A Bloggers Guide To…NoFollow vs DoFollow Links

seo-expertHehe. Me and Claire aren’t really SEO experts (we save that title for the lunatics we work with that seem to think SEO is a fulfilling hobby), but we do know a thing or two about the murky world of search (why not go and have a nosey at our SEO tips for bloggers post for the cold hard proof, homegirls).

So, we’ve decided to put together a little bloggers guide to some of the questions we see pop up on Facebook and Twitter about SEO and making sure that your website is tip-top from a search engine point of view. Hopefully, they will help to clear up some of the quezzies us fashion and beauty bloggers have about our blogs.

In our first Bloggers Guide, we’re going to have a look at…

NoFollow vs DoFollow Links

Dofollow and no followlinks have been hot topics in the blogger groups that I’m part of on Facebook, and I’m sure that you might have seen people talking about them on Twitter too. There’s actually quite a big difference between the two. While they would look the same to your average blog visitor, the real difference is how they look to Google (or the search engine of your choice, but who uses Bing really).

HOLD UP…

For those who want a bit of clarification, links are one of the ways that Google uses to decide where to put your blog in the merry old search engine rankings. If a really good website or blog links to your blog, then Google will say to itself ‘GUT GOTT, this blog must be brilliant, I will rank it number one for ‘bad bitch blog’ (erm…that’s kind of how it works). In recent years, Google have put more weight onto good quality links, rather than the quantity of links your blog has. So, if a site like ASOS provide a link to your blog, its likely to give your search engine rankings a boost. If 1000 really wubbish websites give you a link to your blog, your blog might get flagged for being really wubbish too.

On the flip side, the links you give to brands, companies or other websites from your blog will give them a boost too. Google’s Guidelines are very specific on how you should link to other brands or websites, so it’s worth having a read about what it recommended and what is not. But how does all of this apply to ‘dofollow links’ and ‘nofollow links’?

What is a ‘dofollow’ link when its at home?

So, because Google looks at links as a way of determining the quality of a website, their little computer robots will ‘follow’ links to and from a website to decide where to rank your blog. If the links you provide are ‘dofollow’, Google will do just that – they’ll take into account the link you have provided or received.

As a blog owner, you’ll be keen to get high quality dofollow links to your blog because that will help you rank better in the search engine results pages (aka SERPs if you fancy getting techie). It’s also one of the reasons why brands and companies you might work with may sometimes ask for a link in a blog post you write.

How do you know if a link is ‘do follow’?

If you write your blog in WordPress or Blogger and use their content toolbar to add in links, its likely that these will automatically be ‘dofollow’. However, if you want to check, head into the ‘plain text’ viewing option. If your link is dofollow, it will likely look something like this in code:

<a href=”http://www.vanityclaire.co.uk>Stylingo</a>

You can also specify if you want a link to be dofollow, but the standard link HTML above will always be dofollow unless you tell Google otherwise. This is what it would look like if you want to tell Google it’s a do follow:

<a href=”http://www.vanityclaire.co.uk rel=”dofollow”>Stylingo</a>

What are the don’ts of a ‘do follow’?

This is a subject that’s widely debated and it can be a tricky one. The main thing to remember is that do follow links must be editorially given. It’s against Google’s guidelines to accept payment in return for a do follow link. For example, if you have a guest post or sponsored post on your website with a link to the brand and you have labelled that post as ‘Sponsored’, Google will think that your blog is violating its guidelines.

Whether or not you give a brand or website a dofollow link is usually a case of common sense. If a company directly says “I will give you £100 if you do follow link to my really good viagra website’, it’s usually a good idea to say no. But if you love a brand and they send you a product that you would have written about anyway on your blog, then there shouldn’t be any harm in giving that brand a dofollow link.

The key is everything in moderation and Google will quickly pick up if your beauty blog is writing a load of sponsored posts about how to lose 4 stone in 2 days, greyhound betting and trouser snake operations.

