Monday, April 11, 2011

Are No-follow Links good for SEO?


I've recently seen a lot of discussion on the value of no-follow links for SEO. Half of the Internet Marketing community is saying there IS value to them and the other half thinks there is absolutely no value. After some research, I've found compiled some information on backlinks and their do-follow/no-follow relevance to SEO.

No-follow Links: Is is still valuable to get them when you can? Social Media sites are mostly no-follow. Is it worth the reach even without the SEO value?
With some research, I've come to this conclusion: Yes, no-follow links are definitely important. There is much debate on no-follow links and as an SEO, I don't believe there needs to be so much concern over getting do-follow links. If a link is from a strong website with high PR such as Huffington Post, or Forbes and can pass traffic, then I say go get it! Search Engines are paying a lot of attention to Social media websites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) so why bother with worrying about nofollow/dofollow when they're still incredibly important to have. If you're trying to build a brand and rank on Google, it's best not to obsess over whether a link is good for SEO - think about what is good for your brand.
Nofollow links to not pass search engine value for Google and Bing - Yahoo might be another story. But you CAN have a link on Wikipedia or even Google's own blog and it won't count, but that doesn't mean it's not incredibly valuable.
Websites with lots of links, even if they're no-follow links, can still send traffic: meaning that the link is still clickable or live. This can still help with increased website traffic, leads and potential conversions and perhaps even encourage others to link to your website with a do-follow link. The point of all the Social Media links is about creating awareness and a following for your product and services. This awareness about your brand will lead to more link building from other sources and develop a larger community for your brand. So do no-follow links matter? Yes they most certainly do.