• Home
  • Web Design
  • WordPress
  • E-Commerce
  • Portfolio
  • About
  • Blog
  • Contact
Notting Hill Web Design

When ‘no follow’ goes too far

line

Page sculpting: it sounds like an artistic pursuit, doesn’t it? This is the term used to describe the act of modifying your HTML links to dictate whether or not you will ‘reward’ the sites you link to.

This is done not with a chisel and mallet, but with the use of the ‘no follow’ link, a piece of code that tells the search engines that even though you are linking to a site, you don’t want your link to be considered a ‘vote’ towards its popularity.

Imagine, for example, that you are blogging about a company whose service you consider to be particularly bad. If you exercise a particularly aggressive form of marketing, you may even be pointing out a competitor’s higher prices (not something we’d recommend, by the way). Under those circumstances, you are very unlikely to want to boost their Google ranking.

The ‘no follow’ link has gained its own momentum: when it was originally conceived (by a rare coming together of the major search engines), its purpose was to help combat ‘comment spam’. If your code automatically puts a ‘no follow’ tag in any links inserted by commenters, there is very little point in them bombarding your site with comments containing links to their site.

Thus, if you examine the source code of many of the big newspaper websites and other popular forums, you’ll see the ‘no follow’ links in action.

These days, the most diligent SEO practitioners have even been experimenting with ‘no follow’ links within their own site, in an attempt to guide Google and other search engines to the pages they consider most important, at the expense of the rest.

Why am I thrashing over this fairly esoteric point? Well, because this week the SEO community have been mulling over the words of Matt Cutts, the famous blogging Google engineer, at SMX, an SEO event. Talking over some of the problems of including ‘no follow’ links on your website, he said:

“The first-order things to pay attention to are making great content that will attract links in the first place and choosing a site architecture that makes your site usable/crawlable for humans and search engines alike.”

Good words, Cutts. Personally, I take this as a reminder that you can tinker with the fine points of SEO all you like, and see minor benefits, but the really big gains are made by always making the (human) reader your first priority. If you make your content worthwhile, you’ll gain links – and the higher rankings will follow.

Cutts has an agenda of course: for Google to be of use, its results do have to reflect honest user opinion. Its basic algorithm is based on an inbound link being a vote for quality. Much as we SEO professionals might hate to admit it, when SEO ‘outsmarts’ Google , Google becomes a little bit less useful. That is why, at Notting Hill Web Design, we’ll always advise you to make your content as good as it can be, before you look at the finer points of SEO.

  • Posted in:
  •   

Post navigation

Previous post Previous post:
⟵ Accessibility for All
Next post Next post:
Baker Tweet: Twitter for bakers ⟶
  • Home
  • Web Design
  • WordPress
  • E-commerce
  • Portfolio
  • About
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Sitemap
Copyright © 1999 - 2023 Notting Hill Web Design All Rights Reserved.
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
Accept Decline Read More
Manage consent

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT