Future of Nofollow Tag

Making Unethical SEO More Difficult

There is a good possibility that the nofollow attribute may be phased out sooner than we think. The reason for this is found by first looking at the priorities of relevant SERPs to the keword phrase being searched. If engines simply downgrade all web sites that are easy to post a link to, then there should be less need for the nofollow attribute.

Engines want their algorithms to function effectively. To do this, one of the things they implement is the nofollow attribute. This attribute is in existence to catagorize web page quality more based on true content. In simple terms, the nofollow tag reduces link spam producing higher quality SERPs.

Before the nofollow, webmasters had more of a fiduciary (position of trust) role in maintaining quality web content. The spam started occuring when webmasters, using persistence, would place their link on another site, solely for the purpose of getting a backlink to help rankings. What this did is to foster a webmaster who could care less about the content, but only cared about the new backlink. The latest increase in blogging has created the need for the nofollow attribute because most of the blog spam was made on the user's web page link mostly attatched to the Name field. Blogs showed too much irrelevant outgoing links at a time when their popularity was rapidly increasing.

What engines could be seeing now is a reduction in the usefulness of blogs. Most of these sites, from what I see, are not the best literature in the world. Also the freeness (being of no cost to user) of blogs makes them less likely to have useful resources and services.

If engines downgrade the blog and all other sites that are easy to post a link to, then there should be less need for the nofollow attribute. In other words a better change to the engine algorithms may be to give a penalty to sites that allow large amounts of free link posting. This would make unethical SEO more difficult.

Own a Dofollow Blog

The easiest way to own your own no nofollow blog is to buy your own url. See buy web hosting, for a list of top domain name companies.

Although I own over 10 urls, I do not have a blog on any of my sites. I don't see owning a dofollow blog as important. I only see posting to dofollow blogs without the nofollow attribute as priority organic SEO work. My desire to keep my sites updated with content helps to keep my sites at the top. Owning a blog is good for webmasters who don't like to update their sites, because blogging new useful resources is easy. The blog software does the work of creating new pages.

With ownership of all html write-up that makes up your web pages, making sure your blog does not contain the nofollow attribute is simple.

Priorities of a Search Engine

We can gage the main search engines' priorities, by looking at the things they publish and implement, like the nofollow attribute and penalties for link farming.

We now know that relevant keyword results are a priority, to engines.

From my experience with searching for things, I can say that engines have improved their search result pages over the last few years, by combating the webmaster's ability to trick the algorithms for higher keyword rank.

The nofollow attribute is in existence for the benefit of all engine users and I am thankful for this SPAM reducer.

Useful resources and services located at the top of all keyword searches is the ultimate goal of search engines.

On Nofollow Attribute

According to Wikipedia, the nofollow attribute was started by Google’s head of webspam team Matt Cutts and Jason Shellen using Blogger.com in 2005. They have the nofollow copyrighted and are subject to a royalty free patent policy.

According to Google, announced in 2005, hyperlinks with nofollow do not influence the link target's PageRank. That is the only rule webmasters need to know about this regarding organic search engine optimization work.

What I'd like to know is if other engines use the nofollow. If they do, how much money does M. Cutts and J. Shellen get from this? Anyone know?

Dofollow Blog List

The nofollow attribute used in blogs and forums is used by webmasters to make their site more search engine friendly. The negative side to this attribute is that the one posting does not get credit for a backlink for popularity reasons.

Posting Webmasters: see DoFollow Blogs for the most complete list of no nofollow posting.

Webmasters Who Want to Remove nofollow: see DoFollow Plug In for Wordpress.

My advice to all posters: make sure that when you place on link on another's page, that it relates to the theme. Anything else is spam. When you visit a blog or forum, take a genuine interest in the subject being talked about. This will keep everyone satisfied with your comment. If you don't know the subject, do a keyword search at Google and take 5 minutes to educate youself.

Good comment writing is key to a successful career in search engine optimization. Make sure and offer insights from experience in the subject to your post.