What about those pesky ‘nofollow’ links?

As you might have gathered, nofollow links are the exact opposite to do follow links. Instead of following a link like the real life stalker Google is, search engines will – in theory – put less weight onto it.

When should you use a no follow link?

Nofollow links are best used when you don’t particularly want Google to associate your blog with the website you’re linking to. It may be that the website is a bit spammy or downright rude, but a nofollow link will make sure that Google doesn’t connect your blog with that dodgy site.

If you do accept payment for a sponsored post, then the links you provide to the brand or website in question should be no follow. Don’t be surprised if a brand or website isn’t too interested after you tell them that the link will need to be nofollow. While, of course, you will know that its against Google’s guidelines for them to ask you to give them a dofollow in return for payment – it’s unfortunately still relatively common practice with some brands to do so. The best thing to do is say NO THANK YOU SIR, and move on with your life.

If you do decide to accept payment for a dofollow link, you won’t be arrested and killed by Google hitmen. It’s common practice for bloggers to put ‘sponsored post’ or ‘this is a paid for post’ at the end of a post that has been paid for, which is a way of staying in line with advertising standards. It can be surprising then, when brands might ask you to remove those words. The reason why they sometimes ask this is because this will red flag to Google that the link has been paid for. This can have implications for both the brand and your blog too. We’re not saying that this is right, but it is something that does happen and something that is useful to be aware of. It’s up to you as a blogger to decide what is appropriate for you and your blog!

The fact is, do follow links are valuable to brands. While no follow links aren’t useless (we’ll get onto that in a mo), they’re not always what brands are after.

How do you know if a link is ‘nofollow’?

If you want to make a link ‘nofollow’, you will need to switch over to your plain text editor again and use this HTML code around the link:

<a href=”http://www.vanityclaire.co.uk rel=”nofollow”>Stylingo</a>

Are nofollow links any use at all?

You might be thinking, “if dofollow links are so great, why would anyone be bovved about no follow links?”. On the surface, they look a bit like Solange compared to Beyonce (i.e. relatively rubbish). BUT there are actually a lot of benefits to a nofollow.

Firstly, it’s worth remembering the primary purpose of a link – to let people know that you like a website and that you would like them to visit that website too. While they may have little impact on SEO, no follow links can still drive traffic to your blog or the brand you’re linking to (for example, all links you leave in the comments section of other blogs are nofollow, but they will still drive some traffic to your blog).

There have recently been articles too about whether Google take into account nofollow links, and whether they will start doing so in the future. As with most Google updates, it’s usually difficult to predict what they’re going to do too far in the future. However, it’s worth noting that spamming nofollow links can get you into trouble, just as spamming dofollow links would.

Also, a well placed link on a relevant blog post or website can drive traffic to your blog. Increased traffic can help you rank better, and a nofollow link could lead to dofollow links as more people find out about your blog, read your content and generally become fans of your face.

Further Reading

Google Starter Guide to SEO

Moz: The Hidden Power of Nofollow Links

Using Nofollow According to Google

SEO Tips For Fashion & Beauty Bloggers Part 1: SEO and Your Blog

Good day you lovely lot! Today we have something very different than our usual fashion witterings for you. Since we started our little blog back in May, we’ve noticed a lot of talk about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and you all seem pretty interested to know more about it and how you can apply it to make the most of your blog.

Lauren and I work in a marketing agency and SEO is a big part of our daily jobs, so we thought we could put a couple of posts together to give any of you who are clueless about it a very basic overview. I will state that we’re both in the early stages of our careers, and so aren’t claiming to be in any way absolute experts in the field. Our own blog isn’t even SEO’d as much as it should be, mainly because we can’t really be bothered and like to do this more for fun. But there are a few simple steps that we follow to add some SEO benefit to our blog that you can also do to your own.

