Social Media and No-follow links for SEO

This topic has come up a bit recently and will keep coming up. This is a short answer to the question of Social media and no follow links for SEO. But there are a lot of processes and work that can stem from this post so take it as an introduction.

Important point: No follow links have no benefit to your link profile as they are not part of Google’s link graph. Also, social media links with a follow attributed will have a lower weighting on link juice than other websites that have are not user submitted.

So the big question is, should you use it?
The short answer is yes.

The long answer comes down to the benefit of no follow links and the power of volume. If you want to build high quality, natural back links, you need to be seen. A no follow link may allow a user to find your website and then use your content to write a relevant blog or article that does have a do follow link. It may also provide you with a return in monetary value as can often be placed by the extra eyeballs on the site.

The issue is where no follow links and social media are being used as a way to grow a websites profile with the misconception that it will directly benefit your ranking within SERPS. My suggestion would be to forget this notion and use the indicators as way to determine the quality of your article and the likelihood that it would be used as a reference.

So should you keep using social media and no follow links as part of your SEO? YES, but only if you intend on writing high quality content which lends itself to being shared and referenced. Don’t forget the power of a viral share, real research, high quality content and peoples love for learning.

Josh Mackow
Marketing Manager at SitePoint

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Great point.

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Yes. Even though Google does not count it, your target audience can. Your target clients can. We all know that ranking is just a part of SEO. Gaining natural traffic to your website through these no-follow links can also contribute in your campaign.

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I definitely agree Ian and on top of that, seeing social indicators on a post or page definitely helps provide some reassurance and authority from a users point of view.

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There’s nothing wrong with no follow links. As a matter of fact, it should also be combined with do follow links to make your link building efforts look natural. These links can also lead potential clients to your websites. It may not produce the value needed by your website but it also gives the exposure your need over the Internet.

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Do you have a source for that? I’ve heard plenty of people say it, but I have never once seen anyone who I would consider credible say it. In what way is spamming blog comments and forums (etc) a “natural” profile? There are plenty of sites out there where the owners don’t succumb to dodgy practices to attempt to promote their sites … are you now seriously trying to say that Google wants them to do the things it doesn’t want them to do in order get a “natural” profile?

Yes, it’s actually true. There is nothing wrong with no follow links as long as your intention is for content writing only but if you need something to drive traffic to your website then it would be preferable to use directories with a follow link.

It doesn’t have to be about blog comments and forums. We all know that these kinds of link building strategies are for the old SEO. The new SEO is all about creating quality contents (which is thematic to your niche) with useful links on it. If you are going to stick with the old methods of website marketing, be ready to be penalized.

Yes i agree with it that no follow links does not helps in creasing rank of a website but it very effective to connect your customer or in other words to talk with them directly…social media helps to drow visitor direct on website.

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It’s definitely true that there is nothing wrong with no-follow links, but I think that @StevieD’s point was that actually about how Google view people’s use of them as part of a ‘strategy’

[quote=“roxelgestiada, post:13, topic:102179”]
The new SEO is all about creating quality contents
[/quote] That’s what the old SEO was about too… people just lost sight of that in their quest to cheat the system.

So a few points I have picked out of this while reading the forums.

  1. No Follow links have no DIRECT benefit to SEO in regards to back link strength.
  2. If you are building back links, it is NECESSARY to have no-follow links, as not all websites are do follow. If all of your back links are do follow it will be very obvious that you will have created and manufactured your link profile.
  3. No follow links provide valuable benefit to your website in the way of:

Traffic to your specific pages

  • High quality users who will be there for your content
  • Users who may link back to your content on a do follow blog they own and manage
  • Sales or conversions (emails, money, product removal, partnership opportunities, brand awareness)

Social has the benefit of pushing your website to large amounts of users who can do any of the above actions with your “no followed content”

In regards to commenting on blogs, forums etc with links. There is once again no definitive answer other than, there is a time and a place for everything. Matt Cutts has been direct in saying that there is no penalty for these actions in regular amounts. Defining that comes down to your link profile in answering a few questions.

