KhalidsLife.com

The “No Follow” attribute (rel=”nofollow”) was originally created to block search engines from following links in blog comments due to comment spam. As time passed, websites began using this in other areas, such as text links, to ensure their pagerank (PR) was not being leaked to other sites and to stop search engines indexing external pages.

Whilst he “No Follow” attribute may stop PR leakage, links are still counted towards the overall backlink count, which is what you should be targetting. In my post Off Site SEO, I stated “I’ve found building relevant backlinks works a treat when trying to rank well in the search engines.”

Regardless of whether these links are “No Follow” or not, they’ll still be counted. Sure it would be beneficial if they were “Do Follow”, but it is not the deciding factor.

Here are some important notes regarding the “No Follow” issue…

1. Linking to someone with a NoFollow attribute is a sign of not trusting them. It’s like reaching to shake someone’s hand, but stopping to put on a pair of latex gloves. In short, it doesn’t look good.

2. Search Engines follow NoFollow. Both Yahoo and Google have been known to count NoFollow links as backlinks in SiteExplorer. Proof from Search Engine Journal and Jon Warass.

It is amazing how many different services there are on the web that “Guarantee …” with a “Money Back Refund” etc etc etc. Further to that, the amount of conflicting information is rather bewildering - “Googlebot hates…” or “Googlebot needs”.

Like many things in life, SEO is trial and error. There is no clear system that guarantees you a premium ranking in the SERPs and with so many different things you can do, how would you know what is right and wrong without conducting your own tests?

I managed to rank Kortaz.com #1 - #5 for a number of different keywords. Without sounding arrogant, I think that’s quite an achievement considering “Kortaz” was not even a keyword and the site was not filled with content!

I think the amount of backlinks with the anchor text as the keyword made the site strong and this was the driving force behind its ranking. These links were built up over time with webmasters submitting their own proxy links to be listed on the site.

Aside from backlink building, being popular in Digg and Stumble Upon have their benefits too (I didn’t used them for Kortaz.com but for other sites). As well as bringing in visitors, many webmasters look for content through these sites and this can generate backlinks.

It is quite important to mention on-site SEO too and that generally means ensuring your site is keyword rich with unique content and good anchor texts.

I’d really like to know what you do when it comes to SEO and how you rank well?

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.