The NoFollow attribute is useless when link building. Photo courtesy of SearchEngineJournal.com.
According to an article on SearchEngineJournal.com, the NoFollow link attribute (rel=”nofollow”) was created to block search engines from following links in blog comments, which was supposed to stop comment spamming. The problem is, spammers still continue to spam, and the NoFollow attribute hurts those people who aren’t spamming when trying to engage in link building. NoFollow is now being used online in more than just blog comments, in fact, Google recomments that paid links use NoFollow. But who would pay for a link with a NoFollow attribute? Here are 5 reasons why NoFollow tags should be done away with:
NoFollow tags don’t work. NoFollow doesn’t discourage blog comment spammers and if a human blogger pays attention to the comments he or she is getting, there’s really no point in the NoFollow attribute because he or she will see the spam within a day and delete it.
Many bloggers don’t even know they’re using NoFollow because it’s often the default setting on popular blog sites like WordPress.
What is the point of visiting link directories in hopes of link building when the directory only offers a NoFollow link? No one would ever purchase a listing because there would be no value attached to having a link in that directory.
Linking to someone with a NoFollow tag attached is a sign of distrust. If you automatically don’t trust them, why would they trust you when you expect a reciprical link?
Search engines can’t seem to make up their mind about when NoFollow should be used, which causes confusion, especially for webmasters who aren’t familiar with the pitfalls of NoFollow. This results in webmasters adding the NoFollow attribute to all outgoing links from their Web site which doesn’t help anyone with link building. When people post a relevant and well-thought out comment on a blog post, it adds more content to the blog and can provoke more relevant conversation. Since the commenter is helping you add relevant content, it’s professional courtesy to allow them to post a link to their blog without NoFollow so it actually gets indexed.
According to the SearchEngineJournal.com article, “NoFollow is a poor search engine’s solution to conceal its own failure to rank Web sites appropriately.” It may have seemed like a good idea at first, but it’s failure and misuse have rendered it useless, which is why NoFollow tags must go! For more information on NoFollow, read the full article on SearchEngineJournal.com.
Tags: link building, Link Building Tips
If you’re using a blog platform such as Wordpress or Movable Type, you can control comments posted by simply selecting “moderate all comments before publishing” or even selecting to receive an email when your blog does have a comment to delete, edit or approve it. I agree that the NoFollow tags do indeed discourage ethical companies from building one way links to their Web site when link directories only have one option.
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