Do not neglect No Follow Links
I have received several PMs asking me several questions on no follow link building and how I handle it and if it is a waste of time. I figured it would be easier to address the top 3 concerns that I feel that are important to address on this. I hope it helps the newer people:
1.) Nofollow links are a waste of time - FALSE
No follow links are not a waste of time completely. While they do not contribute any juice towards the page they are linking to. The have two significant benefits. Now bear in mind, one of these is a fact and one is just a theory of mine.
This is a waste of resources since the page you are boosting will pass no more juice to the pages you wish to rank. In short, spend the processing power and bandwith building links to your dofollow tier links instead.
3.) Google will penalize me if I have too many nofollow links - FALSE
Nonsense. They pass no link juice along at all. Also Google for a few years now, Google has changed its attitude to how it treats links. It gives bonuses for good links and ignores and discounts bad links without penalty. They smartly realized it is very hard to get quality links, whereas anyone can mass spam their competitors with toxic links. I do not believe in the concept of link toxicity anymore and believe domains mainly get themselves deindexed not through backlink profile but due to other reasons: E.g. Security, Malware, Duplicate content, Site compromised.
Look long story short, you will have many 'Experts' trying to sell you services by using fear as leverage. Whether fear of penalty or fear of missing out, do not fall for it.
SEO is nowhere near as difficult as they try to make it seem and many of them have never even seen a top 10 SERP for a keyword with any meaningful volume. Ranking is simple if you follow the following rules:
1.) Be realistic. Don't try to compete for a keyword with insane competition from decades old domains who have more resources than most cities.
2.) Optimize your on page content.
3.) Build your links with diversity in platform, anchor and context.
4.) Boost those links.
5.) Get those links exposed to search engine crawlers.
6.) Be patient and wait. Do not expect results the next day.
7.) Stay positive and focused. Stick to your plan. Asking for advice is ok, but don't let complete strangers derail you with tales of grandeur. Those losers have no idea. I wish someone told me this when I started out. Would have retired to Dubai a few years earlier.
Good luck everyone!
1.) Nofollow links are a waste of time - FALSE
No follow links are not a waste of time completely. While they do not contribute any juice towards the page they are linking to. The have two significant benefits. Now bear in mind, one of these is a fact and one is just a theory of mine.
- Fact - They help with indexing. While google may not pass link juice on to the site, they do still crawl no follow links as a way to find to new pages. I know this to be true as I have tested this on no less than 40 different pages and have found that the google bot has turned up eventually. This is why comment posting is not a complete waste of time.
- Theory - They can help with ranking. While they do not contribute link juice, they do contribute to link diversity, which I feel is a factor that contributes towards the ranking algorithms. My testing does suggest this is the case, but to be fair my test size is too small for me to say that this is a statistically significant fact.
This is a waste of resources since the page you are boosting will pass no more juice to the pages you wish to rank. In short, spend the processing power and bandwith building links to your dofollow tier links instead.
3.) Google will penalize me if I have too many nofollow links - FALSE
Nonsense. They pass no link juice along at all. Also Google for a few years now, Google has changed its attitude to how it treats links. It gives bonuses for good links and ignores and discounts bad links without penalty. They smartly realized it is very hard to get quality links, whereas anyone can mass spam their competitors with toxic links. I do not believe in the concept of link toxicity anymore and believe domains mainly get themselves deindexed not through backlink profile but due to other reasons: E.g. Security, Malware, Duplicate content, Site compromised.
Look long story short, you will have many 'Experts' trying to sell you services by using fear as leverage. Whether fear of penalty or fear of missing out, do not fall for it.
SEO is nowhere near as difficult as they try to make it seem and many of them have never even seen a top 10 SERP for a keyword with any meaningful volume. Ranking is simple if you follow the following rules:
1.) Be realistic. Don't try to compete for a keyword with insane competition from decades old domains who have more resources than most cities.
2.) Optimize your on page content.
3.) Build your links with diversity in platform, anchor and context.
4.) Boost those links.
5.) Get those links exposed to search engine crawlers.
6.) Be patient and wait. Do not expect results the next day.
7.) Stay positive and focused. Stick to your plan. Asking for advice is ok, but don't let complete strangers derail you with tales of grandeur. Those losers have no idea. I wish someone told me this when I started out. Would have retired to Dubai a few years earlier.
Good luck everyone!
Comments
I know it's a bit late but great post! This topic of no-follow confuses most people and as you mentioned "gurus" will use this confusion to scare newbies in to buying useless products.
I can't tell you how many webinar demonstrations I have seen over the past 12ish years where they are promoting a new seo tool or "tactic" to a list.
Here is obvious issues...
1. They are all using the same exact framework which worked wonders for selling things but the product should match marketing and does not. (all asking to "imagine" life on a beach with unlimited income)
2. The tool provides less value then whats out there and they justify it by giving access to a dead facebook group and promise of free t-shirt which never comes.
3. One of a few popular guru closers come on with high pressure sales tactics offerring 20,000 dollars worth of added value FREE for action takers
Problem with this is the last 10 tools they closed for people they also gave credit to the tool for the rankings. So clearly it was not the tool at all but simple SEO methods anyone can carry out with a little grit and patience or tools they already have.
I think that since most people go around saying/thinking no-follow links are bad, that it makes it a ripe opportunity to use them.
1. Agreed that a natural link profie has both follow and nofollow links.
2. While you can't juice up your no follows you can build a few tiers to help with initial indexing.
3. Many news and authority sites that Google crawls constantly are no-follow sites so avoiding them is just a bad idea.
4. They help with indexing other links since they get crawled so much.
5. They can provide quick and easy referal traffic which can directly help with rankings and core web vitals.
For me, I def build my database of targets and try update to have dofollow indexable links but I am not avoiding no-follow links thats for sure!
And your right most of these so called gurus dont rank for anything commercially important and seem to have a hard time at even getting/showing a local listing with low competition to rank well but claim to be ranking for car insurance and injury lawyer national terms..... lmfao
Even the whole rank for a "city" and "seo" is kinda a joke, while you can get it to rank quite easy once your there you will find people are not lining up to do business with you like you may have been told.
Seems more for bragging rights and proof of concept rather than and organic lead machine as people are told.
Some people are really good at ranking things and some really good at product development or sales/marketing but its harder to find someone skilled at all 3.
I think people forget that ranking is just a piece of the pie. You need to be good at monetizing the traffic too!!
...rambling done
Have great day, week, year!