When To Use Follow No Follow With outbound Linking
Ever since the ‘no follow’ was invented, there has ALWAYS been a level of controversy about it. Should you use no follow or shouldn’t you? Now, it is widely known that Google seems to use linking (whether on site link or reciprocal links) as a kind of indicator as to which page or specific keywords are the most important to your website. Most people understand the basics of how a reciprocal link works, but do you know what a no follow is and how it works? And do search engines like Google and Bing take no follow into consideration?
What is a No Follow?
To sum up a no follow simply, it is an HTML attribute that basically tells a search engine that a hyperlink should be ignored when it comes to ranking the website. No follow was originally introduced to help prevent spam. The idea behind the introduction of no follow is that if you could reduce the amount of search engine spam coming through, the value and quality of results on search engines, in general, should be a lot better. So, why would one use no follow and WHEN should you use one?
When Should You Use a No Follow?
When asking yourself if you should be using no follow – especially when it comes to reciprocal link linking, there are a few things to keep in mind. Firstly, if you are placing your links within your website (perhaps between pages) and you do not want to give any priority to a certain page, a no follow could be perfect. Did you know that a no follow can benefit the importance of the pages on your website? You can use no follows to pretty much TELL Google what pages to look at first. A perfect example of when a page should be no follow is the privacy policy page of a website.
If you have an outbound link or an on site link to a really high ranking website, they PROBABLY do not NEED your ranking, so a no follow in this situation could be a good idea.
To sum up when a no follow should be used in reciprocal linking (or any kind of linking) is that if you do not want to affect the ranking of a site or importance of a page within a site, use a no follow.
Do the Search Engines take No Follow into Consideration?
Most search engines will take no follow into some sort of consideration. However, the level of consideration or interpretation taken into account is a bit blurry.
Now Google has said that they do not follow the link when it comes to a no follow. There are reports that Google actually DOES follow the link, but just doesn’t index it. It is the same with Yahoo. Yahoo follows the link, but doesn’t use when working out their rankings. Bing appears to not follow the link, therefore totally excluding it in their raking calculations – however, there hasn’t been much research into whether this is true yet.
As you can see, there are a lot of things that you (should be) and that search engines DO take into consideration, when it comes to using no follow in linking.
