No Follow and Search Engine Results
In the comments of my post, Understanding Follow Tags a great question was asked that I thought I’d give special attention to with a blog post. It’s relevant, it’s useful, and there are many theories to it.
So, let’s jump into it.
Lisa asked: Does “no follow” affect SERPs at all?
My initial answer is simple: yes and no. Let’s discuss both.
The point of the no follow tag within a link structure is not to “vote†for a website, at least in Google’s eyes. I’m not going to get into great detail about that here, I’ve already done that in the previous post. If you don’t understand follow tags, check out that post before reading this one.
Your website is listed in search engine result pages in accordance with the following:
- Keywords
- PageRank
First, you should be optimizing your blog posts/website content with keywords that search engines will pick up and associate with your blog. To get together these keywords for your site, I highly recommend a simple process: think like someone searching the web.
If you wanted to know how to improve your Technorati authority, how would you search that? Chances are you’ll go to your search engine of preference and type in “how to improve Technorati authority.†Right?
When you have written a blog post on Technorati authority, you’ll show up in the search engine result pages (SERPs) after your website has been crawled for new content.
Now, how you’re listed in the results pages is based on the priority that Google sees your site. You know what Google thinks of your site based on the PageRank that your site has.
The higher your PageRank on a scale from 0 to 10, the better you will rank in the SERPs.
Here’s the other side.
Google wants to know that they can trust YOU. They do that by picking up those keywords in your posts, seeing how many people link back to your blog/site, and that you are responsible with your linking.
To be responsible with your linking, to Google, means that you don’t allow every single link you give out to be followed. And the ones that you do follow you’re acknowledging that you like that site, you believe the site is trustworthy, and they are a “good neighborhood.â€
These indicators to Google will help, in theory, increase your PageRank.
We then go back to, the better your PageRank, the better you will rank in the SERPs.
Do not call me an expert. However, based on the information I have read and found on this, I believe what I’m telling you to be the truth.
There have been theories however, that even pages without PageRank pass “Google juice,†or PageRank along to the site they’re linking too. I’m not sure if that’s true.
I do certainly know that it’s true to rank in the SEPRs without any PageRank at all. The catch however is where you are ranking without any PageRank? Are you on page one or page twenty-five for the search results?
Obviously, all of us would like to be on page one. Clearly we won’t all be.
So, based on all this information, I suppose our answer is really yes. The use of the no follow tag does affect the SERPs because it is one less vote for a website to be placed in the SERPs for the keywords the linked site is using.
This doesn’t mean that a website that has been linked to with the no follow tag will never be listed in the SERPs. I believe it simply means that a website linked to repeatedly with the no follow tag will not rank as high in the SERPs as their competitors.
My suggestion, for ranking in the SERPs is to be clear about your post topic by using keywords that are commonly used for that specific topic. Think like someone using the search engine, not the search engine.
Technorati Tags: Search Engine, Google, PageRank, SERPs, Technorati Authority, Searching
February 14th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Glad I gave you a topic to write about. :) You said pretty much what I thought, but said it so much better than I could have. :)
February 14th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Lisa » You did indeed, it was something I had meant to mention for quite some time but just hadn’t. Thanks for the push. Glad I could confirm your thoughts. :o)
Feel free to come and inspire a post anytime. LOL
February 14th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Thanks for the post. I’ve always wondered about that. :)
While I’m not 100% worried about PageRank, I’d like something more than just 0 of 10, XD.
February 14th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Sarah » You’re Welcome.
I could see that your site may be hindered by the large amount of ads you have. I love ya girlie, but you’ve got a lot going on with your blog that it’s hard to navigate. Ditch the ads that aren’t making you money and keep the rest. I’m fairly confident that this will help you gain some PageRank back. :o)
February 14th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Almost killed my battery refreshing over and over (LOL), but I got rid of the ads. Only one I’m keeping is TLA, but there are like 4, and they’re from last year’s posts :)
February 14th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Sarah » Holy crap, I can hardly believe you removed so many at the advice of me. Not that I’m not happy about it. Your blog just loaded in half the time for me! Thrilled to see you do it. :D
February 14th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Eh, I wasn’t seeing a return in it. If I can get rid of the Google ads for the same reason, why not the others :)
Plus, they were a serious battery hog, XD, and since I stalk my own site, it was a smart idea. I just needed that extra “push” to do it. :O
February 14th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
[...] teh suggestion of Katy, I removed my ads, and re-arranged a few things in the removal of [...]
February 14th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Sarah » It’s always good to test out systems that may earn a return on your writing investment. Just not so many at one time.
Glad I could give you the extra push!
February 15th, 2008 at 2:32 am
sorry off topic.
hi! do u know any xml codes?
i remove haloscan from my sites,
to returned to the orig. blogger commenting, but i can’t find any answer in Google.
please anyone help.
February 15th, 2008 at 3:44 am
Julia » Sorry, I’m not at all familiar with Blogger to help there. I’m a WordPress girl. :D
February 15th, 2008 at 4:19 am
it’s ok thanks! i found a solution.
February 15th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
I like this post very much. I’ve learned a thing or two. I’d like to respond to the part that says,
“There have been theories however, that even pages without PageRank pass “Google juice,†or PageRank along to the site they’re linking too. I’m not sure if that’s true.”
Well I have only 1 year of expereience on a pc! Emagine my first blog. It is a french Live Spaces blog that is not quite quality ; ) Well it managed to get a pagerank of 4. Most people that link to it have low or unexisting pagerank. (crea.caca2007.spaces.live.com)
February 15th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Asuka_Aki » Interesting comment about your PageRank 4 blog. However, it’s important to remember though that PageRank is given based on multiple factors, not just the number of back links. I’m sure there are quite a few other factors that attributed to the rank but it is important to note none the less.
