A Quick Comment on Nofollow
Posted on November, 6 2008, under Blogging, SEO by Ikki | 19 comment(s)
A couple of days ago, I got this email from my friend Farrhad from Let’s Sermo!:
Hi Ikki!
Why don’t you post an article on advantages and disadvantages of making your blog do follow?
Cheers!
This topic has been debated over and over on many websites, blogs and forums ever since the NoFollow tag made its appeareance. However, I’d like to share my thoughts on this matter and see what are your opinions about it.
Nofollow?
The Nofollow attribute was first introduced by Google (hey, Google again?) as a way to fight spam. Basically, what this attribute does is tell search engines’ spiders not to follow this specific link (more info on Nofollow: Google’s Webmasters Help Center) and Google won’t transfer any PageRank (a.k.a. link juice) to it.
However, the Nofollow attribute is surrounded by controversy. There are diverging opinions about it. One one side, those who support the use of nofollow on links to fight spammers back and share link juice with those sites that are really contributing to the web.
On the other side, those who are discouraging its use since it goes against the spirit and nature of linking and of the Internet itself. There’s a well known motto about this: “Fight Spam, not Blogs“.
This is my position about it: while I can understand the reasons why people discourage the use of nofollow tags on links to help spread some link love around the web, I believe there are situations when using nofollow is mandatory. Some of those situations are:
- Paid Links: it’s a fact that all major search engines are penalizing those sites selling links. To avoid any impact, you should mark them with a nofollow tag.
- When linking to internal pages that don’t need “link juice”: pages like Contact, About, Privacy Policy, etc. don’t need link juice. Save your dofollow links to pages / links that actually provide value to your visitors.
- Linking to questionable sites: this one is a no-brainer. Linking out to sites that provide questionable contents (warez, porn, racism, etc) will hurt your SERP and PR ranks. Nofollow or else…
- Blog Comments: now, I’m quite sure that some of you won’t agree with me about this point - and that’s OK. As much as I’d like to reward you all with a dofollow link, there’s spam. And I’m not just talking about viagra, cialis and the like. I’m also referring to those who leave meaningless comments just to get a link back. Those are also spam comments. I prefer getting 7-8 quality comments over getting 100+ spammy ones anyday.
What’s your side? Dofollow or Nofollow?
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It really depends what audience you targeting, or specifically speaking, what TYPE of audience (commentators or readers). If your main aim is to get only genuine readers and commentators, with no intention of spreading the sense of community ship, no-follow is the way to go.
However, if you seek traffic over quality comments, while taking up the responsibility of monitoring spam (mind you, you can get thousands of spam a day on established blogs), then do-follow is your answer.
There are some people, who in the quest to gain link-favors, go looking out for only do-follow blogs. This is evident on DP, where lists of do-follow websites pop-up everyday.
The bottom line is: if you trust your readers as being loyal, remain with no-follow. However, sometimes you need to take risks to get something in return. If you decide to establish a “dictatorship” blog and “prosecute” everyone who mentions the word do-follow, there are chances that your dictatorship may soon turn out to be a “ghost-town”. A point to think about….
Firstly, thanks for writing this post
Instead of making Let’s Sermo completely Do Follow, i introduced the top commentator plugin throghout the site and 5 top commentators get Do Follow links from my site. They get a lot of link juice
Hey! I created a thread on this in ‘interesting reads’ at STZ
@Forsaken: you got my point
Actually, as Farrhad said, I’m not all against dofollow. There’s Top Commentator Plugin and I also reward good articles / contents with a dofollow on my posts (except when linking to Google - they don’t need link juice from me :P).
Great comment
By the way, I’ve checked your blog and I noticed that you haven’t posted there yet.
@Farrhad: thanks for the thread at STZ. Much appreciated!
Personally, I prefer NoFollow for stuff like comments and all that. However, the blogroll is another story. The blogroll should be DoFollow. The 125×125 ads could be dofollow too, what do you think?
@Wong: Unfortunately, blogroll links could be also considered as paid links by Google. To avoid this, I think it’s a good idea to balance them by adding a few nofollow tags and leave the rest as dofollow. That way, we should be able to go under Google’s radar and prevent any penalization from them.
It is funny how Google is manipulating the web and forcing us webmasters to abide by their rules. We should thank spammers for this
Interesting article, especially the part about the PR sculpting thanks to the no-follow attribute (when you say contact pages don’t need link juice)
Grats on that.
@Everyday life stories - lisaAa: Oh, so that’s what they call it - PR sculpting
Didn’t know, thanks for letting me know!
Oh, and welcome to my blog
This must be your first comment here, right?
@ ikki Ok Contact Us pages sure don’t need juice links. But About pages ….. :O ……
I would like people to know about me or my site.
Would you mind people knowing your real name?
btw, No follow is a kind of headache for the webmasters. I know it helps preventing spam but doesn’t completely demolishes it. Google should find a better way soon instead of buzzing bloggers, webmasters.
@Divyun: actually, spammers are laughing at the nofollow tag. Now, they’re filling us with their spammy comments since they’re now aware of the true importance of a link back (be it dofollow or not): traffic.
It seems that they no longer care about PageRank (which is pretty obvious to me - they’re spamming everyone regardless of what PR have our sites got) but traffic.
doFollow! doFollow! doFollow!
@ eric tan…your reply is a typical example of a “good” spam comment… xD
@Forsaken: yup, it actually is
Hey guys, I just published a small review on Wordpress 2.7
Go check it out!
I’m now doing exactly what I’ve been doing since the beginning, that’s nofollow. It’s just yet another experimentation to see what’s the effect of nofollow on my blog.
You have certainly covered many areas that need to be nofollow and paid links are one of those. Great article indeed. You have a great writing skill too anyway.
Yan
@Blog for Beginners: I’ve been keeping this blog nofollow for all those reasons. One day, when spam is no more, I might switch to dofollow.
P.S.: Thanks for your comments
However I can’t say that I’m satisfied with my writing skills. I’ve yet a lot to learn.
I’ve yet a lot to learn…
Well, we never stop learning, don’t we? Great to know you, Ikki. Is that your name?
Yan
@Blog for Beginners: Nope. My real name is Héctor Cabrera. Ikki is just a nickname I use on every site I visit. I guess I need to update my About page
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