WTF!? -- Nofollow links on a PBN -- SCAM???

rogerke said:

In theory it should be a great trick (kinda like a private SAPE) but those idiots use 100% exact match and host their thousands of websites on the same subnets and nameservers. Hence why they don't rank for anything.

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For churn and burn this footer trick may be useful, but footer links are dangerous mojo and those wanting a lasting rankings should be very careful if they ever use them. They're being abused a lot now, which will make them a huge target coming up.

As for that PBN, if indeed they do use universal footer links it is a BAD thing. That leaves a footprint and makes deindexing more likely in theory. The no follow isn't the sin, it would be the footprints in the footer. So maybe OP does have a beef, just not for the reason he thought.

@75715 - your attitude sucks.

You'd do well to remember that nobody here owes you anything... and any help you get is at the pleasure of others.
So why be a rude prick? It's certainly not going to help you.

I suggest you go away for a month, read this, and then come back.

After reading the replies in this thread it seems that no clear answer has been laid out.

I am also curious as to why nofollow links would be used for SEO purposes.

I know they are used for affiliate links and for links you don't want to pass any juice onto, but it seems that people are suggesting that there is a strategy to using them to help your SEO efforts?

If I was the OP I wouldn't ask the business owners any questions about their PBNs as most people on BHW and other forums say that SEO business are run by people who don't know what they are doing. So I would ask here.

Then one reply above said that there is no difference between follow and nofollow links which contradicts what others above have said.

Personally I would think that 'natural' linking on a website is ALL 'follow'. Most people are not SEO webmasters and the majority of informational, educational and personal site owners/writers couldn't care less about that attribute (if they even know about it).

I'm not sure if anyone cares or not, but I'll add my 5 cents anyway.

60% d0f0llow - Hide
40% n0f0llow - Don't hide

rogerke said:

That's what I thought, but it's not the way you think it is. Let me first state that that agency has those domains for two reasons:

1. SEO purposes
2. To sell these domains

Those nofollow links (and the content surrounding them) aren't manually placed there, but have been scraped from Google. They have hundreds of categories and links on their sites just to fill it up with some content (you can also contact them and they'll add you as a free trial). However, if you look at the footer you'll see the bought d0fll0w links. In theory it should be a great trick (kinda like a private SAPE) but those idiots use 100% exact match and host their thousands of websites on the same subnets and nameservers. Hence why they don't rank for anything.

I have to say the have a great way to pick up some great expired domains though. I'm a bit in a rat race with them. So many times I've found an expired domain in Xenu and hours later they snapped it and vice versa. They don't really have a clue about solid SEO however.

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Sorry to burst your bubble but none of the domains have any footer links except for the standard wordpress footer.

So OP Pm'ed me the domains.

Seeing the Archive History the links were ******** about 2 months back. So from what it seems the company used to PBN links to push the rankings initially to show to the clients may be. And in the mean time they started the SEO work and gradually turned the links to Nofollow once the rankings stablise or the other reason can be they might have read an article somewhere PBN links can attract penalty etc and out of fear they turned the links into nofollow.

Seeing the link profile of some of the domains am not convinced with the quality of work these guys were doing. Am quite confident that there is nothing more to it.

An update that basically clears up the "mystery".

Ritesh was kind enough to take a look at the domains I sent him and he noticed that in the wayback from a few weeks ago the most recent links were do-follow.

Essentially the 1st theory that I mentioned in the OP is true. They agency ranks its clients and after the client is ranking they switch the links to nofollow and move on to the next client.

So at the end, there's no secret tactic involved here. No intricate methods of link building. Just an agency that ranks for keywords and switches over to nofollow after a while in order to not dilute the link juice.

75715 said:

An update that basically clears up the "mystery".

Ritesh was kind enough to take a look at the domains I sent him and he noticed that in the wayback from a few weeks ago the most recent links were do-follow.

Essentially the 1st theory that I mentioned in the OP is true. They agency ranks its clients and after the client is ranking they switch the links to nofollow and move on to the next client.

So at the end, there's no secret tactic involved here. No intricate methods of link building. Just an agency that ranks for keywords and switches over to nofollow after a while in order to not dilute the link juice.

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That's exactly what I was thinking while reading the whole thread. That agency, being a brick and mortar business, don't care about bad reviews posted in forums. They basically get clients mainly from their organically ranked site in local area or by word of mouth or by offline advertisement. Their actual selling plans are usually "monthly recurring" where the client have to pay a lumpsun amount to get ranked first and then a substantial amount per month to maintain that ranking. Now it's obvious no matter how well a site rank initially, people eventually stop paying that monthly recurring payment and then the agency make all the links n0-f0llow to make those ranked site down - basically a blackmail tactic like "you stopped payment and now your site de-ranked, start paying again and we'll make you ranked again". This tactic might get away with those noob offline clients who don't care about checking the reports they got (or mostly they don't care about any report at all) and re-checking the previous reports once again when they stopped paying monthly fee to check if the links still exist or not. Basically they are the people mostly don't know about anything of seo at all, they simply don't know what's d0 or n0 follow... Lol.

75715 said:

Sorry to burst your bubble but none of the domains have any footer links except for the standard wordpress footer.

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In that case the domains are probably new and they still have to be added. Pick up the WHOIS info at SIDN and send it or send me a couple of example domains by PM. I'm only aware of one agency in the Benelux using this modus operandi.

BTW, like others pointed out before me: your attitude and arrogance are pretty annoying.