Timothy Carter

A Google Penalty is a misnomer. Google issues Manual Actions on sites whose practices violate the company’s guidelines. But Google does not issue penalties algorithmically (even though we state otherwise below). When webmasters claim their site was “penalized” by the latest Google update, it’s incorrect. Sites that drop in search results from a recent update are most likely over-optimized (most often this occurs as the result of one’s link building strategies) in one area and under-optimized in others. This lack of optimization on a web page level, can look like a penalty from Google, but it simply indicates a lack of understanding of all the factors impacting your rankings. Google Penalties Google penalties are some of the most frightening—yet most poorly understood—elements of search engine optimization (SEO). With the power to dramatically reduce your site’s rankings and visibility in search engines, Google penalties are a real threat, but at times, the legends surrounding them venture into “boogeyman” territory. But, if you’ve ever received a Google penalty notice like the following, it could send your cortisol levels climbing: As the saying goes: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In short, it is best to practice white-hat SEO services to avoid Google penalties in the first place. But, if you’ve already been hit with a Google penalty, there’s a solution for that too. Here we discuss the types of Google penalties and how to best recover when you are hit with a Google penalty. What are the Different Types of Google Penalties? There really only TWO types of Google penalties: Algorithmic Penalties. An algo penalty may hit a specific page or section of your site or an algorithm update may negatively impact your entire site. Manual Penalties or “manual actions”. Typically site owners will receive an alert from Google’s web spam team indicating your need to fix a Google penalty or manual action. Such a message can be a stressed, but there is a way out! These are some of the top reasons for “true” Google penalties (aka, manual actions): Sneaky redirects. Sending a visitor to a different URL than the one they originally requested is considered malicious. Simple 301 redirects aren’t usually a problem here; instead, this tactic attracts penalties when it takes users to a spam site through doorway pages, or a site completely different than the one the originally wanted. Keyword stuffing (and/or hidden text). Back in the day, you could fool Google’s search crawlers by “hiding” invisible text in the background of your site; it was a method of keyword stuffing, or getting as many target phrases on your site as possible to increase its relevance. Not only is this strategy ineffective (thanks to Google’s many content quality updates), but it will also earn you a manual penalty if you’re discovered to be using it. Cloaked images. Similarly, if you’re intentionally hiding images on your site for the purposes of fooling visitors or gaining a ranking advantage, you’ll likely earn a penalty. Link schemes (and/or spam). Unnatural links or link schemes are one of the most common motivations for Google taking manual action because links are so important to any search ranking strategy. Building links to your website is enormously beneficial if you’re employing best practices and prioritizing the quality of those links, but if you’re spamming links, building low quality or unnatural inbound links or taking part in link schemes, it’s only going to hurt you. Link swaps, link circles, and other forms of spam links are all frequent targets here. Thin content. Most instances of “thin” (i.e., weak or low-quality) content are sorted out by Google’s algorithmic quality indicators. However, in some cases, it may be severe enough to warrant a penalty. Expired information. In some cases, allowing information related to your site to expire, such as job postings, for a prolonged period of time could lead to a manual action. Hacking issues. If your site has been hacked or if its security has been compromised, Google may manually block the site from appearing in search engines to protect its typical users. Google has the power to take a manual action against a site that shows signs of violating Google’s terms of service. In this situation, a human being reviews the site in question and issues a manual penalty against the site. After the penalty is issued, some or all of your web pages will either suffer a massive ranking penalty or be omitted from search results entirely, depending on a number of factors (including the type and severity of the offense). There’s no clear visual indication that the pages are lower in rank, but their visibility will plummet. In all cases of a Google manual penalty, you will be specifically notified of its issuance. This is the only type of formal penalty that exists. However, your web pages may decline in rank for other reasons; these ranking declines are often referred to as “penalties” even though there is no human, manual action involved. Usually, if you notice a sudden decline in your search rankings, it’s because Google has issued a change in its algorithm. Google does this periodically as a way to improve the quality and accuracy of its search results; as a byproduct, it reevaluates the pages in its index, and some pages may fall in rank while others increase. Typically, these algorithm changes focus on refining Google’s quality standards; though the specific details aren’t published, it often means tightening restrictions on how Google “sees” your content and external links. Either way, there are strategies you can use to recover from your ranking decline. In the event of a manual Google penalty, you’ll need to make specific changes to your site and request a manual review from Google directly. In the case of search engine ranking page (SERP) volatility due to an algorithm change, tweaking your current efforts may be enough to bring your rank up over time. Which Type of Google Penalty Is Affecting Your Site? You may notice your pages

