To dofollow or to nofollow: Our LinkedIn discussion of the month

This is a follow up post to our recent how do I get dofollow links blog. Check it out if you’re wondering what on earth a nofollow is, and if you’re still confused then look at our Search Engine Optimisation Training in Brighton, Sussex.

LinkedIn is a subject we cover on our Social Media course and we’ve found it an excellent networking tool. We frequently pose questions to our LinkedIn network and get some really great – and helpful – responses. We often post a question when we’re writing a blog post on the topic, in order to get some help! The thing is, once we’ve published the blog, all that useful information often goes to waste… The solution? We’ll now be posting a summary of our favourite LinkedIn discussion each month!

Read on for the nofollow debate, where the only consensus we managed to reach was that nofollow v dofollow can bamboozle even the most expert SEOs…

This was the question Heather posed to her LinkedIn network:

What’s the latest on nofollows?

Getting lots of conflicting advice on this.
We have nofollows on our comments but many internal links are follow and many menus and lists appear on many pages meaning that some internal pages like the category pages may get up to 600 links.
Should we make some of our internal links nofollow?
Should we make our comments follow?

Mark Lewis, CEO from Musicloops.com

Mark was clearly against using nofollows for anything other than stopping blog comment spam.

Only use nofollows for… stopping comment spam:

“nofollows are only meant to be used to stop comment spam. to what purpose would you use nofollows on your internal links? so that search engines can’t properly crawl your website? not a good idea. You should only use nofollows for the purpose they were created for, stopping comment spam.”

Heather replied: “I had heard that internal links using the same keywords can be considered spam“. Mark: “No, that is a complete myth. Navigation menus are a normal part of all websites and always have been. If Google penalized links in navigation menus the entire internet would end up not being listed in Google.”

Claus Schmidt, Owner of clsc.net

Claus agreed that nofollows should be for blog spam only; he was adamant that using nofollows for internal links is a waste of time and if anything likely to be detrimental to Google rankings.

[Making] internal links nofollow… would be a most peculiar signal to send to the Search Engines:

“Quote: “Should we make some of our internal links nofollow?”

That would be a most peculiar signal to send to the Search Engines. Why on Earth would you want to do that? Don’t you trust your own web site navigation? A nofollow link is a way to tell a Search Engine that that particular link should not be trusted, as the origin and relevance of it can not be determined. Would you say that was the case for the internal links on your web site? I sincerely hope not, because if it is so then you have some serious issues with that site.

–

Quote: “We have nofollows on our comments”

That is the way to properly use the nofollow link attribute. You do not know beforehand which links your commenters will post, and hence you apply the nofollow attribute – effectively telling the search engine “these links are not authorized by our site event though they are posted here.” Keep it that way. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.

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Quote: “some internal pages like the category pages may get up to 600 links.”

That is not a problem, that is in fact a very good thing. It makes sure that those pages get added weight in your site hierarchy as it is perceived by the search engines. That added weight, in turn, is what makes the search engines crawl your subpages in the first place. If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it. And don’t listen to people suggesting all kinds of rubbish in order to earn a few bucks. Most of them have no idea about how search engines operate. Although I admit that as it’s a technical field it’s pretty hard to spot them unless you know about the subject yourself. In which case you don’t need their “assistance” in the first place…. but, well…

–

What you could do instead WRT contact pages and other pages that you don’t really want in the index is to apply the robots meta tag to the page, like this: <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, follow”> The code here means “Follow links on this page, but don’t display this page in the search results” That’s a perfectly valid and non-spammy way to tell the bots not to index a page. It’s the industry standard and all the large Search Engines honour it.”

Shaq Ali, Owner of SSConsultancy

In support of Mark and Claus, Shaq felt that nofollow should be used for comments. But in contrast, he suggests nofollow could be used for internal links too.

It would be unwise to make your comments follow:

“Heather, IMHO, it would be unwise to make your comments “follow” because its a bigger crime to link to a spammy site rather than being linked from one. Yes, you can make some internal links as nofollow. The technique is know as “pagerank sculpting”. You can nofollow the links on your website which you deem are less important maybe something like Help, Terms, Privacy policy etc.”

 

Kunal Dubey, SEO & SEM Expert from MindGenies

Like Shaq, Kunal was enthusiastic that nofollow should be used on internal links.

Should we make… internal links nofollow? YES!:

“Should we make some of our internal links nofollow? YES!!!! if the site you are using for the business then please do it as soon as possible. Should we make our comments follow? YES!!!!”

Aviv Manoach, SEO Projects Manager from sOptions

Aviv was also convinced that page sculpting, or making certain internal links nofollow, was of benefit.

Nofollow… will decrease the link juice:

“Simply, a link with rel=”nofollow” will decrease the juice flowing to other links on the page, but will not get any juice itself. Previously, nofollow didn’t decrease link juice flow to other links on the page it was used.”

Ted Ives, Vice President of Project Management from The Search Agency

Unlike Mark, Claus, Shaq, Kunal or Aviv, Ted was one of many who wasn’t 100% sure.

The industry is still grappling with putting a consensus together:

“Heather, you’re right, there is a ton of conflicting advice.
Matt Cutts seems to indicate Google may or not be respecting nofollow, on a case by case basis perhaps (i.e. if you’re Wikipedia – maybe they’re ignoring it – who knows)…SEOMoz has been doing some recent very laborious research in recent works to prove nofollow still works well – but I don’t find the results compelling or convincing either way.
I would suggest: assume it works until proven otherwise and make your comments nofollow to discourage spammers at a minimum. Even if it’s not respected by the search engines, if spammers think it is, then it will help reduce comment spam. If you want to do internal “pagerank sculpting” by crafting links in such a way as to funnel pagerank into certain areas, you can do so, but you might be missing out on some additonal pagerank that gets wiped out by the nofollows per Matt’s comments.
You’ve posed a really good question and the industry is still grappling with putting a consensus together from what I can tell.”

