The True Benefits Of NoFollow Links

In the world of SEO, there are huge amount of opinions on the importance of nofollow links and whether or not they should be utilised as part of an SEO strategy. Originally, they were introduced by Google, to prevent people from using black-hat SEO techniques of spamming links across the internet e.g. social comments. Frankly, with the way Google operates today, disregarding nofollow links completely is very naive. Long gone are the days of the past where link building was all about quantity over quality. Now, link building is far more natural and creative, which is just what nofollow links are all about.

Build awareness and credibility

Regardless of how much a link will benefit your SEO, they still help you build awareness, and this is hugely important for any company. By obtaining nofollow links in relevant, highly helpful article’s, you could possibly generate a substantial amount of traffic. From this, you are increasing the likelihood of reaching a whole host of people who don’t not know your business but could be potential custom, therefore increasing your brand awareness. It also helps improve your credibility if you are linked in a helpful article that people are reading.

Referral traffic

When it comes to marketing as a whole, word of mouth is a huge factor. NoFollow links are the word of mouth marketing for online, and therefore vastly important. When people post your links on social media, forums, content sharing website etc. you may not receive any ‘link juice’ to your site. However, if people are following these links and increasing your sites traffic, this can have obvious benefits on your marketing and lead generation.

Links generate more links

Back in 2009, Joshua Unseth did a post about the Importance of NoFollow Links. In it, he explains how a single nofollow link lead to a follow link that helped increase his traffic and his rankings. Although this article and example is a little out of date, the principle still applies, links can lead to more links.

NoFollow links are natural

By having a mixture of nofollow links and follow links in your link profile, it makes your site look a lot more natural, which Google likes. This also helps you avoid being penalised by Google Penguin updates.

Could actually benefit SEO

Finally, one thing we have to remember is the guys at Google don’t always tell us the truth, and are really picky with how they word things. One thing we do know is that the crawlers don’t follow the links and just ignore them as if they have no importance. However, one theory states that the natural element of nofollow links helps improve your trust flow, which can have a positive effect on your rankings.

To conclude, links play an effective role in boosting a websites visibility and although they may not bring about a direct boost in rankings, they are a crucial part of any digital marketing strategy.