Nofollow links are much better than you think. Here's how to get the most out of them

by Admin




Article by Axandra


Article by Axandra
SEO software

Some people think that nofollow links are worthless, some website owners even want to delete links that use the nofollow attribute. That's not a good idea. Nofollow links can help your website a lot.

What are nofollow links?

Nofollow links were introduced by Google to mark links that should not be used for the ranking algorithm. Its main purpose was to stop comment spam in blogs. The idea was that people would stop spamming blogs and other pages with links if these links didn't influence the rankings anymore.

To mark a link as a nofollow link, it gets rel="nofollow" as an attribute in the HTML code. Links with that attribute will be ignored by ranking algorithms that use links to determine the position of a web page.


The effects are indirect

If nofollow links do not influence the position of a web page in the search results, why should use these links? Of course, a link without the nofollow attribute is much better. However, nofollow links can still have a very positive influence on your website, even if the effects are indirect:

1. Google does not always ignore nofollow links

Google says, that "in general" they do not follow nofollow links. That also means that they do follow the link sometimes if they think that the link is still important. This can happen if a website nofollows all links on the site, or if the overall signals show Google that the link is important.

2. Links are about much more than SEO

If you're building links solely for SEO then you're doing it wrong. The main purpose of links is to get exposure on related websites that will send your website targeted visitors.

Nofollow links on popular websites will send your website visitors. Links on popular websites will also be used to share your site on social networks. If you dismiss nofollow links, you're missing out on a lot of visitors.

3. Semantic context

In general, nofollow links do not stand on their own. They are surrounded by text that probably also mentions your company name or your products. Google can consider these brand mentions as implied links (this concept was explained in a Google patent).

In other words, the nofollow link can help Google to put your website into the right context. Google understands the semantic link between the content of a page and the linked page, even if it is a nofollow link.

How to build your nofollow links

Nofollow links can help your website. However, you have to treat them differently. Here are some things that you can do to make sure that your nofollow links will work for you:

1. Use the right anchor text

Remember that the anchor text of nofollow links is useless for your search engine rankings. Use attractive anchor texts that move people to click on your link. The anchor text is about getting clicks.

2. Try to reach influencers

If your nofollow link is presented to the right people, you can get additional regular links through that link. For example, press releases usually use nofollow links. If your press release is read by the right people, these people will add further links to your site, and they will be the reason why many people visit your website.

3. Focus on traffic

As we said before, search engine optimization is about getting visitors, it is not about getting rankings. As long as a link sends real people that are interested in your products and services to your website, it is a good link. All other metrics are not important.

Focus on the bottom-line

If you focus on building links that send real visitors to your website, you will soon find out that it does not matter if a link is nofollow or not. Building links that way will let to more targeted website traffic, and it will increase your web page rankings on search engine rankings.

The link building tools in SEOprofiler can help you to achieve this goal. SEOprofiler offers tools for link analysis, as well as many powerful tools for high-quality link building. If you haven't done it yet, try SEOprofiler now.

Article by Axandra
SEO software



News Categories

Ads

Ads

Subscribe

RSS Atom