NoFollow vs. DoFollow - Should You Care?
Filed Under: Link Building
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 place 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”.
Technorati Tags: no follow, do follow, link building
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11 Comment(s)
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- From ICT magazine » Internet » SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 24, 2008 · Information & Communications Technology magazine | May 2, 2008
Julia from Fast Blog Finder | Apr 24, 2008 | Reply
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”.
SEO Bedrijven | Apr 24, 2008 | Reply
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.
Brandon | Apr 28, 2008 | Reply
That was good. I was trying to find the answer to this. Thank you.
Eric | Apr 29, 2008 | Reply
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.
BJ | May 1, 2008 | Reply
do follow dont follow, still on the fence
Laveranus | May 5, 2008 | Reply
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.
Pedro | May 5, 2008 | Reply
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.
Sonal | May 17, 2008 | Reply
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.
PC Sport Live | Jun 4, 2008 | Reply
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.
Xocai | Jun 12, 2008 | Reply
My understanding was that google does not attribute much value to them, but Yahoo and MSN do.
Nate Nead | Jun 26, 2008 | Reply
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.