There are many people that will literally flip out when a webmaster says no to a link… Their reason may be fear that the link will get their website penalized or they may just refuse to try out new tactics just because their current methods are working so far. In today’s post, we at 411 Locals, will talk about nofollow links and will give you an example of how and when they can be beneficial.
Nofollow tags explained
The nofollow tag is a basic piece of HTML which allows webmasters to control whether search engines follow a link or not. Judging by the name, you can probably figure out that in terms of “control,” we mean that it actually instructs search engines not to visit the site.
How can a nofollow tag be useful then?
- Some webmasters use nofollow tags to ensure that search engines prioritize the most important content from your pages. For example, they can restrict the results for contact pages, registration forms, sitemap, etc., so that most of their traffic will go to the most important pages such as blogs, home, about, services, etc.
- Sometimes, you might have to link to competitors, and you surely wouldn’t want to boost their SEO
Nofollow tags and social media
Let’s say you see one of your followers’ posts and you see a link to a website you’ve never heard of before. The post is short enough for you to get the idea, but it doesn’t really interest you. Time can pass, and this topic may just become interesting for you, so you go back to the post and click on the link. You find some new information in this website that was basically linked with a nofollow tag on social media.
The moral of the story is that even though search engines don’t follow these tags, they can still be valuable. You may have been one of the thousands people that clicked on this link even though, when you first saw the post, it didn’t engage you.
A piece of advice
Try out new things, don’t be afraid of links, try not to discount nofollows. The 411 Locals team believes that every site that generates traffic is well worth the effort and every link is valuable. We are just explaining that even though a webmaster agrees to post your link under nofollow, you can still benefit from it.
These were our thoughts on the nofollow topic. We hope you found this article interesting, stay with us for our next topic!