February 16th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Watcha,
I am firstly going to make an observation of your site after my previous ‘thumbs up’s’. Just constructive criticism, so it’s a little off topic, but bear with me.
After being on your site for a while, pop in most days. Something occurred to me whilst I was hopping around from place to place.
Something was not quite ‘there’, then it hit me like a thunderbolt. Well, not quite that significant, but you get the point. Your nav bar. Simply, I have found not having one along the top, actually for me, leaves me quite bereft. I know you have one down the side and along the bottom but I feel it’s actually too far down the side. And for a while, I was just floating around figuring out how to get back home. I know it would of been only a second or so, but as STEVE KRUG says ‘Don’t make me think!’.
It’s sort of hidden below your ad’s and sandwiched in between your top commentators, and because they are all text based, you loose some visual clues as to where and what things are.
I really hope you don’t take this the wrong way Katy, just an observation from a user’s point of view. Maybe it could be just moved up ahead of the ad’s, this would make a world of difference. Or even just duplicate your footer links along the very top above your header graphic?Anyway, just an idea. :0)
RE Post.
I always take in the juice from posts like this. I am currently reading some great books on SEO (SEM) and web analytics, two of which are the ‘An hour a Day’ series, which I would heartily recommend.
I have heard, although don’t take my word for it, I was probably under the influence of too much caffeine, but somewhere, I read that Google has not ‘yet’ made this NoFollow change. Now what that relates to Im not sure, if it meant Google are now re-adjusting their algorithms to compensate for all the users who adjust the no-follow code, I can’t be sure. But worth looking into as I know many users have altered this believing it will really benefit the regular commentator.
It’s always going ot be a loosing or at the very least, a drawn race with Google. Unless your a pioneer, when these ‘back alley hacks’ are promoted, it’s usually short lived. Stating the obvious I know, but hey, sue me. :0)
Right now Im not overly fussed with Page Rank or even anything Google related. For sure I am doing all the things one can do, but Im not driven to check everyday. Mainly because my current Blog is new, a month old, so im not even going to try to think I can do anything huge with it. If it happens it happens.
I do have another blog that was quite rated. It was about Bipolar and other issues and had quite a following within that certain ciircle. But then I had some unique experiences to share, and with my writing style, became quite a potent blog to visit. So I have learnt alot from that and SERPS, PAGE RANK, SUBSCRIBERS were very important to me. Right now, im a little more chilled about it.
And oh my god, here I am waffling again.
Please excuse me whilst I take my leave.
Graham Smith
ImJustCrazy
“Web & Blog Ramblings from ‘my’ Gutter”
February 16th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Graham » You gave me the push I needed for something I have thought about myself. Since working on this design I always thought my navigation was a little hidden. I’m annoyed with it sometimes when navigating my own site. And, I’ve recently decided that I wanted to display recent posts on the sidebar but there’s enough crap over there.
So, now you’ll find that the navigation has been moved to the top and “Recent Articles” has taken the place of the navigation in the sidebar. I’m happy. Thanks for the push and no offense taken at all. :o)
In regards to nofollow, I had once heard, whether true or not, that nofollow was started by Google. However, not always observed by Google themselves and other search engines. I have no idea if this is true simply because I never cared enough to do the research to find out.
February 19th, 2008 at 5:15 am
Now this article is directly in my wheelhouse, I have sooo much to say about it but I’ve written about it so much already that I’ll give my condensed opinion here.
#1 – Pagerank and serps aren’t proportional, you have to remember that it’s your pagerank as compared to your competitions pagerank, not to some number scale.
#2 – Internal pagerank matters OOOO so much. I can take a PR2 site and crank it to PR6 in one update without writing a word, simply by micro managing pr.
#3 – It’s often best to do the opposite, tone down you index page PR by offloading it onto articles – to do that you don’t link to the articles from the index page, instead, you link articles together so that they pass less PR back to the index and more to each other.
sorry, getting long already… great post!
February 19th, 2008 at 8:10 am
Popular Wealth » All great points. It feels like, in the long run, there’s a lot to factor in. More than obviously what you have just mentioned.
Like I pointed out in this post, I’m no expert but I certainly am willing to share what I have personally experienced or what I see happening for myself.
There’s a lot to learn and so much more to keep up with.
March 14th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
thanks for all of the great tips. I appreciate all the insight I can get. THere are so many terms out there–I get easily confused. Thanks for helping to sort it out.
March 14th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Jason » You’re very welcome!
And I agree, there’s a lot of web jargon and terms around and it’s hard to keep up. It’s just a matter of knowing what jargon terms apply to what your goals are and then forgetting the rest.
Good luck!
May 17th, 2008 at 12:50 am
[...] – especially back links with relevant keywords that boost our PageRank and our position in the SERPs. This much we have learned, [...]
July 6th, 2008 at 7:09 am
I’m still in learning process of search engine optimization and above post was really show a good point for me to take note. I can get no 1 position for Belajar SEO keyword but how do I get better Page Rank?
September 13th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
PR is certainly not the end all be all of seo is one factor weighed in the algorithm. It is something you want to improve but not something you need to focus on. Build quality content and a good user experience and pr will come. One thing to remember google will consistently be changing their algorithm so it is important to utilize different types of off site optimization , what we think today is the best method of ranking higher in the serps may not be best for the future.
No follow links to your site in most cases is something you can’t control since it’s coming from another site , it will not hurt your pr at all just won’t get any juice passed to it.