To Follow Or Not Dofollow

Back in the early days of the internet, a hyperlink was a hyperlink: simply a means of redirecting web visitors from one page to another. But Google's PageRank algorithm changed all that - suddenly inbound links to a page came to be interpreted as "votes" or endorsements of the quality of the target page. And linking to pages of dubious quality could have a negative impact on the reputation of the host page. This inevitably led to the infamous nofollow attribute which webmasters were encouraged to apply to links pointing to sites or pages of dubious quality, as a way of indicating to the search engine crawlers that such links were not to be counted as votes for the target page, and has given rise to a class hierarchy among backlinks.

These days, most blogging and community-based software platforms automatically apply the nofollow tag to any links that are community-generated - like blog comments or forum signatures - which makes sense since webmasters don't want their sites penalised for inadvertantly linking to bad neighbourhoods. But there is a significant and growing backlash amongst webmasters who view this as against the spirit of the web, and who consequently have deliberately removed this attribute from outbound links, signalling a return to traditional linking practices.

Of course, since these links carry weight with the search bots, this is great news for anyone wanting to improve their search engine rankings. But apart from altruism, why would webmasters take on the risks that doing so carries (not least the risk of attracting spam)?

In fact, this can be part of a strategy to attract more traffic to a site: the fact that something of value is being given away for free (links) attracts visitors and can raise a site's profile as it becomes listed in dofollow directories and so forth. And for this reason it is often adopted by newbie bloggers trying to get noticed.

Of course, not all traffic is of the same quality, and it doesn't take too long before the dofollow webmaster starts to realise that his or her audience consists primarily of other webmasters and SEOers trying to build links to their own sites, and in most cases who are not at all interested in what the host site has to say. This lack of engagement, coupled with a fairly high level of awareness of monetisation strategies, makes it nigh on impossible to generate any revenue from the site, which is often one of the main reasons the site was started.

This is certainly true in my own experience, and as a result I have two bits of advice for anyone considering this strategy:

1. Don't do it - rather concentrate on traditional linkbuilding strategies like networking with other similar sites, delivering quality content, and perhaps using article marketing.
2. Stay away from the blogging and Make Money Online niches - they're simply too competitive and your chances of getting anywhere are slim to none.

By: Rodney J Smith

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Kids' DVD players | www.kidsportabledvdplayersguide.com | Coby DVD players