Can Nofollow Links Hurt Your Site’s Ranking?

Links, meta tag descriptions and other related components are essential in SEO. You can optimize your web page or site in order to ensure the top spot in the SERP (Search Engine Result Page) every time a user looks for your products or services. The “nofollow” link is one of the most common elements used in SEO. There are however proper ways to use and maximize links such as this to work on your online marketing advantage and boost your site visibility, leads generation and profitability.

Video Highlights

Google Webmasters answered the following question in order to shed light on the pressing topic regarding “nofollow” links and its potential effect on your page ranking in major search engines particularly Google:

“Can no-follow links hurt your site if you are building links basically not for Search Engine Optimization but to generate direct leads and traffic?”

• Google gives an upfront answer that technically, no-follow links could not hurt your site.
• However, one corner case which emphasized is that Google may potentially take manual spam reporting action towards you if they receive complaints or spam reports from other users. This may happen if you leave comments on every blog in the virtual world with tons of links that could start annoying the readers even if the comment has no-follow links.
• No-follow links could not guarantee you don’t get spam reports and complaints especially if you do mass-scale link building which could be deceptive or manipulative in terms of directing traffic to your site.
• As long as the user or webmaster is only using direct or regular traffic building and not annoying and disturbing the entire web, no-follow links will have no impact on the page ranking.

In order to get a higher ranking, you should:

• Focus on the guidelines of Google Webmaster especially in not abusing the web through mass-scale link building which could draw complaints and spam reports against you and your site.
• Remember that moderate, direct and regular traffic building is possible and not considered spammy activity especially if you are using no-follow links.
• If you are not flooding the web with links which are considered deceptive, manipulative and nonsensical, no-follow links could not significantly affect your site’s page ranking. The general rule of thumb is to use links in moderation and not leave massive, bulk links which could direct traffic to your site through spammy activities and tactics.