I have been saying this for well over a year now that the entire <nofollow> strategy in SEO is bogus.  It just doesn’t make sense to me.

Some History of Google’s NOFOLLOW HTML Attribute

Let’s go back in time.  Way back in history, in the dark ages of 2005, Matt Cutts from Google introduced new HTML code called the <nofollow> HTML tag.  This HTML tag was introduced to add to the HTML code of a webpage in front of a link.  The goal was to tell complying search engines to NOT index the link and in turn, do not follow that link.

It wasn’t long before SEOers discovered how this could benefit them in rankings.  It was determined, for example, that if a link had a nofollow attribute attached to it, the page’s value (aka link juice) was passed to only links that did not posses the nofollow attribute.  In other words, outbound links with the nofollow tag passed zero page rank.

This gave us control of page rank on our own sites!

This meant we, SEOers, had control of the internal ranking juice on the sites’ we controlled.  We could manipulate page rank from one page to another, in turn increasing our rankings simply by controlling and understanding how to properly use the nofollow attribute.

This was widely argued as white hat.  I argued otherwise.  The nofollow HTML attribute was NOT designed for this, and this made zero sense from a user’s marketability standpoint.  SEOer’s continued to push and created strategies like the 3rd tier push (pushing page rank from 3rd tier pages to 2nd tier pages) and link schemes that truely did help.

Here’s the problem.

Since Google is always looking to enhance the value of the visitor, then why would nofollow help the user?

1. Used properly, for example adding a nofollow to a terms and conditions page, make sense.  We would not want to rank or market our internal T&C’s.  They have no value to market.  Companies do not promote or market their contracts to prospects.  They market their marketing material, their business cards, brochures, etc.
2. When using nofollow to manipulate page rank, you’re in turn manipulating the search engines, removing the democratic value of the Internet and in turn, decreasing visitor value.

So, I’ve always asked the question, when is Google going to update their algorithm to stop this false manipulation and restore democracy in the link building scheme.

Most teach us to avoid NOFOLLOW sites

I’ve been taught to look at sites that will not use the nofollow for a link to my site, including directories, blogs, forum, social sites, article and video sites.  I’ve argued, while with no proof yet, that the search engines must give some sort of validity to a link, or a reference to a site.  Sure, the value changes depending on the nofollow, anchor text, site’s authority, trust, etc.  But I still argue that that there is still exposure and transparency.  Regardless of the webmaster’s desires.

It’s like handing out a business card to one person and a brochure to another.  Both are references to your business, but the business card doesn’t depict a clear picture of what you do, your brochure is much more detailed.  We still hand out card though and hand them out more willingly than a brochure.  This is the same as links.

I don’t and now I have proof

Here’s the link (with follow!) http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Music/06/26/jackson.presley.blog/index.html

The world of local SEO is moving towards links and citations, along with theme and geographical sites.

I found an article on CNN that proves this theory, at least in theory.  This is not hard evidence, however based on my philosophy that Internet Marketing can always be directly related to old skool marketing, this makes complete sense.

See, in this article from CNN to a blog of Lisa Marie Presley, CNN knows the immense value of a link from their site to another.  They do not want to provide SEO value to this blog.  They do not want to promote this blog.  They do not want to help this blog monetize itself, if there was a monetization strategy in place.  They do however, want to mention the reference cited from the blog.

Therefore they added a reference.  Not a link.  The link is not spiderable.  In theory with the nofollow tag, they merely needed to add a nofollow to the link, however because of the alleged theory, even that would add some SEO value.  So they didn’t even make it a link.  Not only that, cause under my theory, this is still a citation, a reference, if not a link.  Therefore, they used a URL shortner (www.bit.ly) and removed the link.  So now it’s just unrecongnizable text.  The search engine can not follow a link nor does the search engine know the originating domain.  The value to the CNN reader is still there, by copying and pasting the link.  A search engine won’t copy and paste text to determine if its a link.

So there you have it.  The value of the democratic Internet is restored.

Ask yourself this question

If you are adding value to the democratic Internet by posting valuable information on theme related blogs, and these blogs use nofollow, why would a search engine give value to your competitor in their index if they only posted on follow blogs and not yours, even if you 5x times the valuable posts?

I believe that websites that have used this strategy in the past and use nofollow today to manipulate page rank, will have created a clear footprint of manipulation and it’s pretty obvious.  I believe that the search engines will soon penalize these sites that have clear objectives to manipulate the SE’s.  I recommend to never look at sites code and use the nofollow as a determining factor to acquire a link.  Don’t consider it at all, only use it for pages on your site that make no sense from a marketing standpoint.  I believe the SE’s will soon work all this out and you’ll be much further ahead of the other SEO’s who chase the algorithm.