Can too many nofollowed backlinks hurt your website?

[markovald]

For a client i thought to do some quality and manual comment marketing on niche blogs. In think that can be a good system to drive visitors and build autority. I think to do 4/5 comments every day, and i have in average 3/4 follow links every month.

But i thought that: it's a problem if your link profile have 80/90% of nofollow links?

Thank you in advance!

[aakk9999]

The opinions on this vary. Here are two discussions we had on this forum on this subject (there are many more if you search).

Google: Link Drops In Forums Is Spam and Will Get The Dropped Site Penalised
May 27, 2014
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4674984.htm [webmasterworld.com]

Can spam nofollow links hurt my website?
Oct 22, 2010
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4220250.htm [webmasterworld.com]

[Kratos]

It will make you look like a spammer; that's all.

[markovald]

@aakk9999: thank you!

@Kratos: But it's common for blogger for example to comment other blogs very often (in some cases every) day with links to their blog. Maybe it depends on niches?

[EditorialGuy]

We've had at least a thousand (maybe more) nofollowed forum links from a megasite in our field. As far as I can tell, they haven't hurt us a bit. Who knows--they might even have helped, since the pages they link to are among our most popular pages even though we don't get a lot of referral traffic from the megasite.

BUT....We didn't post the links. The megasite's moderators and members did. (We don't post on the megasite, period. Maybe Google can tell the difference between comment or signature spam and legitimate links?)

[FranticFish]

I'd expect so. Signature links are identical, whereas natural citations are varied.

For the same reason, I'd also hope that they could tell the difference between a 'Great post thanks I'm agree check out my site' comment, and something that adds to the discussion, something that is textually unique and not cut and pasted from another site or used on multiple sites.

Applying a 'cookie cutter' approach to anything leaves a trail of identical or near-identical footprints.

I've spent a lot of time on 'mummy blogger' sites recently, and it is very common for them to comment on each other's sites. And these sites (which are usually monetised) rank well and drive traffic, so it doesn't seem to be hurting them.

[aristotle]

Most likely the opposite situation, having mostly DOFOLLOW backlinks, is where the risk lies.

Most of the new backlinks that my sites attract are nofollow. This is the natural and normal situation these days for the large majority of sites, due to the linking policies of most forums, as well as many large sites like facebook and wikipedia.

So it would look unnatural for a site to have a lot of dofollow backlinks and hardly any nofollow backlinks. This is what you should try to avoid.

[Kratos]

@markovald If you're commeiting on niches that allow links to be placed, your nofollowed link is going to be stack with other nofollow links from commenters. Who knows what their sites are about, including the sites expiring and being taken by a Chinese spammer, a black hat (or by yours truly) and turned into a PBN. Do you really want to associate your linked blog (with what's worse a nofollowed link) with other blogs of people passing by dropping their link to say "Hey great post I loved your article"?

@aristotle You're wrong, so wrong I don't even know where to start. Nofollow was intended to curb spam. Guess what Google (and anyone) is going to think if your backlink potfolio is 50% nofollow links (or whatever % the gooroos are claiming)? The only nofollow backlinks that a site naturally gets without doing blog commenting is either via a forum link (hey someone found your site interesting and half of forum CMS have their links non-nofollowed) or via those silly Chinese scrapers acting as referral spam that appear on your GWT console.

A good site will have most of its link non-nofollow. A nofollow here and there is OK, but don't start with the myth of having to "balance your nofollow and 'doofoolloows'" (no such thing as dofollow) so Google thinks you have a natural backlink portfolio when you're actually manipulating it.

Aristotle I love your posts and I pay attention any time that I see a post of yours (I lurk, haven't posted for months), but I just don't agree with this and I believe that you're wrong on this one. Don't take it personal.

[aristotle]

Kratos -- What I said is that most of the backlinks that my sites attract these days are nofollow. That is a true statement. These backlinks mostly come from places like debate forums, ehow, facebook, easybib, and pinterest, to give the most common examples. These types of sites automatically add nofollow tags to all outgoing backlinks. This is a policy that they adopted to discourage link-droppers and spammers.

My sites do attract some dofollow backlinks, usually from a small site somewhere or somebody's blog post somewhere, but these are probably only about 15-20 % of the total.

So in my experience, for all five of my sites, the natural backlink profile contains about 80-85% nofollow. I suspect that this is true of most informational websites.

