Post by sumiseo558899 on Nov 3, 2024 17:32:34 GMT 7
Almost from the very beginning of the development of search engine algorithms, link signals have been one of the main ranking factors. Search engines evaluate the quality of a project and decide whether to give it high positions, including by link profile.
How Nofollow, Sponsored, UGC, Noreferrer, and Noopener Link Attributes Affect SEO
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As of 2023, backlinks are content writing service still among the significant ranking factors. Google is constantly working on improving its algorithms, but backlinks from quality dofollow sites help gain visibility even in the most competitive niches.
It is believed that the more diverse the link profile of a site, the lower the risk of being penalized. Webmasters use different attributes to ensure the naturalness of the link mass and to show search engines that the site is worthy of high positions.
The Impact of Link Attributes on SEO Then and Now
When working with backlinks, optimizers use several basic approaches. They buy dofollow links on exchanges, put nofollow backlinks from forums, social networks and other sites and do not worry about the fact that many of them are closed by a redirect.
Some webmasters actively use references without links. Google recognizes such brand references - if their number is constantly increasing, this will help the project gain authority in the niche.
Now, in addition to the nofollow link attribute, there are several other attributes that are designed to mark up certain types of links. In most cases, optimizers continue to use nofollow out of habit, but the share of new attributes is growing.
Google recommends that you specify the correct attribute for each link and do not manipulate the algorithms. They are constantly learning and can recognize intentional deception.
When third-party projects are mentioned in an article and they are 100% closed with nofollow, it means that the site owner does not trust the sites, and this looks strange to search engines. It is necessary to protect link weight from leakage, but it is also useful to link to external resources without nofollow.
Introducing the Nofollow attribute
In 2005, Google announced the nofollow link attribute as a tool to combat comment spam. An article on the search engine's official blog stated that "From now on, algorithms treat nofollow links as meaningless for SEO."
Nofollow became the main tool in the fight of webmasters to preserve link weight. Links that did not transfer weight and prevented the robot from following the link were used for all references to external resources that the site owner considered unsafe.
Nofollow has evolved from a way to combat spammers to one of the most commonly used tools by SEOs to mark all unwanted links. Many webmasters used the noindex nofollow meta tag to automatically close all links from robots on technical pages, but in most cases only the link attribute was used.
SEOs used nofollow until 2009 to concentrate link juice on important pages and not dilute it. In 2009, Google changed its approach to calculating link juice and the "Do not follow" signal became useless for internal linking.
Adding two new attributes
Google gradually came to the conclusion that one link attribute is not enough and announced two new attributes in the official blog in September 2019. Sponsored and ugc appeared, which are used to mark up certain types of links.
The meaning of nofollow has not changed, it's just that two more tools have appeared in the optimizers' arsenal. Now you don't have to use nofollow in 100% of cases, but use the right attributes for specific tasks: sponsored — for paid links, and ugc — for comments and other sections with user content.
Nofollow remained the most popular link attribute, but since September 2019, optimizers began to use it in combination with two new values of the rel tag a. For example, if you close a link via rel nofollow noindex, you can additionally set sponsored and ugc.
Using noindex in the source code of a link does not provide any benefit for SEO, but marking sponsored or user placements helps search engine algorithms better understand the nature of links. Although, most likely, neural networks have already accumulated enough data to independently recognize different types of backlinks.
Using attributes as a "hint" for ranking
When Google added the nofollow attribute, it was used to prevent robots from following links and minimize the impact on rankings. After March 2020, the situation changed — all link attributes began to be considered as hints. The rule “The link will not be taken into account when ranking” turned into “May affect rankings”.
Google still recommends using nofollow for resources that SEOs don't trust, and adding sponsored and ugc along with it. You can optionally close a sponsored link in nofollow, but it's no longer a "black mark."
Many webmasters do not understand what "processing as a hint" means. Previously, they used nofollow to prevent a robot from following a link and prohibiting the transfer of link juice. Now the "Do not follow" signal is not a directive, but a hint. Robots can take it into account or ignore it depending on the situation.
Link attributes for crawling and indexing
Using rel nofollow to make a link unindexed never worked. Although many webmasters believed that the link attribute would prevent the robot from following the link and indexing the page. Google has always recommended using nofollow to mention sites that the optimizer does not trust.
To prevent crawling and indexing, Google recommends using the appropriate robots meta tag values or a robots.txt file. The latter method is currently not reliable, because crawlers can ignore the rules from the technical file if they think that the content may be useful to users.
Many SEOs use nofollow on sites with many pages to save crawl budget. And while this tactic could be fruitful before 2020, now the “Do Not Follow” signal is a hint, and crawlers’ behavior may differ in each case.
Why did Google change its approach to handling nofollow?
The nofollow attribute was created to combat comment spam and mark links to resources they did not trust. Many webmasters used it for other purposes. For example, they linked to Wikipedia and other authoritative resources and "prohibited" robots from following the links.