Search Engine Optimization And No Follow Blindness

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

Generally speaking, search engine optimization and the ‘no follow’ tag don’t live in the same home. In fact, mention ‘no follow’ and many search engine optimization experts will ignore you. There are times when the ‘no follow’ doesn’t hurt.

A thread on the DigitalPoint forum has been following the question about buying ‘no follow’ links. It has been an interesting discussion with some rather wise comments. However, I think some of the participants have been caught by the ‘no follow’ blindness. Search engine optimization relies on links to obtain increased ratings. We know that Google is not impressed with ‘paid’ links. Under those circumstances, a paid link is either ‘no follow’ or risks being penalized.

If the ‘no follow’ is placed away from the tag, that is, in the meta tags or perhaps even in the robots.txt file, then all is not lost. If the site is popular then traffic may flow from such a link. If the link is within an article, and that article is being syndicated through RSS, then the link, once it leaves the site, no longer has the ‘no follow’ tag attached. If your search engine optimization program can cope with that issue, then you may find that one article producing many links.

If the link is in a sidebar or similar, you need to consider it in the way you would consider any banner advertising and place a value on the link from that standpoint. Search engine optimization is all about getting a decent result in the SERP’s. If you are buying links for traffic then that issue belongs in the advertising and marketing area and should be assessed from that perspective.

All things considered, buying links can be beneficial if done correctly and for the right reasons. Buying links as part of search engine optimization strategy has questionable value. If the link is ‘no follow’, it has only limited value. Then again, Google has erred before and followed ‘no follow’ tags.