Follow or NoFollow? - Where the Difference LiesWritten by Abdulrehman on September 14th, 2008
Every anchor link on any page on the Internet falls into one of the two broad divisions. It is either a follow link or a nofollow link. But the point is what difference does it make whether it is a follow or a nofollow link? Basically a follow tag instructs the search engine bot to follow that link and look it up. Whereas a nofollow tag restricts the bot from following that link, as bots usually crawls up everything on a page. A link with none of the two tags is usually understood as a follow tag.
You must be thinking that why would someone put a nofollow tag, well that is because it counts as an out-going link, and to get a better page rank the more incoming links you have and the lesser out-going links you have the better your page rank would be. So when people have dozens of links on a page, they usually put a nofollow tag on them, so that it does not ruin their chance of getting a good page rank.
However, follow links from famous web pages which have high page ranks are very valuable. You can imagine its value that one incoming link from a PR10 web page can get you a page rank 4 or more. However, if the PR10 web page sends a lot of outgoing links then it’s own page rank may drop a few ranks. Here is the structure of a link with reference to the follow/nofollow tag:
<a rel=”nofollow” href=”http://www.3arn.net”>3arn.Net</a>
So if that link is on a page, it will not count as an incoming link to my Blog’s homepage. Some people put nofollow plug-ins on websites where comments are available to help protect from adding spam out-going links to the page. Wordpress by default turns every link on the page to a nofollow which cuts out the hassle. Many people out there oppose no follow links, I support them too but too an extent I think that nofollow tags can be extremely valuable in terms of page-protection and getting a better page rank and moreover its your choice that you want to send them an outgoing link or not.
Especially with blog, there should be some links that follow, this usually encourages activity on the blog. For example, if you spam on my blog in order to get an incoming link from this blog you will not get one. Firstly your link in the comment will not be followed, secondly spam comment will not even be entered. However, I have given my readers a chance of getting a follow link from my blog, which is from the Top Commentators list. With just a few comments you can have your website’s link followed by bots that come to my blog. So overall, you stay at advantage. Here are Some Advantages and Disadvantages of adding NoFollow Links to a page:
- Advantages
- More chances of getting a better page rank.
- Stay safe from spam comments with the purpose of getting a follow link.
- You can put a nofollow to your website’s internal pages like Contact, etc. because it is useless passing the page rank to them.
- Disadvantages
- It might discourage reader activity on the blog.
- The number of comments on a blog can reduce if the top commentators list is non-existent.
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Every anchor link on any page on the Internet falls into one of the two broad divisions. It is either a follow link or a nofollow link. But the point is what difference does it make whether it is a follow or a nofollow link? Basically a follow tag instructs the search engine bot to follow that link and look it up. Whereas a nofollow tag restricts the bot from following that link, as bots usually crawls up everything on a page. A link with none of the two tags is usually understood as a follow tag.
You must be thinking that why would someone put a nofollow tag, well that is because it counts as an out-going link, and to get a better page rank the more incoming links you have and the lesser out-going links you have the better your page rank would be. So when people have dozens of links on a page, they usually put a nofollow tag on them, so that it does not ruin their chance of getting a good page rank.
However, follow links from famous web pages which have high page ranks are very valuable. You can imagine its value that one incoming link from a PR10 web page can get you a page rank 4 or more. However, if the PR10 web page sends a lot of outgoing links then it’s own page rank may drop a few ranks. Here is the structure of a link with reference to the follow/nofollow tag:
<a rel=”nofollow” href=”http://www.3arn.net”>3arn.Net</a>
So if that link is on a page, it will not count as an incoming link to my Blog’s homepage. Some people put nofollow plug-ins on websites where comments are available to help protect from adding spam out-going links to the page. Wordpress by default turns every link on the page to a nofollow which cuts out the hassle. Many people out there oppose no follow links, I support them too but too an extent I think that nofollow tags can be extremely valuable in terms of page-protection and getting a better page rank and moreover its your choice that you want to send them an outgoing link or not.
Especially with blog, there should be some links that follow, this usually encourages activity on the blog. For example, if you spam on my blog in order to get an incoming link from this blog you will not get one. Firstly your link in the comment will not be followed, secondly spam comment will not even be entered. However, I have given my readers a chance of getting a follow link from my blog, which is from the Top Commentators list. With just a few comments you can have your website’s link followed by bots that come to my blog. So overall, you stay at advantage. Here are Some Advantages and Disadvantages of adding NoFollow Links to a page:
- Advantages
- More chances of getting a better page rank.
- Stay safe from spam comments with the purpose of getting a follow link.
- You can put a nofollow to your website’s internal pages like Contact, etc. because it is useless passing the page rank to them.
- Disadvantages
- It might discourage reader activity on the blog.
- The number of comments on a blog can reduce if the top commentators list is non-existent.
I am Abdulrehman Agha, the guy behind 3arn.Net. I am 17 years old, and live in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. I'm in Grade 11 studying in Saint Mary's Academy. I started this blog to share my money making experiences with others through the internet.
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A lot is read into this when people are building back links but a bit too much if you ask me. All links are counted and can create traffic
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It all depends, if you want real backlinks, nofollow links would do you no good!
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[...] and to make the whole scenario clear for them. Pagerank sculpting is was when you put a rel=”nofollow” tag on some links on your page to stop the link juice or the pagerank from flowing to them [...]
Great post. Thanks for the info.
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