We have seen a plethora of discussions over the months and years that debate whether or not it is in a webmaster’s best interests to pursue no-follow links. From a broad perspective, no-follow links are specifically coded to tell search engines not to follow or judge your website based on the content of these sites. Various changes in recent years in regards to how people communicate and interact with one another has shifted this dynamic, with some no-follow links not being true to their name and instead providing positive or negative “karma” to a site. So, should you be worried about the presence of no-follow links on your website and whether or not you should be obtaining them? These concepts will be discussed, leaving you with the ability to make the best decision for your site.

No-Follow Links Through Facebook, Twitter

Like we mentioned in the introduction, there are no-follow links from sites such as Twitter and Facebook that do get counted by search engines and will impact your site’s rankings and ratings. Despite some SEO enthusiasts saying that no-follow links through these sources do not make a negligible impact, there is the added benefit of obtaining new visitors and customers through the viral outreach that no-follow links can provide to your site. It is for both of these reasons that we wholeheartedly suggest pursuing these links, but they should not be your number one priority when it comes to boosting traffic and business.

No-Follow Links – Old School Method

When it comes to traditional no-follow links, the debate on the effectiveness becomes quite divided. A large portion of the web community clearly believes that no benefits are offered to a site that has no-follow links to other sites listed on its pages. There is another school of thought that applies many of the nuanced changes in the web-related field over the years to the concept of these no-follow links as well, saying they provide a small amount of benefit. There are many webmasters who use no-follow links to provide information and relevant sites to their visitors without being directly tied to the fortune and rating of that website. This choice is predominantly made by each webmaster; if you have an opportunity to use a no-follow link, feel free to do so.

Information Gathering

By examining other sites that are similar to (and in direct competition with) yours, you can begin to see how they are using or not using no-follow links in their interface. When searching the bigger sites in any given category, you may be able to determine whether or not no-follow links have been successful in increasing their ranking (number of no-follow links, for example). How do you find these nofollow links without inspecting the source code line-by-line? By using Pingler’s NoFollow Finder Tool, which locates and displays all the no-follow links on any given page. This will allow you to see the number of no-follow links each site has, as well as giving you some tips on other sites that may be in your category, are possible affiliates and link partners, as well as any strategies for using the most popular sites in your no-follow strategy.