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Can NoFollow Backlinks Impact Rankings in Google?

I remember 3 or 4 years ago getting into a heated forum discussion on the impact of nofollow links. Well, if you take a look around different marketing and SEO forums, the same discussion continues to take place.

There’s two sides, and both sides are adamant about what they believe.

One side believes everything that the Google scapegoat, Matt Cutts has said in previous videos, usually dating back to 2010-2012.

The other side believes in their own data and experience.

So what is right?

NoFollow Backlinks and Their Impact on Rankings

I’m in the camp that believes nofollow links can and DO have an impact both directly and indirectly.

Before we get into more specifics though, I want to point out that the other camp that bases their idea that nofollow links can NOT impact rankings, whatsoever, are taking this statement out of context:

Nofollow is method (introduced in 2005 and supported by multiple search engines) to annotate a link to tell search engines “I can’t or don’t want to vouch for this link.” In Google, nofollow links don’t pass PageRank and don’t pass anchortext. – Matt Cutts, 2009

You can see his entire blog post on the subject of PageRank sculpting and Nofollow links here.

Now in the interest of transparency, Matt Cutts has also said that nofollow links don’t increase rankings, but that point has been said much less than the fact that nofollow links don’t pass PageRank.

The focus is that nofollow links do NOT pass PageRank. Matt Cutts’s time with the web spam team is fine, but you must understand that it’s the web spam team’s job to introduce filters to an algorithm or multiple algorithms that benefit search quality.

What about the relevance factors? Trust factors? To assume that nofollow links play absolutely NO ROLE in rankings, is probably not a good idea. When Matt Cutts made his initial statement, he mentioned that only a very small fraction (3-4%) of all links are nofollow. Yet, in 2016, about 50% of links are nofollow.

What We Need To Understand About PageRank

In order to continue diving into this topic, we need to understand that PageRank is an algorithm, within an algorithm.

Also, PageRank has not been publicly updated for quite some time now, so we don’t really even know what the PageRank of a site is anymore.

Google has over 200 ranking factors, PageRank being one of them.

The problem with SEOs and this notion that PageRank is still a major factor, and that nofollow links will not help a website rank at all, is a notion that is based on dated information from a guy that hasn’t even been working at Google for about 2 years now.

Are we really naive enough to believe Google hasn’t made changes in the last 2 years? How about the last 7 years?

We have penguin, panda, hummingbird, and many others that haven’t been dubbed a name.

Google Is Learning More About Context Than Links

The PageRank algorithm is still a factor, but a dwindling one.

Remember when anchor text was a main issue in “link diversity”? Well, I guess some people still consider it to be hugely important but we’re in the age of information and machine learning and to think that Google is still using considerably primitive technology in search… well, it’s not happening.

Anchor text is now used more to identify spam, than it is as a ranking factor. Google understands what a link is about based on context and content of a page it is linking from, and to.

In fact, I mentioned a year ago in a post that the future of SEO is one that isn’t based on links at all, but co-citations and co-occurrence.

Authority, Trust, Reputation, Citations Differ From PageRank

One of the less talked about algorithms in Google is something called “TrustRank”. Some SEOs think this is a myth, or a leprechaun on a unicorn at the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but it’s not. It’s a patent registered by Google in 2005.

No, I don’t care about “Topical Trust Flow” as a majestic metric, that is not what TrustRank is and in no way can anyone come up with a reliable way to determine what TrustRank would be, since it is a private algorithm and we have no idea how much of a factor it is, and what is included.

What people need to know if they believe nofollow doesn’t help, is that Google has implemented things in the past that help understand reputation and authority of a site or even a person. Remember authorship? Sure maybe rich snippets of authorship are gone for the most part, but author rank was real.

Do we really believe that Google isn’t using something similar for websites and brands right now?

Google has said they don’t use social signals as a ranking factor. Despite what most people say, I think I agree that they don’t, and the case studies that show otherwise are confusing correlation and causation. However, we have to believe that Google is sophisticated enough to understand what a Twitter user tweets about, what their reputation is, what they like and don’t like, and whether a nofollow link they share is something that they want to account for.

A nofollow link does not pass pagerank, but couldn’t it pass trust? Couldn’t it still pass authority in a non-PR format? Couldn’t it still pass relevance?

With 200+ ranking factors, can we be naive enough to think that links that don’t pass PR, can’t pass something else that does impact rankings?

Alright.. I think the point is clear.

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NoFollow Links Ranking Sites in Local Search

I have a lot of experience in SEO. Both organic and local SEO, but local has always been my biggest focus. The vast majority of YOUR clients, are likely to be local businesses.

There’s a few differences between local search and organic search, and I assume if you’re reading this, you probably understand what those differences are, so I’m not going to write 5 more paragraphs explaining them.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you already know 2 main areas of focus with local.

  1. Location relevance
  2. Industry/Keyword relevance

I discussed this when I talked about ranking a site in 20+ cities for 60+ keywords.

Now with local, it’s very easy to see if nofollow links impact rankings or not. I’ve seen it happen hundreds of times, with my own eyes. This isn’t just theorizing here!

Local SEO is much different in the way that the results are focused. Google ties multiple things together. This is also a reason why citations have been a ranking factor in local search.

It’s about tying multiple business instances together.

Let’s use a scenario here… you have 2 businesses. One business has 10 followed links, lets just say they’re from different directories. The other business has 10 nofollow links, facebook, twitter, linkedin, and maybe nofollow comments on local news sites or location specific blogs.

While business #2 doesn’t get any PageRank passed onto them with the nofollow links, they do have relevance passed on. The first business may have PR passed, but we need to remember local SEO isn’t about strength of links, it’s about the relevance of links that tie a business to its’ location and industry.

In fact, you can actually use identification marketing techniques, with NO LINKS and still rank better than those that do have links.

For example:

 

 

NoFollow Doesn’t Just Impact Local Search

Local search is just the easiest to explain.

NoFollow links can still impact organic search, you just need to have something that ties things together.

Paul Savidge, which you may remember from a few guest posts in the past about conversion rate optimization, mentioned that Schema authorship tags could be the unique identifier that brings everything together.

I agree with him.

Final Thoughts

I’ve been a long time believer that just because a nofollow link doesn’t pass PageRank, it can impact rankings.

When I think about building links, whether or not the link is nofollow, doesn’t even cross my mind. My goal is to generate traffic. If a link has no potential of generating traffic, it is pretty much useless to me.

What are your thoughts on the nofollow vs. dofollow debate in SEO? Let me know!

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