I like blog commenting as a link building strategy. If you can add to the conversation, it’s an easy way to get both human visitors and backlinks.
But what about “nofollow?”
Nofollow is often ignored. Last year, Ben Fisher did a case study to see if nofollow links counted – they certainly seemed to, based on his results. Neil Patel “broke” the story with screenshots, and that post is now recognized as the “nofollow is BS” authority.
Because I recommend tools like CommentHut and Comment Sniper (which server 2 very different purposes when trying to get traffic from blog commenting), I often get emails from folks asking about the “nofollow” issue – why comment on blogs if it’s nofollow, blah blah blah. So it’s clear there’s still some confusion within the population on the value, if any, of nofollow links.
I thought I’d run the same study as Ben did last year and see if I could get my site to rank for a keyword that (1) is not on my site and (2) only use blog comments to get anchor text links for my keyword. I, like Ben, chose a misspelling simply because I’d be able to see results very quickly that way.
The term: ultilevel marketing
The results as of 5:44pm PST on 2/18/2008 after leaving about 15 blog comments with the help of Comment Hut to find relevant blogs are that I am ranked #1 for the keyphrase in Google, Yahoo and MSN:
What does this mean?
- Nofollow links with well chosen anchor text can pass link juice
- Blog commenting on nofollow blogs is still an effective way to increase search engine rank for a term
- Thoughtful and interesting blog comments will always bring human visitors
Some 30 Minute Backlinks users have noted that occasionally, software directories nofollow their links. Clearly, based on the results above, nofollow links *do* still contribute value to a site’s rank in all three major search engines. Any links that happen to be nofollow received by way of 30 Minute Backlinks continue to add to a site’s overall link profile and ability to rank for it’s keyphrase.
Edit 2/22/08 to correct my misspelling of the misspelling
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Im doing the same experiment with an orphaned page on my sites at the moment. Ive added 5 nofollow links to wordpress blogs using a really obscure term with no results. I’m 3 days in and so far the page hasn’t been indexed… i hope it does!
This is a very interesting post and I myself have done this just internally within my own small site. I am still getting found for the phrases I wanted that are in the anchor text and also the title tags. One thing I do dissagree on though is that the link juice can be obtained. this is what the nofollow is used for; to stop pagerank from flowing away from a page. I would imagine that you ahve a link internally or externally that did not have a nofollow on it and thus the page did get some pagerank. Great article.
Great post and some good information. But I wonder how long it will be before the nofollow tag starts doing what it is suppose to do?
Google has really been pushing the use of the nofollow tag.
I think no matter what you do, Google changes its alogorithms so often we are all forever catching up and spending time hoping by writing comments like these we will all of a sudden gain better positions! well i just did it
Excellent article. Nofollow links do count, we knew this about year ago and so did most of our clients. Thanks for clarifying it in such a nice manner. I will try to frequent your blog more often.
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John D.
http://www.widecircles.com
Social Media Marketing
Thanks for the nice topic. As there are many confuion regarding, google list no follow link.
The final result was :
All links which is shown up in Google Webmaster Tools and Google Webmaster Tools does not differentiate between incoming links that pass link popularity and links that don’t.
Inbound links are still inbound links irrespective of the nofollow attribute in it. Plus, they’re still valuable from a business perspective as they can funnel targeted traffic to your site.
Thanks Michelle for providing proof that no follow links do help and are counted with Google. I wonder what the situation is for Yahoo and MSN? I’ve heard MSN is notably bad at respecting “no follow” attributes.
The no follow information can be so confusing sometimes, but your article cleared a few things up for me. I did not realize you could rank for keywords this way. Thanks for the information.
Well…however Google does not consider nofollow links as backlink for a site or no-follow links have no link juice but still they are very important as they have power of diverting traffic to your site and needless to say that traffic is always so important for a site….
Indeed……no-follow links are valuable in terms of traffic…..
Keep in mind also that nofollow (as far as we know) is a Google-only concept. Google came up with it and there are still plenty of search engines out there (Yahoo, MSN) that don’t exactly put that much weight on nofollow….that’s at least 30-40% of total web searches.