In any case, as I've said elsewhere, my opinion is that the best way to judge the value of a backlink is by how much traffic it sends you, not by whether it's dofollow or nofollow.

[EditorialGuy]

it would look unnatural for a site to have a lot of dofollow backlinks and hardly any nofollow backlinks. This is what you should try to avoid/

Better yet, just let nature take its course and don't try to avoid one or the other. What "looks unnatural" is likely to be a moving target anyway.

[Kratos]

@aristotle You have got to be kidding on 85% nofollow. Go check the guys ranking, their nofollow links are 10% to 30%

I just checked 5 different niches (competitive ones) and checked the top 3 results for backlinks to that ranked page and the domain in general. I used both my Majestic and Ahrefs subscriptions.

It took me 8 minutes to see that those ranking vary around 10 to 30% nofollow links. Contrary to what many people think, followed links are everywhere and nofollow links make a single digit of the links on the internet. You're telling me that a natural backlink profile is made almost entirely of nofollow links when the web space has a single digit % of nofollowed links (ref: Matt Cutts). Not only that but nofollow links are absolutely useless for SEO (right, right, they send traffic).

Why on earth would you want 85% backlinks to be nofollow to rank in a competitive niche? Half of forum CMS have nofollowed links (i.e. many forum links are followed), Ehow (useless pseudo scraper that will give you what, 5 or 10 nofollow links from your stolen content), Pinterest (ok, you've got a good dozen nofolow links), blog comments (if you believe in spamming other people's blogs). What else? Heck I even checked one of my big site's backlink profile and it has 12% nofollow links and half of those those Asian excerpt scrapers are following the links (hey thanks for your 3,000 backlinks registered in my GWT bro). This site also has thousands of Pinterest links from stolen images that are ours.

Anyway, if you believe in thinking that a natural backlink profile is some X magic number, then that's your business (this can be seen as ranking manipulation, even though believing in X% of nofollow links is useless as nofollow links do nothing to for SEO/ranking purposes). Now, if we're talking of "how to skin a dead cat I just found laying dead on the road next to my neighbor's house who went on holiday two days ago" -- Then sure, blast those nofollow links like they pass some kind of magic and thou shalt rank.

I love your posts Aristotle and I read and learn from your posts, but I have no idea how you're so bent on 85% nofollow links or whatever "natural" backlink profile you have. This kind of thinking is what deviates people from focusing on getting the best backlinks ('dofollow' or whatever Ahrefs calls regular links) and instead worry about trivial stuff that doesn't even work. I'm tired of those professional bloggers who sell you 'how to blog and rank' giving silly advice like this. Anyway, this is actually good for me and for those of us who know of the uselessness of nofollow links, so continue to believe in the nofollow/dofollow voodoo.

I will continue reading your posts as you're a very knowledgeable guy. I just don't see why you think that way given the level of wisdom you have.

[tangor]

Links sminks... (lol)

I just look to see if they are spammy, then disallow those.

Otherwise, I don't care if if a link is follow or no follow. I didn't ask for them in the first place. :)

I also don't go looking for them.

(But wait, that's a different school than SEO, right?)

AND FOR SOME that works perfectly well. Links are not a one size fits all kind of thing. But if you live and die by links, then knowing what to follow/nofollow is dang important and, in MY case, something I don't chase.

Just another point of view.

[aristotle]

Kratos -- Thanks for your kind words about my posts. But in this case, you apparently misunderstood what I tried to say. I was talking about backlinks that my sites attract on their own, without any involvement on my part, whereas you are focused on backlinks that people "build". I used to try to build backlinks for my sites, but stopped doing so four or five years ago, preferring to spend my time in other ways.

I agree with you that dofollow backlinks are probably better for improving your rankings. At least this is the conventional wisdom, based on what Google tells us. This is why people who build backlinks generally prefer dofollow.

You're also correct when you say that some high-ranking sites have a preponderance of dofollow backlinks. But this could be a sign of artificial link building, so many of these probably aren't "natural" backlink profiles.

Also, with regard to my sites, I was talking about "new" backlinks. What Matt Cutts said in the past may not be as accurate now as when he said it.

[Kratos]

@aristotle Thanks for the reply. You're absolutely spot on and I understood your post now.

Cheers!