How do you diversify links in this day and age?

OutOfContext said:

Okay, so most of your diversity links are nofollow? I think it's almost unreal to find niche relevant d0f0llow comments on pages that haven't been spammed to death.

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Yes. I include a naked link in some of my powerful backlinks but mostly between my primary keyword and a long tail that I'm also ranking for (KW + 1 word). Most of my diversification links are from nofollow sources. They still count towards your ratio, at least in my experience. Never had a penalty. Plus, having a mix of nofollow and dofollows makes everything look more natural. Two birds one stone. Honestly, I believe nofollows still effects ranking somehow. I doubt they pass authority but I think they factor in somewhere.

P.S. Don't worry too much about anchor ratios. Diversity is important but the exact ratio varies wildly depending on the keyword. My competitor is ranking #1 with 80% exact match anchors and he's been there for months. Others on the front page have 50%+. Look up your competition and stay roughly in their range.

OutOfContext said:

One interesting question that I see emerging from replies so far is whether nofollow links are counted towards the overall anchor text profile. Some say yes, some say no.





Have you guys successfully used nofollow links as the only type of links for diversification and avoided getting a penalty from anchor text over-optimisation?



So why do you think that nofollow links don't count towards the overall anchor text profile?

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When a guy who makes 100k+/m tells me that they don't I tend to believe him.

This is a surprise, no-follow links don't count towards your anchor text ratio? Really? I highly doubt that! People order press releases all the time to dilute their anchor text profile.

1) Nofollow links show up in Google Search Console.
2) Google used to automatically put nofollow on links created by people on stuff they hosted. Now Google automatically puts a link to the main search page with a referral via parameters.

I don't see why either #1 or #2 would be the case if nofollow links were actually dropped from the link graph. Nofollow links do something. I think over time Google has been using them more and more.