Thanks for conducting the test and sharing your results. I think it still makes sense to make finding “do follow” blogs a higher priority if whatever tool or method you use has the capability. “Do follow” and “no follow” are not the same thing and IMO the difference is more likely to widen rather than shrink or stay the same.
Thanks Michelle for this wonderful article. However could you tell me incase there is a nofollow website, how can i make a dofollow posting on that blog?
…………..
Mike Smith
so what’s the need for no-follow ?
This is some cool stuff on the nofollow debate. I definitely think that they have some weight, though limited, and are looked at by google for what term is linked.
Thanks for the live test results. Testing often disproves what you may read in forums.
Great post. I have been thinking about this for quite some time and have to agree with the evidence. If you do a linkdomain: search on google for my site Flood Prevention products you will see lots of links from nofollow links. This means thay have to be crawled and if so why wouldnt the engines use the data?
Great post Michelle. I have always thought that nofollow links must count for something maybe google is throwing us all a curve and the nofollow links actually do count and they are trying to avoid having people link unless it is really relevant to their site. I know I would accept nofollow links as long as they were relevant to my website.
http://www.antivirusremedies.com
You have to take everything that Matt Cutts says with a grain of salt. It’s not in Google’s best interest to help everyone with their SEO work. Google also claims that .edu and .gov links dont carry any more weight.
Have you seen anything change on this topic within the past week. I’ve been getting into the area of getting backlinks to my site lately, and I thought something recently changed with follow and no follow links.
It’s always been my opinion that a backlink is a backlink, no matter the juice, etc. Just keep building your backlinks and don’t worry about PR, link juice, nofollow/dofollow, or any of that nonsense. Step back and get back to basics on your marketing. If you’re commenting on blogs and you’re writing something useful, that will attract attention and visitors to your site. If you’re writing useless content, you don’t get any visitors. The link juice/PR/etc. should just be icing on the cake. Go for the long term strategy and everything will fall into place regardless of the link juice.
@Greg Parsons Agreed – entirely too much attention is put into nofollow, PR, etc. Just build links, folks!
@Greg Parsons – I am glad to see your comment. So very VERY true.
Thank you
Michelle,
Great article. I to like the other 50 replies here was confused about nofollow blogs. I use commenthut as well and is a valuable tool to find wordpress blog that accept comments. i avoided the nofollow higher PR sites, but from now on I will comment on those sites as well.
Thanks,
Craig, Real Sports Fan Stuff
Ranking first for “ultilevel marketing” is too funny.
Hows about going for “Coolest Hermit on the Planet?”
Alex
Nofollow links ; we have noticed they do carry some weight and relevance in yahoo and msn, were not sure about google but worth some more research.
Excellent Post.
I have a doubt: when commenting on blog posts, the Anchor Text is only used at the “website box” in the personal details of the person who is commenting, or it must be used in the body of the text?
I don’t know if all blog comments accept HTML code to make anchor texts (i.e.: Dinero y Negocios) Or another method should be used?
Looking forward to your response.
Kindest Regards,
Alex Kei
@Alex Kei: For this test, I used my anchor text as the “Name” and the URL in the “Website” box. This way when the comment appeared, my anchor text was used when linking to the site.
Thanks, Michelle. I think this just goes to show that we should just get on with the job of getting links – no matter if they are dofollow or nofollow. You will get a spread of both over time. Both will be beneficial in some way.
Thanks Michelle… great post! I never tried testing “no follow” links, but I definitely will now!
Great post, Michelle!
I noticed that Yahoo! Answers (which also has a NoFollow attribute) recognize some of my comments there and this is a great in terms of Search Engine rankings!
I love reading your articles and posts. Please keep us uptaded.
Hi Michelle,
To the best of my knowledge, the big G has never proclaimed that a) nofollows don’t add to page reputation nor b) that the number of sites linking to you are not part of the algorithm. At minimum, it looks more natural if you have a good mix of backlinks.
