may not follow your link back to your site. So, I am adding a fourth reason to your list. If your site has enough traffic on its own, you don't need to worry about the search engines finding your site. In this case the difference between dofollow and nofollow is negligible.
September 8th, 2010 at 3:32 am
Nice article. I was wondering if google counts nofollow links still or not. If they do, what's the point of having nofollow in the first place?
September 21st, 2010 at 8:25 pm
I fully agree. I've gained numerous no follow links that are definitely helping me rank for some competitive keywords. I do feel do-follow does give more love but I feel its more relevant to whether the do follow is coming from a relevant content source from where the link is being passed onto. In those cases I feel its gold, otherwise I'm not sure how much difference there really is.
September 27th, 2010 at 10:11 am
A good bit of common sense here, I am currently doing a bit of research myself to see if no-follow links, still send a bit of love. Will let you know what my findings are.
December 10th, 2010 at 4:59 am
Something that I was asking myself… can I improve my SE traffic with nofollow links… I did some research over yahoo site explorer and I was shocked how many sites got on first place in Google using nofollow links… I guess that those DoFollow links works only for PR but who cares about that
January 10th, 2011 at 6:54 am
Traffic is the goal. So Id on’t really care about the follow/no follow business. I only care because Google made it an issue.I suggest that dofollow is good for ranking on Google other nofollow is not bad.
January 14th, 2011 at 6:26 am
I use both do-follow and no-follow links for sites, in fact some of the no follow links have provided. Take wikipedia for example, the links are no-follow, but wikipedia often ranks top or near top for relevant searches and people will often scroll down and look at external links for official pages and such.
If you site has some value or you are actively do stuff on the wikipedia article to make it better, then chances are your link won’t be deleted.
There are other big sites that offer the same and I have developed sites where a vast proportion of the traffic came from these no-follow links.
Remember traffic is the name of the game, better to have a poor ranking and lots of traffic, then a high ranking for poorly searched keywords and no traffic.
March 8th, 2011 at 9:48 am
Saw this post talking about dofollow and thought you would like to know about a new site, Wiki Dofollow. It is a community compiled list of high ranking dofollow sites. That way, the list stays current.
April 8th, 2011 at 5:49 am
The no-follow vs. do-follow issue can be different for each individual client. Some clients like their voice becoming a part of the conversation on blogs they never knew existed while others just want to see high PR Numbers and lots of inbound links. You can explain the pros and cons of each, but, in the end, the client is paying for your services so you need to respect their requests.
May 4th, 2011 at 12:51 am
[...] It must be said that some controversy exists when it comes to no follow links. A famous search engine (which shall not be named) has been shown to be unpredictable on this issue. Some folks say they serve no purpose, others insist they’re an important part of increasing traffic to your site. What’s known for sure is that search engines are smarter than you think. They look for a mix of high quality sources with original content that link to your website (like blogs, etc… spam-rich sites like link farms carry no weight with them), and they know when somebody’s cheating. Check out this informative blog post: NoFollow vs. DoFollow: Should You Care? [...]
May 11th, 2011 at 6:20 pm
the bit about the search engine want you to have a ballance between do follow and no follow is not true because google bot does not notice the no follow links therefore doesn’t keep a track of it and even if you have 100 no follow and 100 do follow google will only see 100 do follow links
http://www.myfree-ebooks.org/
May 30th, 2011 at 1:28 pm
I’ve been trying to do SEO on my own sites, because the truth is that you just can’t get around it. you have to do SEO. but I was always under the impression that no-follow links couldn’t help you at all, but I guess that is not entirely true, and that is good to know. thanks for the article it cleared some stuff up for me.