What's the news on sitwide nofollow links and anchor text penalties
-
Is it possible to be penalized for sitewide nofollow links because of anchor text penalties, even if you use branded anchor text?
-
You shouldn't receive any kind of penalty for doing so.
The premise of the nofollow tag is tell Google that "Hey, these links might be paid advertising, or could look a bit unnatural, so I'm going to whack a nofollow tag on them so you don't pass any link juice". It then ceases to become a tool to manipulate the SERPs, so you're not doing anything wrong in Google's TOS.
I think that's pretty clear cut. It's this scenario that nofollow was pretty much designed for. I'd never bet the mortgage with Google, but this comes close!
If we're talking site-wide links like footers to show that you worked on the site, from a personal POV I think that's a bit much and that a homepage link would achieve the same effect, but that's just me.
Hope this clears things up.
-
Good question, I don't know the answer - but it does apply to our business, so I'll follow this discussion for insight. Thanks for asking this Bob.
-
That does help. However, I was asking if it is a problem in your backlink profile to receive nofollow backlinks that are sitewide.
-
I posted a similar question the other day that may help a bit.
Dr. Pete posted a very good answer -
http://www.seomoz.org/q/too-many-noindex-follow-tags
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Over-optimizing Internal Linking: Is this real and, if so, what's the happy medium?
I have heard a lot about having a solid internal linking structure so that Google can easily discover pages and understand your page hierarchies and correlations and equity can be passed. Often, it's mentioned that it's good to have optimized anchor text, but not too optimized. You hear a lot of warnings about how over-optimization can be perceived as spammy: https://neilpatel.com/blog/avoid-over-optimizing/ But you also see posts and news like this saying that the internal link over-optimization warnings are unfounded or outdated:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SearchStan
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-no-internal-linking-overoptimization-penalty-27092.html So what's the tea? Is internal linking overoptimization a myth? If it's true, what's the tipping point? Does it have to be super invasive and keyword stuffy to negatively impact rankings? Or does simple light optimization of internal links on every page trigger this?1 -
Community Discussion: Are You Optimizing Your Brand's Content for Featured Snippets?
My latest post on the Moz Blog, Featured Snippets: A Dead-Simple Tactic for Making, explores how to keep Featured Snippets once you have them. I'm curious to know how many brands are actively working to get in the answer box, and for those who are, what's been the results?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ronell-smith2 -
External Keyword Anchor Links - Always Bad?
1) I've been told that other sites linking to my site with keyword-rich text are bad. 2) But Google Console / Analytics shows that we rank extremely high for random, pointless phrases loosely tied to the topic of our site. Like "dht blocker". (its a hair loss site) 3) This week I began analyzing our backlinks. Guess what I found? Literally hundreds of bot-created spammy trackback and pingback text links around the phrase "dht blocker" It seems to me that keyword rich anchor text on external sites is NOT a bad thing. In fact its an outstanding way to rank better for your desired keywords. Obviously the "bad" is the spam element. Probably the high quantity. On unrelated websites. But guess what? It worked. _We are ranking extremely well for these pointless phrases, thanks to these spam bots. _ Obviously we will be disavowing all these sites. But I want to start building quality links via legitimate, honest means. So here is my question: If I begin a legitimate honest link building campaign with other websites, and request that they put the HREF around our most coveted keyword phrase - is this inherently BAD? Or is it actually possibly GOOD? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HLTalk1 -
When Mobile and Desktop sites have the same page URLs, how should I handle the 'View Desktop Site' link on a mobile site to ensure a smooth crawl?
