Article Directories with NoFollow Attribute

[gouri]

Article directories are supposed to be a good way to build backlinks to your sites, using the keywords you want as anchor text. SEOs recommend submitting to article directories to build backlinks.

Many article directories, however, have a nofollow attribute for the anchor text you use as links to your sites. Can these backlinks then be of help?

[tedster]

No - that's why Google introduced the rel="nofollow" attribute. They say it completely drops that link from their link graph of the web. They also say they don't even use such links to discover the URLs that they point to - in other words, if that's the only place that address appears on the web, then Google won't even spider the URL.

However, such a link might help another webmaster to see and appreciate your site - and therefor give you a natural editorial link that does count. So a good article could be a form of marketing.

[gouri]

I think I understand what you are saying.

Even though this link may not be followed to my site and help in the rankings, someone could see the article, visit a site and create a backlink from their site to mine which could help.

[Lame_Wolf]

What will help you is to write articles for your site. Then you will gain inbound links to it as well as pulling in visitors.
By submitting articles to other sites is helping them far more than helping you.

Make sure the content is unique and interesting to read and you cannot go wrong. Any SEO'r that suggests submitting them to other sites ought to be sacked.

[gouri]

Hi Lame Wolf,

I mean submitting artilces to article directories that include links in the articles to my site.

Are you saying I should write articles and post them on my own site, and people will read them and link to them?

[Robert Charlton]

Even though this link may not be followed to my site and help in the rankings, someone could see the article, visit a site and create a backlink from their site to mine which could help.

If they really liked the article, they'd be more likely to link to the article than to link to your site.

If you have the article both on the article directory and on your site, chances are that the version in the article directory will be treated as the original, and the version on your site will be filtered out as duplicated content. So, whatever you have on your site should not be allowed to appear elsewhere on the web.

But yes, you do need to figure out a way to promote your site so people will find your content and link to it. It's possible that articles written just for article directories might serve to do that, but that does represent a lot of effort that might be better spent in other ways and more directly lead to inbound links.

We have a whole forum dedicated to Link Development [webmasterworld.com]. Here's one of many threads from that forum I suggest you read. It touches specifically on submitting to article directories vs creating unique articles for topical sites of higher quality....

Link Development vs. Traffic Development and Staying with the Times
[webmasterworld.com...]

[gouri]

Thank you for that excellent post. I think this is very helpful, and I am also going to look at the link on link development.

[Lame_Wolf]

Hi Lame Wolf,

Hi Gouri

I mean submitting artilces to article directories that include links in the articles to my site.

Personally, I wouldn't do it. Depends on site structure, amount of links on page, PR, how related that site is to yours, how deep your article is on their site, how busy that site is etc etc.

Are you saying I should write articles and post them on my own site, and people will read them and link to them?

Oh yes !
Search engines love unique content and not copied, scraped or otherwise. And the articles I have on my site not only pull in visitors, they also have other sites linking to them.

[Robert Charlton]

For a further discussion of article directories vs unique content on your own site, take a look at this discussion, which lays out the basic reasons for each....

Article Directory Submission vs. Content on your Website
[webmasterworld.com...]

Also see...

To create content or not create it, that is the question
[webmasterworld.com...]