I am a music fan and love discovering new material on blogs. Part of the thrill comes in finding the alternate links for similar bands being posted within the comments or in the post itself. Every now and then, amongst the myriad of comments there are a few with links which are simply pointing to a car deals’ website. Sounds annoying right?? Google thinks so too, which is why such links are tagged as “NoFollow” by Google. Now there is some sense back right? But businesses question about marketing means for their website.
SEO experts agree though that even the Nofollow link has its value though. Websites want traffic and that is what these links bring. Think of it as you stumbling on to an amazing jazz piece after listening to an AC/DC song on radio- you were not looking to listen to it but you liked it anyway. Other than that, a few Nofollows from, say BBC, are also worth a lot of traffic so that is one aspect to be aware of.
The other significant point is that of link building. Now in a natural order of SEO, your site is bound to be linked via NoFollow AND Follow links. If your site only gets Follow links then that is suspicious in itself from Google’s perspective. That is precisely why the new algorithms work without completely disregarding the NoFollow tag. You do get some ranking boosts if you get a few NoFollow links but an overdose of them knocks you down.
Because an excess of the Nofollow tag means that all the sites are essentially branding your website as unreliable or irrelevant. And this is where the debate really boils down- no one is exactly certain what the magic number of NoFollow links is. Getting the Follow link is tough enough and in any case, the NoFollows are natural. Marketers and SEO experts are left wondering, where to cap off their NoFollow marketing if the rankings keep fluctuating on a more regular basis.
For Google, this scenario works because it keeps the SEO workers on their toes. The results they gather are more or less in doubt, hence they are always pushing for more content driven SEO strategies, which is exactly what Google wants. Officially, Google has stated that there is no link juice to be had from NoFollow links but obviously that has not been the case entirely thus far. The optimum line is obviously the middle road but that is also a rocky one. Best approach is to just ensure targeted marketing of links so that you are more likely to get DoFollow links rather than NoFollow. Your initial boosts after a NoFollow will be gratifying to see, but one tag too many and you might see your site go down a ranking dip of no return.