Alfred Armstrong, Director and Senior Web Developer from Figure W

The discussion of this… has gone round in circles:

“Heather, I don’t believe there’s much point in using nofollows on internal links. The discussion of this as an SEO tool has gone round in circles. It’s the sort of thing that search engine algorithms process differently with every algorithm change, because there is no clear benefit to actual visitors (which is what the search engines really care about, ultimately).
If you don’t want internal pages to be indexed, perhaps because of duplicate content, then use a “noindex, nofollow” robots tag in the head of these pages, ie:
<META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW” />
As far as nofollows in user-generated outbound links, I would tend to continue to use them as they do at least indicate to the search engines that you have not endorsed the links, so if they do have an effect it should be in your favour.”

Heidi Cool, Web Designer / Strategist from HeidiCool.com

I don’t think there is a right answer for this:

“I would leave things as is… Matt Cutts recommends letting page rank flow freely through your site. The time one could spend on page-sculpting probably isn’t worth any results you might see. And since people are putting less and less emphasis on page rank I think you are safe to leave it as is.

You’ll probably gain more from SEO if you focus on making sure your pages are all properly coded using W3C valid semantic HTML mark-up, include the proper meta elements such as title and description and use keywords in the content that visitors would use as search terms if seeking such content.

As far as comments go, I think it depends on your commentators. If you regularly get commentators who run high quality sites or blogs, then giving them some link love may be a good thing. Google values it when you link to good stuff just as they devalue it when you link to spammy stuff. So if allowing follow could be a nice way to show appreciation to good commenters.

Either way, on many systems you can edit the comments, so you could add or remove rel=”nofollow” as necessary. My blog is nofollow, but I’ve been thinking of turning that off. Akismet has been working well enough to catch the spam, and comments from new visitors are moderated so I don’t think many bad links would slip through. When they do I can always edit the comment. I don’t think there is a right answer for this. It really depends on your blog and your readers.

Ted mentions there is some confusion regarding whether or not Google always respects nofollow. From my reading of Matt’s article Google never passes page rank for nofollow but will sometimes pass along link text due to some technical problems. Google will index the links that are nofollow but that doesn’t effect your SEO.”

Alex Moss, SEO specialist from Pleer

SEO Consultant Alex helpfully added some advice following reading this blog post; thanks Alex, these thoughts are a perfect way to round things up. It seems that nofollows remain a grey area (as does SEO technique and the Black v. White Hat debate in general) and perhaps Google likes it that way…

The fact that Matt [Cutts]/Google have said nothing really “official” about this means they either haven’t decided or want us to create more speculation and draw more attention to the subject:

“The nofollow debate is like the MP expenses scandal of the SEO world. People do it, some people get punished for it and others seem to get away with it without being detected. If I were an MP, I’m sure I wouldn’t have my new duck house paid for through expenses but I’d certainly use the expenses to my advantage. It’s very easy for the public to point fingers but the fact of the matter is is that those people would probably do it themselves if they had the chance. Now, back to how this is relevant to the nofollow debate.

Mark Lewis’ opinion to use nofollow for comment spam is technically correct as this was the initial intent of nofollow. Adding them to comment spam is a must in my opinion for 2 reasons – a) you won’t be penalised for linking to a spam site; and b) it will act as a deterrant for spammers as they will know that the link they insert will count for nothing.

However, with that, I agree with Alfred Armstrong that if you want certain internal links to be nofollowed there is a simple META tag that can be inserted into those pages. This saves time going through templates and adding nofollow whereever needed. Either way, the work done will probably outweigh the benefit.

I usually take the opinion that I should not follow any pages that have absolutely no intent for conversion – for example the terms & conditions and privacy pages. However, this is as far as my nofollows go internally. If you really want to do some internal link sculpting be wary of how you do this. Comparing back to the MP expenses – if some MPs weren’t so overzealous with their claims then maybe the story would have never unfolded and MPs would still be claiming for “grey hat” expenses.

The fact that this debate exists can be even down to Matt Cutts just seeking more respect in the online community. Speculation is great linkbait – it causes debate which is technically new user generated content and lets people like us link to Cutts’ blog to refer to the “higher power”. Ted Ives’ post is an example of how, technically, Matt Cutts has taken the role as the last word. The fact that Matt/Google have said nothing really “official” about this means they either haven’t decided or want us to create more speculation and draw more attention to the subject.

SEO, if done properly, is a natural progression that search engines will notice. If they notice that you’re abusing this natural progression they’ll penalise you for it. Bottom line – use if for its original purpose and be wary of anything other than that may be bordering on abusing it. If you’re planning a strategy about inserting nofollows then you’re either desperate or you are thinking more about cheating and less about simply creating a good navigation structure.”

Dofollow v Nofollow: to conclude…

Thanks to all on LinkedIn for taking the time to offer some really helpful advice. Ted, Alfred and Heidi – informative as they were – all agreed that page-sculpting and when to use nofollow is a very confusing area. Ultimately, no one knows exactly how the Googlebots decide how to rank a page. For now, our blog comments are nofollow – but we won’t be using nofollow anywhere else.

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