Garrett Pierson
Learn SEO Social Marketing

The Nofollow Link & Social Media


There has been a lot of questions about how Social Media is affecting the SEO industry. The question I would like to ask is how can it help the SEO industry and how will affect the SEO for my clients sites and my own. The major issue with Social Media sites and how they play a role in your SEO these days is a majority of them (especially the big boys e.g. Twitter) use the Nofollow link. “Well your asking what does this mean and why do I need to worry about it.” First of all don’t worry about it, this is not the end of the world but what it means is that going to all these major social media and networking sites and linking back to your website will for the most part have no affect on your search engine results.

The NoFollow link (e.g. <a href=”url” rel=”nofollow”>) was originally created to block search engines from following links in blog comments, this was due to the very high amount of blog comment spamming. The wonderful Wikipedia definition says, “nofollow is an HTML attribute value used to instruct some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. It is intended to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of search engine spam, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing spamdexing from occurring in the first place.”

With Social Media sites popping up daily and with them being very easy to place user generated content and links spammers began the same old routine and therefore we suffer from their actions. The top social media and networking sites quickly found that they too needed to use the nofollow attribute to help reduce the amount of spam submitted. So for the most part placing a link on Social Media sites will not directly help your search engine optimization efforts. That doesn’t mean Social Media can not help in gaining valuable links to your sites here are a couple of ways Social Media and Networking help:

  • Ask for links to your site from those people you are networking with
  • Social Media is a great Link Baiting tool
  • Create instant awareness of your website or blog posts making it easier for people to find and therefore link to

So these are just a few tips and examples of how you can use Social Media and Networking site to help gain valuable links back to your website for SEO purposes. Although the majority of these social sites we use daily will not directly help our site SEO here are a list of some that can:

Social sites that allow Dofollow links in the profile area

1. Digg
2. Propeller
3. Flickr
4. Kirtsy
5. LinkedIn
6. Current
7. PostonFire
8. BloggingZoom
9. CoRank
10. Technorati
11. MyBlogLog
12. Bumpzee
13. LinkaGoGo
14. Bibsonomy
15. Mister-Wong
16. MyLinkVault
17. ClipClip
18. 9Rules
19. AssociatedContent
20. Blogoria
21. NowPublic
22. MemeStreams
List from Jeff Quipp at SearchEnginePeople.com

Current Top 20 Social Bookmarking sites that Dofollow

1. Blinklist.com
2. Furl.net
3. Mister-wong.com
4. Backflip.com
5. Spurl.net
6. Diigo.com
7. Bibsonomy.org
8. Rawsugar.com
9. Linkagogo.com
10. Myjeeves.ask.com
11. Buddy Marks
12. Connectedy
13. MyLinkVault
14. Jumptags.com
15. OYAX
16. A1 Webmarks
17. Bookmark Tracker
18. myVmarks
19. Health Ranker
20. Yattle

(Note this may change at any time!)

The wonderful thing about these social sites is that we can create our own user generated content on them and leverage the power and authority they have in the search engines. If we write and share valuable and useful content within these sites such as Hubpages.com, Squidoo.com, Digg.com, Wordpress.com, and many more, our content will rank very high in the search engines giving us wonderful exposure to the masses hopefully creating buzz and therefore more sales.

So with all this in mind we need to remember that SEO and Social Media are two different channels that we can and should use to build successful businesses online and brand ourselves or our products. We need to use both of them to stay competitive in this ever changing online world.

Popularity: 35% [?]

Don't Miss Out On Learning SEO!
Subscribe to the YourSEOMentor RSS feed or my email list below. Also start following me on Twitter. Thanks for Visiting!



Tags: , , , , , ,

15 Responses to “The Nofollow Link & Social Media”

  1. @Knatchwa Says:

    Good information thanks for offering it to the public at large I will have to explore each of those links further in the days to come.

    @Knatchwas last blog post..Internet Censorship … Should it happen?

  2. Tom Says:

    To be very true, i am using these social media sites extensively. My basic purpose is to fetch the traffic rather than backlinks or PR. I think traffic is much much important than PR. If some of your site or post will be on first page of DIGG, Can you imagine that what you would be going to get? It will be almost unbelievable.

  3. Social Media Optimization is Key to Blog Marketing Says:

    [...] Your SEO Mentor has a great post on NoFollow and DoFollow social bookmarking sites [...]

  4. Recent Links Tagged With "corank" - JabberTags Says:

    [...] public links >> corank The Nofollow Link & Social Media Saved by rockergirl3000 on Fri 19-12-2008 Eat less Saved by NguyenEmpire on Fri 19-12-2008 List [...]

  5. Social Media Optimization for Business Blog Marketing Says:

    [...] Your SEO Mentor has a great post on NoFollow and DoFollow social bookmarking sites [...]

  6. Social Media Optimization is Key to Blog Marketing | Maria Reyes-McDavis Says:

    [...] Your SEO Mentor has a great post on NoFollow and DoFollow social bookmarking sites [...]

  7. A Few Questions - Thirty Day Challenge Forums Says:

    [...] is reading) will say "Keyword phrase – Cool Stuff." For question 2, check out this page: Nofollow Link Social Media | SEO Training Sorry, I can’t help with #3. __________________ My Friend [...]

  8. fuentedance Says:

    The nofollow link dose prevent page rank liking but from my experience it effects ranking. Maybe less then dofollow but it sure dose. Some of my sites got indexed by nofollow links and that made me do some more research…

  9. Lindamood Bell Says:

    Thanks for u sear with us this nice list bcz Do follow Bookmarking list its very useful bcz they get easily Back links, PR, Website Ranking and Traffics

  10. ryan Says:

    great list, I would also like to add PR2 bookmarking site Onlinesocialbookmarking.com to the list, thanks
    ryan´s last blog ..Deccan Chargers Beats RCB in final, Hyderabad wins IPL My ComLuv Profile

  11. shabbir Says:

    Thanks for sharing. I would also like to add PR 2 do follow social bookmarking site Onlinesocialbookmarking.com to the list

  12. Scott Says:

    I have used social sites for sometime and have found the more content you can add to your posts the more relevant your links become as google sees that as an authority site.
    Scott´s last blog ..Low Profile Lift and Tilt Table My ComLuv Profile

  13. Tania Says:

    Thanks for sharing this DoFollow list.I am using these social media sites

  14. Dennis Bellows Says:

    I would agree with Scott. The more content you add to your site, blog..ect the more google seems to trust you. Maybe this is due also to the freshness of content.

    Regards

    Dennis B.
    Dennis Bellows´s last blog ..Tilt Table Bellows My ComLuv Profile

  15. anne Says:

    hi! thanks for this article. I have searched a lot of articles about nofollow links and this is the only article that erased my confusions. you are great!

Leave a Reply


CommentLuv Enabled
SEO Podcast

Don't Miss Out On Learning SEO!
Subscribe to the YSM RSS feed or my email list below. Also start following me on Twitter. Thanks for Visiting!

Big List - Search Marketing Blogs
Alltop, confirmation that I kick ass

Social Media Training Course
Trust Seals

Authority Black Book



SEO Dojo






Utah Running Marathon website for all the Utah Runners!