Potential Risks with NoFollow

[Millefiore]

Hi All,

I know there are differing thoughts on nofollow links and it is alright to have a mixture of dofollow and nofollow links.

But I am still very curious and want to hear what's your view:

Is there a possibility of NoFollow links to hurt your website traffic?

Say, Website A is willing to give links to your site because it is in the same niche BUT the links are NoFollow.

Personally, I think if I don't look at the value of backlink there, I can still get exposure from the links provided.

Really appreciate your thoughts and opinions on this.

[AnniePot]

You are wrong. I've read and learned from several works written by published SEO experts, and all of them agree, Google gives much more credence to backlinks which have a natural appearance. They explain how no natural acquisition of backlinks could possibly result in nothing but the dofollow variety.

Contrary to what you are saying, a mix of dofollow and nofollow backlinks will benefit your SEO efforts, and definitely not detract from them.

[Apollo-Articles]

Generally speaking nofollow links will not harm your site, in fact you should actively look for them, since they make your link profile look more natural.

Some people even suggest the nofollow/dofollow rule was created so Google could spot SEOers/Spammers quickly.

Sam

[Ryan David]

Originally Posted by AnniePot

You are wrong. I've read and learned from several works written by published SEO experts, and all of them agree, Google gives much more credence to backlinks which have a natural appearance. They explain how no natural acquisition of backlinks could possibly result in nothing but the dofollow variety.

Contrary to what you are saying, a mix of dofollow and nofollow backlinks will benefit your SEO efforts, and definitely not detract from them.

Isn't "no natural acquisition of backlinks" kind of an oxymoron?

[JohnMcCabe]

Originally Posted by Apollo-Articles

Generally speaking nofollow links will not harm your site, in fact you should actively look for them, since they make your link profile look more natural.

Some people even suggest the nofollow/dofollow rule was created so Google could spot SEOers/Spammers quickly.

Sam

No-follow was created as a way to channel the "link juice" within a site. Most sites really don't want to rank things like their TOS, privacy page, etc.

Using the 'rel=nofollow' tag within the link told the spider that this link was not meant to get any of the influence of the linking page.

Prior to the advent of nofollow, webmasters were using convoluted linking methods, like javascript or php links, to get around this.

SEO types extended this to try to conserve any 'link juice' their site had and keep it on their site by making all offsite links nofollow.

As I understand current practice, using nofollow no longer channels juice to the regular links. It simple doesn't give credit to the nofollow link.

Either way, nofollow links, don't hurt rankings. And, as the OP surmised, they do expose your site to human eyeballs (assuming humans visit the page).

There is no such thing as 'dofollow', only the absence of nofollow.

[Newman8r]

There's not a risk in the nofollow link itself - but a lot of newcomers will buy huge social network link packages with hundreds of links that are all nofollow, not realizing that they are wasting their money.

Back in the day I used to comment on blogs and not even check if the links were dofollow or nofollow - most of them were likely nofollow. Still, that activity quickly brought the PR up to 4 and the site was very profitable. Whatever looks more natural to google is best.

having 50 nofollow links alone will probably do next to nothing for your site, but if you've got 100 "dofollow" links, then adding those 50 nofollow links could help I think.

[Ryan David]

Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe

No-follow was created as a way to channel the "link juice" within a site. Most sites really don't want to rank things like their TOS, privacy page, etc.

Using the 'rel=nofollow' tag within the link told the spider that this link was not meant to get any of the influence of the linking page.

Prior to the advent of nofollow, webmasters were using convoluted linking methods, like javascript or php links, to get around this.

SEO types extended this to try to conserve any 'link juice' their site had and keep it on their site by making all offsite links nofollow.

As I understand current practice, using nofollow no longer channels juice to the regular links. It simple doesn't give credit to the nofollow link.

Either way, nofollow links, don't hurt rankings. And, as the OP surmised, they do expose your site to human eyeballs (assuming humans visit the page).

There is no such thing as 'dofollow', only the absence of nofollow.

I'm assuming you meant that nofollow was created to address blog comment spam. SEO's quickly adopted it for their own purposes.

And yeah, in 2009, Matt Cutts announced that pagerank sculpting via nofollow doesn't work anymore. Instead of being divided up among all follow'd links, the nofollow'd link juice is simple "dropped".

[JohnMcCabe]

Originally Posted by Ryan David

I'm assuming you meant that nofollow was created to address blog comment spam. SEO's quickly adopted it for their own purposes.

And yeah, in 2009, Matt Cutts announced that pagerank sculpting via nofollow doesn't work anymore. Instead of being divided up among all follow'd links, the nofollow'd link juice is simply "dropped".

Nope, I meant that nofollow was created to facilitate sculpting, but I was having trouble digging the word out the Swiss Cheese. Later, Cutts did announce that sculpting no longer worked the way it did previously.

People were using nofollow to funnel and sculpt PR within a site before blog comment spam became a problem. Blog owners started using it to remove much of the incentive behind the spam, i.e. the "link juice".

With the advent of automated software, the cost of posting to nofollow blogs is so low that it seems like they don't worry about it anymore. Just spew their pollution without worrying about channeling the toxic runoff.

[rowanman28]

There was a thread just recently where a guy ranked his site for a competitive search with nothing but no follow links. Google is so complex, and constantly changing, so tomorrow, they may not work very well again.

[RevSEO]

You won't be harmed for receiving NoFollow backlinks, in fact they help add credibility to a backlink profile. If a website has strictly 100% DoFollow backlinks, then something is up as that's not a natural backlink profile.

Do yourself the favor of not worrying about Dofollow and NoFollow and put that time and energy into making your website that much better.

[paulgl]

Nofollow was created to combat spam and signal untrusted links.

It has nothing to do with anything else.

Idiotic webmasters have morphed it into something ridiculous.

If you don't want something indexed, you noindex it. Nofollow
has nothing to do with internal linking. Nothing. Nothing to
do with privacy pages or anything else.

In fact, the craziness with nofollow is that people are just
plain idiotic. Using it for useless purposes, and having no
idea what it means and should be used for.

Anyone who says you need a mix of nofollow links is just
crazy. Why on earth would you need a mix?!?!?!

Nofollow is UNNATURAL! It is man-made. Google made, to be exact.
It is put there to combat spam and not pass link juice. So, a nofollow
link to your site is a signal that it is untrusted and might be
spam, logically speaking.

If people only thought logically...

The value of backlinks is another story entirely. There are varying
degrees of usefulness for all types of backlinks, from traffic, authority,
and PR.

Paul