For better or worse, the number and quality of your backlinks are still one of the most important ranking signals. Since appearing in the first few search results for selected keywords can bring an immense value to your business, it’s not surprising that everyone is still putting a lot of effort into link building.
One of the first things a beginner link builder learns is that not all backlinks are created equal. So whenever there is any serious discussion about link building, an unavoidable topic is the value of nofollow Niche backlinks.
If you took a minute right now to Google this topic, you would find many different opinions and some contradictory advice:
While it is impossible to say if nofollow links have any direct impact on your rankings, it is wrong to assume that they are useless and that they should be avoided at all cost.
The reality is that you will have to deal with nofollow links at some point in your link-building campaigns, so this article will give you a few ideas on how to squeeze the most value out of those links when they come from high-authority sites in your niche.
Follow vs. Nofollow Links
Follow Links – In many cases, backlinks in your content will be follow links – links that are visible to Google, generate “link juice,” and work to improve your rankings in search results.
Nofollow Links – Some backlinks, however, will be nofollow links. These links contain an instruction to search engines to disregard the link so that it doesn’t help you improve the ranking of your page/domain. Google’s official stance on nofollow links is: “in general, we don’t follow them”:
There is a good reason why nofollow links are sometimes preferred by site owners over follow links. The most notable reason is to minimize the occurrence of bad link-building practices, such as comment spamming and paid links, for example, which hold the potential to unfairly influence search results.
Despite this solid reasoning, nofollow links are often frustrating when it comes to SEO link-building campaigns.
