SEO TIPS: Proper Link Attribution

Everyone is aware of backlinks and how important they are to PageRank. Back-links can build you up, or if they are the wrong kind, they can tear you down. As we have discussed many times over, relevance matters. That is why, in large part, there is so much interest over the use of the nofollow attribute the last several months. If you’re concerned about PageRank, you have to know how this works.

For the sake of background, the nofollow attribute was introduced by Google in 2005. If a website uses the “nofollow” attribute in its site for their external links, then Google will not award any credit in the form of Page Rank to the recipient website. You may be realizing traffic from these links, and that is a good thing, but in regard to PageRank, they are not helping you.

Nofollow attributes can be used on  your own website as well. You don’t want to lose all your juice to other sites the same as they don;t want to lose theirs. You can use the nofollow attribute if you are promoting an affiliate link, since using a nofollow attribute is what the affiliate programs expect you to do anyway. They merely want you to just send them targeted traffic and they pay you a fee for each purchase that your visitors make. They don’t care about getting link juice from you at all – just the traffic. You don’t have to dilute your own ‘link juice’ by supplying back links to site that doesn’t care about it.

By the same token, when you have space for banner ads, you can assign a no follow attribute to them as well, since, again, you are being paid for the traffic that you send to them and not for boosting the other website’s page-rank. Here is a piece of advice to keep in mind always – if you are being paid to place something on your site or blog – nofollow it! Not just some of the time, every single time!

Being paid specifically for placing the banner in a page with particular page-rank without a nofollow tag is supplying paid links to a customer and means you are helping them with black hat tactics. This is something you do not want to be caught up with in any way, shape or form. If someone buys links from you expecting back links from a page with good PR to boost his or her website’s ranking as well, JUST SAY NO. Google will punish you and you do not want that. Keep it simple and always pay attention to the follow/nofollow attribute in all aspects of your SEO strategy.