This first post is going to contain SEO tips in relation to your own blog, but we also have a second one planned. That will be focused on how SEO agencies are approaching bloggers, and what you need to know about sponsored posts, do-follow links and all that jazz – this is something else which we’ve seen spoken quite a lot about on Twitter and various sites recently, and so can help clear up one or two points there too!

So without further ado, let’s get this motherbitch started.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. To put it basically, SEO is about making your blog as search engine-friendly as possible. Ever wondered why some sites always appear at the top of the search pages in Google? SEO is the main driving force behind this.

The two main prongs of SEO are on-page optimisations and off-page optimisations. On-page, as the name suggests, is everything on your blog that can help Google to ‘see’ you and rank you higher in results. Off-page is what goes on outside of your own blog that can still help you, such as having links to your blog on other people’s websites and blogs.

What Can You Do?

Choose Your Title Posts Wisely

You fashion and beauty bloggers are a creative lot, and something we all see a lot are blog posts with imaginative titles. Song lyrics that sum up your mood or outfit are nice from a creative point of view, but don’t help you much in terms of SEO. Try to include some keywords in the title of your posts. For example, if you do a review of the Barry M Gelly Polish, then title your post ‘Review: Barry M Gelly Polish’. We know it’s pretty Snoresville, but people search Google using those words and so your blog is more likely to come up in the results. Quite a bit of our traffic comes from search engines, and we think this is largely down to our boring-but-literal titles.

Also, think about how you personally use search engines. A lot of searches start with phrases like ‘how to’ and ‘what do’, so incorporate these into our post titles if you can. For example, if your outfit post features you styling a pair of dungarees then titling this post ‘How To Wear Dungarees’ or ‘What to Wear With Dungarees’ could really help you.

Include Some Keywords

Similarly, you should try to include a few key phrases within the body of your post. If you want your review to rank higher, then including a few instances of the phrase ‘review of [product]’ ‘[product] review’ can help. This doesn’t have to be difficult or impact on your writing style – just an introductory sentence such as ‘Here’s my review of [product]’ can help.

Avoid the temptation to start over-stuffing keywords into your posts though. ‘Here is my [product] review. I hope you like my review of [product]. I enjoyed writing this [product] review. [Product] [product] [product] REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW’ will make Google HATE you (nothing personal, Google just hates people very easily).

Guest Posting

A lot of beauty and fashion bloggers love guest posting on one another’s blogs. Not only is it a great way to reach a new bunch of readers and spread word of your blog, but it’s also got SEO benefit. Search engines take into account how many sites link back to your blog – it’s generally considered that the more sites linking to you, then the more important your blog must be, and so the higher you’ll rank. So writing a guest post for someone else and linking back to your blog is really useful.

However, there is a focus on quality not quantity. Spamming sites with your link won’t get you anywhere – in fact, sites and blogs that have a lot of backlinks from really low-quality sites, or ones that are completely irrelevant to your niche, can be penalised by the big G (Google, not God… we don’t know where he stands on spam).

Use Your Google+

Some of you may have Google+ and dismiss it as the most boring and useless of the social media accounts. Most boring? Definitely. But most useless? Definitely not. There’s a lot of buzz around at the moment that suggests that the more authoritative someone’s G+ profile is, the higher that whatever they write will rank. This is because they’ll be seen as somewhat of an ‘expert’ in their field, so Google will push their posts to the top. Linking your G+ account to your blog can make your face pop up in results pages, like this:

SEO Tips Feat

Yes, I do feel famous sometimes.

Other Resources

We hope you’ve found some of these tips useful, and feel free to share this post out to other fashion and beauty bloggers who might be a little baffled by this SEO business. There are a few other articles dotted around the net that you might find helpful:

Business 2 Blogger – Simple SEO Tips for Bloggers
Pro Blogger – SEO Tips for Bloggers

If you want to geek up and find out more about SEO in general, then this Wikipedia article is a good place to start, while the Beginners Guide to SEO can give you a really in-depth learning.

Stay tuned for our Part 2!