We're about to roll out a mobile site. The mobile and desktop URLs are the same. User Agent determines whether you see the desktop or mobile version of the site. At the bottom of the page is a 'View Desktop Site' link that will present the desktop version of the site to mobile user agents when clicked. I'm concerned that when the mobile crawler crawls our site it will crawl both our entire mobile site, then click 'View Desktop Site' and crawl our entire desktop site as well. Since mobile and desktop URLs are the same, the mobile crawler will end up crawling both mobile and desktop versions of each URL. Any tips on what we can do to make sure the mobile crawler either doesn't access the desktop site, or that we can let it know what is the mobile version of the page? We could simply not show the 'View Desktop Site' to the mobile crawler, but I'm interested to hear if others have encountered this issue and have any other recommended ways for handling it. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | merch_zzounds0 -
Is my text readable? I don't see it in the page source
Text on my site seems to be readable in a text only version (the page is not cached so I viewed it by disabling JAVA and then copy and pasted the page into Word) However, when I look in the page source I don't see the text there. The text was created using Open X html boxes to help us with formatting, but is this causing an SEO problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
Will aggressive use of branded keywords in anchor text attract Penguin’s wrath?
I'm working on a site for a serviced apartment site http://www.alcove.co.in/ which offers apartments in 9 cities in India. Site was ranking in 1st page of Google for “serviced apartment + city” for 7 cities until sometime in Jan 2013. However organic traffic has been gradually falling since sometime in September 2012 (40% fall this month over same period last year). There’s been no sudden fall in traffic which we may link with any Penguin update. There have been no warning messages in Google WMT. Even today the site ranks in 1st page for 3 cities; however ‘Serviced apartments bangalore’ which was the biggest revenue earner, is not ranked in first 5 pages. My questions are whether will aggressive use of branded keywords in anchor text will attract Penguin’s wrath, does Google makes allowance for case when company's name includes keywords. In our case, company name is Alcove Service apartments, could there be some other reason for fall in ranking/traffic? The distribution of anchors (external links, multiple links from same domain are counted) is : percent
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anand53
Keywords 34%
brand+keywords 43%
Natural 4%
only brand 11%
URL 7% For the above, Brand = ‘Alcove Service apartments’ or ‘Alcove Serviced apartments’ brand+keywords = various combinations of ‘alcove’ + [‘guest houses’ or ‘hotels’ or ‘accommodation’] + city1 + city2… Intriguingly, Open Site Explorer analysis of domain metrics (Domain Authority, Followed Linking Root Domains, etc) ranks Alcove higher than all but one site appearing in 1st page of Google for ‘Serviced apartments bangalore’. Most of alcove’s links are from article directories (no spun articles were used), directories and link exchanges with relevant sites. Any suggestions and guidance on what we could do to remedy the situation would be greatly appreciated! Thanks0 -
Is it possible for a multi doctor practice to have the practice's picture displayed in Google's SERP?
Google now includes pictures of authors in the results of the pages. Therefore, a single practice doctor can include her picture into Google's SERP (http://markup.io/v/dqpyajgz7jkd). How can a multi doctor practice display the practice's picture as opposed to a single doctor? A search for Plastic Surgery Chicago displayed this (query: plastic surgery Chicago) http://markup.io/v/bx3f28ynh4w5. I found one example of a search result showing a picture of both doctors for a multi doctor practice (query: houston texas plastic surgeon). http://markup.io/v/t20gfazxfa6h
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CakeWebsites0 -
What's the best way to phase in a complete site redesign?
Our client is in the planning stages of a site redesign that includes moving platforms. The new site will be rolled out in different phases throughout a period of a year. They are planning to put the new site redesign on a subdomain (i.e. www2.website.com) during the roll out of the different phases while eventually switching the new site back over to the www domain once all the phases are complete. We’re afraid that having the new site on the www2 domain will hurt SEO. For example, if their first phase is rolling out a new system to customize a product design and this new design system is hosted on www2.website.com/customize, when a customer picks a product to customize they’ll be linked to www2.website.com/customize instead of the original www.website.com/customize. The old website will start to get phased out as more and more of the new website is completed and users will be directed to www2. Once the entire redesign is completed, the old platform can be removed and the new website moved back to the www subdomian. Is there a better way of rolling out a website redesign in phases and not have it hosted on a different subdomain?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BlueAcorn0