Are NoFollow Links Completely Useless?

Understanding NoFollow Links

A 'NoFollow' link is just like any other link, but it has an added attribute "rel=nofollow" towards its end. This attribute tells search engine spiders not to crawl that particular link. This added attribute was started by Google to control the manipulation of link building as a tool to increase search engine rankings.

There are various small ways by which 'NoFollow' links do help.

First of all, not all search engines consider 'NoFollow' attribute. Since this term was coined by Google, there are some search engines which do not consider nofollow guideline in their search engine algorithm.

A nofollow link can drive free traffic to your web site.

If you add a link of your site in some high ranking website, visitors to that site can still see your link and reach your website even though it may be nofollow link. Hence even though you may not be getting any value in the eyes of search engines by a nofollow link but these links are still links and can help to drive direct traffic to your website. So sometimes when generating traffic is considered, a 'nofollow' link can be as good as a 'follow' link.

'NoFollow' link can still help you to get in touch with others and gain some publicity.

If you leave genuine comments in other peoples' blogs, then slowly, they will turn up on your blog and start commenting on your blog or website articles. If they find something interesting to read, they will help in promoting your site by referring your site to others and by regular commenting.

This will help you in making a brand image for yourself and your blog/website. Consider two sites that are the same in terms of quality of content and number of links they have. In this case, a website having a more 'nofollow' link will be given a higher ranking. Thus, in a way, nofollow links have high value with search engines.

A site having 'nofollow' links is any day better than a site having no links at all.

A 'nofollow' link does not mean that the link in itself is bad. Hence your site will not get any bad publicity by being a 'nofollow' link.

If a link is made 'NoFollow' that does not mean it cannot be indexed by Google or any other search engines.

If the same link is used by other websites without a nofollow link, then Google can still index the webpage.

Also, it is possible to make directory submission of the site as well as directly submit a webpage to Google or any other search engines. Thus these web pages can anyway get indexed by search engines. What is important is that the NoFollow attribute will not prevent your site from being visible to and being virally spread by the readers in general.

Leaving your website link on NoFollow pages is an indirect way of attracting traffic with your powerful comments and informative anecdotes. Besides, a more direct way of optimizing a website can be through manual directory submission.