[Research Proposal] Digging into No-Follow links

This is one of the most controversial topics in the world of SEO from my point of view, if not the most

In one of the greatest guides in BHW by user t0mmy about this topic he suggests this:
https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/do-follow-vs-no-follow-whats-really-up.978902/

Every time I hear “No-follow links don’t give any SEO value” I have a one word reply: Wikipedia. A Wiki link is one of the strongest and most sought after links available. Their editorial process is iron clad and they do a great job at removing any link that isn’t relevant or is spammy in any way. I have personally seen keywords jump from the bottom of page three to the top 5 simply by adding one Wikipedia link. Still think they are useless because they are no-follow?

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Using Wikipedia as an example is one of the biggest cliche in the SEO world. Wikipedia, like Amazon are not good exemplars. I have a hypothesis: some domains are "hard-coded" in the algorithm. This said, there are specific algorithms that go around this type of sites. There are some proofs like the fact that Wikipedia links are part of Google graph.

I've seen a lot of gurus selling courses analysing Amazon for SEO purposes. This is a complete joke. Amazon probably agglutinates all the worst SEO practices in the world, and still ranks flawlessly for most buy-intents. Google just respects Amazon and knows that Amazon results satisfy their customers most of the times.

Wikipedia is even worse: As I said, Wikipedia is part of Google graph. This means, that what it's on Wikipedia is half a Bible for Google purpose satisfaction. Therefore, we should never compare Wikipedia nofollow with shittywebsite.com nofollows. Even the big site nofollows like BHW are straight into that bucket (except for traffic purposes obviously).

But I won't put my hand on the fire, to say that nofollow links are completely worthless for SEO purposes. In fact, I've been testing a lot of strategies around nofollow links and so far I've discovered that there seems to be like a ranking factor in nofollow links according to the total of outbound links in a site. This is not 100% authentic and it could be a huge confirmation bias, but here we go:

Let's put an example with this two hypothetical shites:
- Site 1: 10.000 outbound links, of those, 9.900 are nofollow, 100 d0follow
- Site 2: 500 links, of those 250 are d0follow, 250 are nofollow

Through some of my experiments, I've found that the site 1 links are worth 0 value. No link juice at all. Great as a part of a natural SEO profile as t0mmy suggests, but not for ranking purposes. I even doubt that it builds up any kind of domain reputation or anything like that.

But on the other hand, site 2 nofollow, could be as powerful as a d0follow if not more powerful, depending on where it is placed, and this is what I'm trying to prove right or wrong currently .

I feel that a nofollow on main page in Site 2 gives more link juice than a d0follow in Site 2 in a 3rd click-away page from the main. I've started running a test on this hypothesis. Will follow up in a couple of weeks this post.

Following thread. Hey dude, can you share how you run such control experiments? What do you control for eg. PA,DA,TF?

Thanks!

The three advantages of using no-follow links indirectly affects SEO ranking (via natural referral traffic, natural link diversity, and increased brand exposure). In fact, according to a 2017 SEMRush study, the top ranking factors today have nothing to do with links or keywords, but with a site already having its own direct traffic, and the time spent on the domain.

IOW, non-search-engine derived traffic and site dwell time are the leading factors for improving rank, not the direct gaming of the search engine algo. The reason Wikipedia works for traffic is due to the heavy traffic volume, which can increase your site's natural traffic, not because it directly contributes to SEO ranking. In theory, one could go to 100% no-follow links if you picked sites more like Wiki, and it would rank your site higher than from using do-follow links.

Given this, the most efficient way to do things with no-follow is to just concentrate on getting links from relevant sites with most high traffic sources, as your link (example) getting even 1% in click throughs from a site that has a million visitors a month will surely lead to a lot of trickle traffic. Since most such links will be no-follow, that will take care of adding to link diversity, and the traffic volume will take care of increasing brand awareness. So, just concentrate on getting links in very high traffic places, and the rest will take care of itself.