What are NoFollow and DoFollow links?
Before we start, you need to know that many marketers online will tell you that Dofollow links are the only links to have, this advice completely wrong and outdated. Many companies are still using old tactics to build links that in time will get most websites penalised.
If you are outsourcing your SEO work and link building is part of the service, then you need to read this to understand how you can protect your website from any potential search engine penalties.
- Dofollow are links that pass on Trust, Authority and Pagerank
- NoFollow is the exact opposite they give no benefit to the linked website.
Understanding Link Profiles
After the many updates from Google (Panda, Penguin) and the thousands of websites that were affected and continue to be effected, it’s essential for you as a website owner to understand a little about link profiles.
Every link you build to your site is another footprint being added to your websites online profile that can be tracked by Google. Get this wrong, and you can suffer some very severe penalties.
Another argument that surfaces online from time to time is this, if you do not use Google’s Webmaster tools or Analytics, then Google can not track you, again this is wrong information and just not accurate.
Google chrome is a fantastic tool to do this, and so is Google’s very own search index, so there is no escape from Google knowing what is linking to your site or even how your site is performing in the search engines.
You link profiles have to be natural, the best links to get are one-way links that are relevant to your site’s content and compliment the page the link is on by giving the site reader an additional resource they can use in their search for information.
What Is A One Way Backlink
A one-way backlink is a link that is on another website which you do not own but is related to your niche and that you are not linking back to. If you were linking back, that would be known as a reciprocal link which is not as useful as a one-way link. These links are much harder to get and are looked at favourably by Google when coming from a related site as a vote for your content giving your site more credibility and in some cases a better ranking.
Should You Get Links On NoFollow Sites
Well to be entirely truthful, a year ago I would have said not a chance, NO WAY just like many are still saying today. After the dust has settled with the first updates we are now getting a bigger picture of what Google wants which is creating a very natural footprint within your link profile and Nofollow links should be part of that link profile.
I am not saying that you go out and find any sites to get Nofollow links or even employ someone on Fiverr to get hundreds of comments on low-quality sites, these tactics can hurt your online business.
You can, however, do a little research and find sites that are two years or older have content that is related to yours as well as social influence. By doing this, you may not be getting any benefit from the link regarding Trust, Authority or Pagerank but if the site is established, then you have just created another traffic source for your business.
There are some free tools you can use right now that will give you an idea of how suitable a site is for linking.
- For social influence, you can use this free tool Social Link Popularity Tool
- SEO4Firefox, a simple plugin for the Firefox Web Browser
- SEO Quake a plugin for Firefox, Google Chrome shows website age
What About Anchor Text
Today more than ever before you need to be diversifying your anchor text for all incoming links. As an example of this let’s say I wanted to build some links to MarketingTilt (homepage), the first thing I need to understand is this, am I going to be branding my business name or am I trying to get ranked for a specific keyword on that page.
In both cases, you are going to need some diversity and in this case with branding a business name that would be the keyword most used for the selected page followed by a collection of diversified keywords that are listed as the categories on the homepage as well.
There is a lot of hype online about knowing exactly what the percentage is for link diversity such as 30% for your main keyword and the last 70% a mix of related keywords as well as naked links (https://www.marketingtilt.com.au) and click here, read more, go here and so on. I don’t believe that this is the case as every niche market is different and every keyword is different not to mention the many of aspects of your business website.
As a guide in your link building make sure it looks natural to you and not Link Spamming, stay to quality sites using the free tools above, and you will need fewer links, add quality content, and you will need fewer links, interact in social circles, and you will need fewer links.
The more you can build a robust link profile that looks natural the more authority your website will have, it will take time, but it will be well worth the effort. If you are serious about creating quality links and want to avoid any search engine penalties now or in the future then I recommend you check out some the Semantic Mastery Products such as Syndication Academy 2.0 of their very powerful Mastery Mastermind group.