  1. Are all of your comments from blog comments or forum posts? If yes, this will look unnatural
  2. Do you have a balanced amount of follow and no follow links? if no, then this could look unnatural
  3. Do you use back links from articles, local directories that are specific to your niche and high quality, some comments with back links, are your links surrounded by other high reputation websites in articles, do you have presence on social media (this is a point of existing not link power).

So in other words, you can’t rely soley on comments on blogs or forums to drive your back links as they are easy to “game” which means they have a lower weight, can be quickly seen as spam and could get you a penalty. My suggestion would be to use these forms of link as 5-10% of your strategy and use directories as SPARINGLY as possible.

Try to write extremely high quality articles, with high quality back links to high quality content and make sure that all of that content fits the niche on those websites. Also ensure that the article with your back link has other high quality, reputable sites in that article and that your link is only shown once.

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Hi

Thanks for updating,
i knew that only do follow is important. but after this post i understand roll of no follow links.

Thanks
john

No follow link also useful for website visibility. You can see that most of popular website are no follow so i think getting link to no follow is not bad idea. If you are building 100 links then 10 to 20% links should be no follow. Anyway it was useful information.

Why? Do you have an authoritative source to explain that, or is it just your opinion?

There is a lot of information and a lot of mis-information posted about SEO; if you have a good source to back up your views, then that’s much more helpful, as people can see whether the information is reliable or not.

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There are no authoritative sources to my knowledge that would give us clear splits on how much we need to split follow and no follow links to have a natural profile or how often we should seek either type of link.

My thoughts are that we should seek them indiscriminately, focusing on the traffic we could get and the quality of what we are doing.

But all in all, SEO has become a bigger beast now with a lot more of a focus on user engagement and creating a strong community. Focus on that and you will be fine :slight_smile:

Here you can readout about the power of no follow link. http://moz.com/blog/the-hidden-power-of-nofollow-links

[quote=“joshmackow, post:29, topic:102179”]
There are no authoritative sources to my knowledge that would give us clear splits on how much we need to split follow and no follow links to have a natural profile or how often we should seek either type of link.

My thoughts are that we should seek them indiscriminately, focusing on the traffic we could get and the quality of what we are doing.
[/quote]I agree with you entirely.

I just get exasperated by the number of times I see here people posting that you must have x% of links nofollow, with no explanation or justification. It’s one of the many SEO myths which seem to be perpetuated despite having no basis in fact - that there is some kind of magic number or percentage. (Like the people who state you should build x links per day, etc. )

And when I see people posting advice like

I find they generally mean “to try to scam the system and fool Google”. IMHO, if your link-building efforts are normal/natural, there’s no need for artificial manipulation of numbers.

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And when I see people posting advice like

to make your link building efforts look natural.

I find they generally mean “to try to scam the system and fool Google”. IMHO, if your link-building efforts are normal/natural, there’s no need for artificial manipulation of numbers.

I definitely agree! One thing I do know, is that I do believe that when you do create a link building effort, you do need to have no follow links to keep it ‘natural’. That isn’t to say x%, but if you do all do follow or even all no follow you are going to have a bad time with Google! What is natural you ask? Just making sure you do not discriminate a quality source that is a nofollow link and you don’t actively only seek do follow.

I actually love that people get SEO wrong, because it means the people who do the right thing get the benefits. Serve your customers, care about what they think and do on your site and you will be rewarded. Google is our friend, unless you scam.

Let’s hope everyone here who does the right thing, or wants to do it learns from this. Penalties are only to fear if you are being dodgy :stuck_out_tongue:

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Brilliantly put, thank you.

when u are working on a seo project the accumulation of links has to look natural but sometimes dont have the time to bui;d slowly the follow links, the best way to build links fast is to have a healthy dose of no-follow links .

although social media links are not shown as part of ur link profile they are useful in having ur links indexed, plus its not all social media sites that are no follow. so are do follow or make ur link do follow after u have reached a certain threshold in terms of time on the platform & number of content

the other value of no follow links and social media links is that link diversity is a key factor in rankings

as previous writers have said no follow links & social media links get bring in business as long as they are visible