No-Follow Links Are Still Good – Let's Discuss

[gary2]

There is a lot of confusion about do-follow and no-follow links.

I would like to share my understanding here.

What are backlinks?

Backlinks are votes of reference from one website to another. In other words, more backlinks mean that many people are referring to your website page.

For example, if website A refers to website B, Google uses its algorithm to evaluate quality of links and the referred websites.

So, what are do-follow and no-follow links?

If website A adds a do-follow attribute to a backlink to website B, it means that "Google’s bot crawl budget for the particular page is being passed through to website B."

On the other hand, if website A adds a no-follow attribute to a backlink to website B, it means "website A is still referring to website B, but doesn't want the crawl budget to pass through to website B."

Does this mean no-follow links have no power?

That’s not correct. No-follow links simply prevent Google from passing crawl budget to other websites, but they are still counted as a "vote of reference."

Conclusion:

Both do-follow and no-follow links are counted as votes of reference. The only difference is the quality of the website that is referring to your website.

A no-follow link from a high-authority website is far better than multiple do-follow links from random websites.

Quality matters, not quantity.

Note - I am just putting my understandings and experiences here. If I am wrong or you want to add something with this, I am happy to listen

 

[Turbo B.]

Do you have to show some samples of high ranking sites with no-follow only links?

 

[gary2]

Do you have to show some samples of high ranking sites with no-follow only links?

can you sent me a recent work sample.

Hi, this is not a sales thread. If you're looking to purchase any service, you can go and check link building section

Thank you

 

[Emily Willson]

There is a lot of confusion about do-follow and no-follow links.

I would like to share my understanding here.

What are backlinks?

Backlinks are votes of reference from one website to another. In other words, more backlinks mean that many people are referring to your website page.

For example, if website A refers to website B, Google uses its algorithm to evaluate quality of links and the referred websites.

So, what are do-follow and no-follow links?

If website A adds a do-follow attribute to a backlink to website B, it means that "Google’s bot crawl budget for the particular page is being passed through to website B."

On the other hand, if website A adds a no-follow attribute to a backlink to website B, it means "website A is still referring to website B, but doesn't want the crawl budget to pass through to website B."

Does this mean no-follow links have no power?

That’s not correct. No-follow links simply prevent Google from passing crawl budget to other websites, but they are still counted as a "vote of reference."

Conclusion:

Both do-follow and no-follow links are counted as votes of reference. The only difference is the quality of the website that is referring to your website.

A no-follow link from a high-authority website is far better than multiple do-follow links from random websites.

Quality matters, not quantity.

Note - I am just putting my understandings and experiences here. If I am wrong or you want to add something with this, I am happy to listen

I usually stick with a do-follow link strategy—it’s consistently worked best in my experience. But I’d be curious to hear from someone who’s tried the opposite and seen actual results.

 

[gary2]

I usually stick with a do-follow link strategy—it’s consistently worked best in my experience. But I’d be curious to hear from someone who’s tried the opposite and seen actual results.

it's not about the opposite side of the experiment. It's about some times people ignore some authority links option just because no follow.

You can see many of your competitors will have links from Forbes, HuffPost, NYTimes etc and they are no follow links.

 

[We Bring Rank]

Of course @gary2 combination of Follow and No-follow links is really important for the balance of the backlinks in the sites. And these No-follow links are playing major roles in affiliate marketing.

 

[gary2]

Of course @gary2 combination of Follow and No-follow links is really important for the balance of the backlinks in the sites. And these No-follow links are playing major roles in affiliate marketing.

Bonus is those links from big media sites will give us some referral traffic if luck hits. That's a major ranking signal (user engagement)

 

[We Bring Rank]

Bonus is those links from big media sites will give us some referral traffic if luck hits. That's a major ranking signal (user engagement)

Damn right, Sometimes it's possible, But not in all the case,.

 

[ajimix]

in my experience, no-follow links also give some weight, but not as much as follow

 

[Emily Willson]

it's not about the opposite side of the experiment. It's about some times people ignore some authority links option just because no follow.

You can see many of your competitors will have links from Forbes, HuffPost, NYTimes etc and they are no follow links.

Yeah, I get the idea, and links from reputable sources like Forbes or NYTimes are definitely valuable. But when you have a limited budget for link building, I prefer to invest in methods that I know deliver consistent results. In that case, I’d rather get 10 high-quality do-follow links than spend the entire budget on a single no-follow link from an authority site.

 

[greenrobot]

Honestly, I still don't fully understand why they created these attributes in the first place

 

[SEO Link Firm]

I completely agree, quality always matters more than quantity when it comes to backlinks. Keep sharing your insights!

 

[Monsterer]

I think no-follow links impact mostly in affiliates and e-commerce

 

[gary2]

Honestly, I still don't fully understand why they created these attributes in the first place

Just to let the websites control their crawl budget maybe

I thought no follow links impact mostly working in affiliates and e commerce

It works in all aspects of seo

in my experience, no-follow links also give some weight, but not as much as follow

Truth, both have its own advantage. Do follow has edge over no follow links.

I am trying to say don't forget to get some links from authority sites if they just offer no follow links

 

[TechnoTycoon]

I think no-follow has some value as well.

 

[statmark56]

Moz.com:

"
Just like it sounds, "nofollow" tells search engines not to follow the link. Some engines still follow them simply to discover new pages, but these links don't pass link equity (the "votes of popularity" we talked about above), so they can be useful in situations where a page is either linking to an untrustworthy source or was paid for or created by the owner of the destination page (making it an unnatural link).
"

 

[hideath]

I've come across at least a couple of case studies for people ranking only using no-follow links, i believe one of them was shared in bhw as well,
They do for sure pass some amount of link juice & trust, but the theory that they do pass all of the link juice & won't work for crawl budget isn't the case,
If you're using any auction domain with a handful of links, you can check that some pages have pages with nofollow links showing under the referring pages while inspecting the page URL, it's mainly stating that "we followed and crawled this page because that other page is linking to it",
So, basically, it's quite the opposite, nofollow links would work the same for crawling, but rather pass less link juice

 

[gary2]

I've come across at least a couple of case studies for people ranking only using no-follow links, i believe one of them was shared in bhw as well,
They do for sure pass some amount of link juice & trust, but the theory that they do pass all of the link juice & won't work for crawl budget isn't the case,
If you're using any auction domain with a handful of links, you can check that some pages have pages with nofollow links showing under the referring pages while inspecting the page URL, it's mainly stating that "we followed and crawled this page because that other page is linking to it",
So, basically, it's quite the opposite, nofollow links would work the same for crawling, but rather pass less link juice

I agree with your point. Do follow links are better than no follow links in terms of comparison but I just want to say "Even no follow links has its own value especially when you have links from high authority sites with millions of traffic

The bonus is "links from organic traffic generating page is a lot better".

 

[HenryObi]

A no-follow link from a high-authority website is far better than multiple do-follow links from random websites.

There's no sufficient evidence to support this claim.

Do follow links from small ranking websites in your niche is better than Wikipedia links that are no-follow. I'm saying this because I've used both and seen it in action.

This is not me saying no-folow links are entirely useless. I will always prioritize do-follow over no-follow links. Unless the do-follow comes from a shitty source.

 

[gary2]

There's no sufficient evidence to support this claim.

Do follow links from small ranking websites in your niche is better than Wikipedia links that are no-follow. I'm saying this because I've used both and seen it in action.

This is not me saying no-folow links are entirely useless. I will always prioritize do-follow over no-follow links. Unless the do-follow comes from a shitty source.

@HenryObi Everyone prefers and prioritizes do follow links, including me. I am not against do follow links. Thanks