Nofollow Links 101: Text Links and You

Every time I go to a blogging conference – most recently the 2010 Type-A Mom Conference in Asheville, North Carolina – I hear a lot of confusion about nofollow links whenever SEO is discussed. A lot of bloggers are completely clueless about this whole search engine optimization thing, and that’s to be expected… There are people who make entire careers out of staying up-to-date on this stuff and managing it for clients who are smart enough to realize their  time (and money) is better spent doing what they do best… and let the SEO folks do what they do best for them. There’s a lot of stuff to know, and especially if you’re a juggling a blog with a family and other part-time or full-time work, there’s no way you can keep up with everything. (See: Do Bloggers Even Know They’re Breaking Google’s Rules?)

So I’m going to make nofollow links very simple for you.

What is a nofollow link?

You have to understand a little bit about HTML code to understand what a nofollow link is. Let’s see if I can explain. This is what a normal link to my site looks like in HTML:

<a href="http://WELLinTHIShouse.com">WELL, in THIS House</a>

It’s pretty simple, as far as code goes. I’m not going to go into fancy explanations about what the a and the href mean. It’s enough to know that that’s what works to make a hyperlink.

To make that a nofollow link, you just have to add the rel=”nofollow” attribute. This is what the nofollow link would look like:

<a href="http://WELLinTHIShouse.com" rel="nofollow">WELL, in THIS House</a>

Again, it doesn’t matter what the rel part means. It’s enough to know that you need to add it to your links to make them nofollow.

Why do I need to nofollow my links?

There is a very detailed explanation to this, but I’ll give you the short version. You need to nofollow any link that Google might view as a paid link in order to prevent getting penalized and have your page(s) fall off the search engine results pages (SERPs). This is only an issue with Google. Yahoo and Bing don’t pay any attention to nofollow; they don’t care about paid links the same way Google does. So this is most important if you depend on Google for search traffic. (Is there anyone who doesn’t depend on Google for search traffic?)

Why does Google care about paid links? This is a more contentious issue, and what I am saying is a lot of supposition. The official word, I believe, is that Google claims that paid links pollute the SERPs. Every link counts as a “vote” for the site it points to, which is part of how Google decides which sites to display in the SERPs. If companies are paying for people to place links to their site, this is like “vote buying,” which doesn’t truly tell Google which sites people think are important and useful enough to link to. By adding nofollow to your links, you are telling Google not to count that link as a vote to the site it points to.

So why don’t Yahoo and Bing care whether a link has been paid for or not? This is where there’s room for debate, but my personal opinion is that Google doesn’t want paid links competing with Google AdWords, because they make a ton of money from their own paid link advertising factory. I’m not slamming Google by saying this, just providing a legitimate business explanation for their extreme interest in the matter.

And here’s the thing about getting slammed with a paid link penalty by Google…You don’t get a trial. You don’t even get a notification that it’s happened. One day, you’ll wake up and find that your PageRank has gone down, or you no longer appear on the first page of the Google SERPs for search terms you used to rank for. If Google thinks you’ve got paid links on your site, you may be penalized.

So what does Google classify as paid links?

The most blatant forms of paid links are those text links in your sidebar you may get paid $5-$20 a month for. The people buying that link don’t even care if anyone clicks on it. Sprinkle enough of them around the Web, and their search engine rankings can improve dramatically. (Until Google figures out that they got that way by buying links, when they’ll get penalized and drop out of the rankings.) Once the site gets penalized, you can get penalized for being a part of the link buying scheme. If that’s not a good enough reason not to sell text links in your sidebar (or in your posts), then consider the fact that many of the Internet marketing firms that solicit these links are getting paid thousands of dollars a month to score the links for their clients. The links are worth far more than you’re getting for them.

Then there’s the murky area of sponsored content links. I am including product reviews in this category, since you are being compensated with free product in exchange for your review that most likely links back to the company that sent it to you. Search Engine Journal has a great post about Paid Blogging & Sponsored Conversations, which I highly recommend reading. Matt Cutts, who works for Google, said himself that paid posts should not affect search engines. I did a fairly epic post for my former employer about Google’s double standards, using Michael Gray and Guy Kawasaki to illustrate my point. (The short version is that Guy Kawasaki can get away with things that smaller bloggers can’t. Just because he’s Guy Kawasaki.)

What does this mean for you? To play it safe, if you’re being compensated with cash or with free stuff, you should consider nofollowing the links to whoever is compensating you. In my PR Review Policy, I’m very upfront about the fact that I nofollow all of my links in my sponsored reviews. None of the companies I’ve worked with have ever had a problem with this. Remember, Google may not count the links, but Yahoo and Bing still do. And it doesn’t necessarily hurt to generate buzz without getting the “link juice” from a followed link.

If you decide to nofollow your links to sponsors in order to avoid potential Google penalties, it’s best to be upfront about this in your review policy. (You have one, don’t you?) If a company is only interested in the link juice – which can be taken away if Google discovers the link buying – they can look elsewhere. And remember, companies aren’t necessarily trying to be sneaky by buying links – they may not know the rules either.

Information is valuable. I hate hearing that another blogger saw their PageRank drop dramatically for “no apparent reason,” when really it can be explained by links in sponsored posts. (P.S. PageRank itself isn’t all that important. But a sudden drop in PageRank can be indicative of the SERP penalty that does matter.)

Feel free to ask questions in the comments section, and I will try  to clarify if I need to.

Christina Gleason (976 Posts)

That’s me: Christina Gleason. I’m a writer, editor, and disability advocate. I'm a multiply disabled autistic lady doing my best in this world built for abled people. I’m a geek for grammar, fantasy, and casual gaming. I hate vegetables. I cannot reliably speak, so I’ll happily conduct business over email or messaging instead.