To Add or Not to Add Nofollow

By Albert
In Google SEO
19/05/09 at 20:02
1 Comments

To Add or Not to Add Nofollow

To add or not to add nofollow to your website raises a lot of eye brows as to why it makes a difference. Some webmasters just can’t decide on which to chose and why it is even important. I’ll tell you why it is important.

What is Nofollow?

Nofollow is a simple tag designed for Googles’ search engine crawlers to go through links that your website “loves.” In simple words, if you have a nofollow tag on a link, it means that you don’t give credit to that link, which means, your website won’t devote any of it’s Google page ranking juice toward that link. If you don’t include it, it has the opposite effect. That is why you see many webmasters scramble for links that are dofollow and contain a high page rankings.

Example of a nofollow link in code

<a href=”http://www.google.com” rel=”nofollow”>Google</a>

Example of a ”juicy” link in code

<a href=”http://www.google.com”>Google</a>

To Add Rel Nofollow

There are many positive effects and negative effects of adding the nofollow rel tag. Here are some. (Adding rel nofollow will only effect Google’s image of your website and does not fully apply to other search engines)

Positive Effects

The page rank juice will only be distributed among links of your own, furthermore, it means that you can climb the PR charts faster than someone without the nofollow rel tag. (Assuming you have the same quality of links)
The lower the amount of your links are being distributed about your site’s PR, the more value the links on your website are.
You will receive less “spam” comments from webmasters who are only commenting for their own personal good.
More quality feedback that wasn’t made purposely for their own good.
The less outbound links without the nofollow rel, the more likely that Google will imply that your site is trustworthy.

Negative Effects

Less commentating, this means in general that it applies to both spam comments and regular comments.

Not to Add Rel Nofollow

The positive and negative effects of not having the rel nofollow tag should give you a good glimpse as to what kind of site you want.

Positive Effects

More comments in general, whether it be promotional or not.
Your links will be more likely to be distributed to webmaster communities, which can help aid your site’s traffic stats.
To make you feel “special,” because most blogs are nofollow. I am not one to say stats, but I believe the percentage of blogs that don’t have nofollow rel are around 5%, which is a very small population.

Negative Effects

Most websites that come out dofollow and offer a way for webmasters to leave links, are generally filled with spam and even more spam.
Your pages’ Google PR gets diluted and distributed away.
Google doesn’t like websites in general with lots of outbound links.
Lessens the link value coming from your website.
Encourages more spam comments with visitor’s only purpose is to promote their own links.

Although each have their own very own unique purposes, in most cases, it is for the webmaster to decide if one out weighs the other and if it is worthy of including the nofollow tag or not. If you own a blog, you might think about adding the nofollow rel tag, but if you own a big social networking site like Digg, you might consider leaving the links alone. Each have their own personal ideals and the way you use these tags is totally up to you. Your decision will help shape the type of community and the image you want your site to have.