There is a lot of confusion on nofollow/dofollow, I was under the impression that they both will pass the anchor text, but a nofollow will not pass Google pagerank?
Yes Ray, you are correct. No Follow simply instructs Google not to pass Page Rank – it’s a Google-specific piece of code they introduced initially to stop the ‘benefits’ of blog comment spamming. However, the anchor text benefits ARE passed as I’ve seen on my own sites so many times and that has most importance with ALL the major search engines at present.
Michelle, one thing to also note here, which I may have skipped, is the authority of the site that is using no follow. I have seen movement on pages where I used my link on a no follow blog and it was on a fairly competitive term bc the site was a PR 7.
I’m sure some others could comment on links on a authority site which uses no follow.
Chris
Interesting experiment, and it confirmed my suspicions! Cheers!
I’m totally flexed, I’m going to go with nofollow links still count. Like sumone said above if u leave a good comment you’ll get clicks anyway. there are 100s of SEs out there so if you have loads of nofollow links you will still get a bit of traffic from those combined.
My conclusion is that you have two things going on with a link, the anchor text and the pagerank. My guess is no pagerank is passed with no-follow, but… the anchor text is still picked up and that is why search engines rank you, not pagerank. As said in a previous comment, stop following the green bar. I am interested in finding out if this test still holds true since this post was is over a year old. Thanks.
Hello Michelle,
would be nice to have someone experiment new stuff? I love it!….just found your site and scan around c what I can learn from you. I used to stay away “no-follow” site and forum for only one reason and you know what that is….? Hell spend five minute wouldn’t be hurt.I give it a try.:) thanks again.
Good study. I had the same feeling that dofollow comments still counted to an extent. A lot of my good links were nofollow and they still helped me out.
Hi Michelle,
Should I post to forums with high index page but the actual page for putting links has no PR at all? Will google still consider this as a boost to my PR?
I just found you and I love you already! Going through your Social Media Daily and it is rockin’ (so far)
I use comment hut as well and is a valuable tool to find word press blog that accept comments. I avoided the no follow higher PR sites, but from now on I will comment on those sites as well. I think it still makes sense to make finding “do follow” blogs a higher priority if whatever tool or method you use has the capability
Hi there, I think posting to dofollow and nofollow blogs has its own benefits. If you are looking for a dofollow blogs and posting comment to it, Google will see at as “unnatural” because all your links are coming from a dofollow blogs or forums only.
I would guess that nofollow does pass some value, how much is obviously not clear, which is messed up since Google created it and told everyone to use it when they didn’t want a link to pass value. But maybe what is more important for nofollow is that a site will not be penalized if they link to a “bad neighborhood” as long as they use nofollow.
I’m in the ‘all links have value’ camp too. Firstly, because google isn’t the only search engine, but mainly because I believe any link to your site is a good thing and must count for something.
I agree that that nofollow links do help in ranking a keyword, what I’m not sure of yet is the importance being given by Google to the nofollow link. I believe that Google gives more importance to dofollow links than nofollow links.
In the spirit of this article, I thought it would be appropriate to leave this comment with a URL and see if my traffic increases.
Of course, it looks like other people already did the same here. Anyway, I did find the post to be interesting, and it helped me to think about nofollow in ways I hadn’t really explored it before.
great test michelle!!
here’s my take… people should stop doing their nutz over nofollow / dofollow. google is heavily assessing on links coming from broad social contribution, ie blog comments, videos, web 2 properties, bookmarks, directories, photo sharing, social networks and the list goes on.
the point… be active in ALL of it and ignore what everyone says about nofollow — just get LINKS!!!
the fact is the only reason I commented here was.
1/. I like Michelle
2/. To get a link with anchor text
I did not check if she has enabled dofollow on this blog — personally i don’t care.
Cheers,
Matty T
Great post. I’ve been wondering this for a while and whether or not all the hard work actually pays off if someone has the no follow attribute turned on in there blog.
Thanks!
Dr. Sadovnik
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