Are you confused as to why your website is failing to rank in Google search, particularly local search? When local search works in your favor, you’ll see your company sitting atop the search results for many a local phrase. But if you’re not ranking high in local search, or not appearing at all, it can seriously impact your business. If people can’t find you, how can they buy what you’re selling? It’s a big problem with a multitude of solutions. For some, it’s as simple as getting listed in Google My Business (GMB) and on Google Maps. For others, it’s a bit more complicated. Though local search has specific requirements, it’s still search and requires SEO. Bearing that in mind, let’s look at some reasons a company might fail to appear in Google local search results and what can be done from a local SEO perspective to remedy the situation. You’re Not Listed in Google My Business (GMB) This is by far the simplest reason you’re not appearing in local search results but not always the easiest to fix. Getting listed can be a bit of process. Google is very stringent in its listing guidelines so you absolutely must do your best follow them to the letter if you want to see progress. Your first step is to create a local business on Google. You only qualify for this option if: Your business as a mailing address You follow Google’s quality guidelines So long as you follow instructions, set up isn’t all that difficult. But this is actually where a lot of people get tripped up. You Didn’t Follow the Quality Guidelines for Local SEO As Local University puts it, Google’s quality guidelines for business listings shouldn’t be called guidelines at all — they should be called rules. Because if you don’t follow them precisely, the result is more often than not a failure to be listed or a failure to have your listing appear as you’d like it to. The guidelines are pretty detailed. For instance, if your business has a mail box or suite number, you need to include that information in Address Line 2, and under no circumstances should it appear in Address Line 1. It’s a bit persnickety, to be honest.  You should definitely take the time to review them on your own. But let’s take a look at a few aspects here just so you’re clear on some of the bigger requirements: Only a business owner (or someone authorized by the business owner) can verify a business listing. Try to use an email address attached to your company’s domain name to add trust to your verification request The business name in your listing should be what it’s actually called, though you can use one word to clarify what your company does. You can also use a “single descriptor” to better identify your company’s location, which can actually be made up of more than one word. See what I mean about these guidelines being very precise? Use your company’s real physical address Only one account can be created for a business location unless you’re an individual practitioner within a larger business (like a doctor or lawyer) or the page is for a department that acts individually within an organization like a university or hospital. Use a local phone number. Select a category based on what the business is “not what it does.” You would say “Hospital” not “Vaccinations,” according to Google. Fraudulent or illegal businesses aren’t allowed to create listings, let alone multiple listings. Google does have some country restrictions. Some business models are ineligible for a listing including those that: Don’t make in-person contact with customers Aren’t open yet or who have very restricted business hours Consist of a class or event held at a location you don’t own Stock your products but you don’t own the retail store I realize that’s a lot to wrap your mind around and it will take some serious time to familiarize yourself with all of these rules before you can get a handle on it. But it’s worth the effort if you want to see your business rank higher. Your Business Isn’t Verified If you’ve gone to all the effort to do the above, it would be a real shame to forget to verify your listing, now wouldn’t it? But that’s often a reason why people fail to see their businesses in the local search results. They just never got around to this step. So take this opportunity, while you’re thinking about it, to verify your page. When logged into Google and navigate to your page then hover on the “Unverified” button at the top. Click on “Verify Now” and follow the instructions. Typically, you just need to input your mailing address and click on “Request Postcard.” You’ll have to wait a few days to get your postcard but this is your ticket to verification. Seems sort of low-tech, I know, but it’s Google’s way for business owners to prove they are who they say they are. Just follow the instructions on the card to complete the verification process. Your site should be listed and ranking in no time after that. You Didn’t Fill Out All of Your Business Details (Name, Address, Phone, etc.) Once you’ve got the basics taken care of, you need to populate your listing with some real information. That means filling out your business introduction as fully as possible. Really take this opportunity to introduce yourself to your potential customers. What is your business all about? Why did you start it? What are you passionate about? What separates you from your competition? Don’t go all salesman mode in your introduction but you should definitely make the effort to demonstrate what makes you stand out by writing a compelling business description. Another thing you need to remember to include is photos. As with anything online, photos add character and life. Without them, your listing will look incomplete and is less likely to engage potential customers. Plus, even if it does appear in the search results, it’s going

Guest blogging used to be the primary means of generating more organic website traffic. But gone are the days of the one-trick guest blogging pony. Paid guest posts, while unfortunately not a thing of the past, have been a massively overused tactic for establishing online brands.  And search engines are getting better at determining a pattern from websites that accept guest posts and subsequently discounting their impact and relevance in passing authority. That means that not all high-authority backlinks via relevant websites are created equal. Instead we focus on traffic (first and foremost), relevance and quality. For those looking to scale up their link building and find guest blogging opportunities, you have come to the right place. How to Find Guest Blogging Opportunities I’m going to show you how to find guest posting opportunities by using one of my favorite internet marketing tools: Scrapebox. Other alternatives include Pitchbox and Mailshake. In some cases, you can find the opportunities themselves in Scrapebox and then use a tool like Mailshake to perform the automated outreach. What You’ll Need: Scrapebox (download it here for a one-time fee of $57. TOTALLY worth it.) Private proxies (Get them from Proxybonanza for a small monthly fee. I recommend going for the “Bonanza” package from the “Exclusive Proxies” section.) Note: That Proxybonanza link is an affiliate link. I’d really appreciate if you’d buy through my link! How are We Going to Use Scrapebox to Find Guest Blogging Opportunities? Scrapebox will execute multiple search queries simultaneously in Google and Bing, automatically harvest all the results, and allow us to manipulate, augment, and export the data. For example, let’s say you want to find good guest blogging opportunities for your website about canine epilepsy. To find other websites that rank well for the term (and similar terms) which might be good targets for a guest blog post, you’d want to examine the top 100 search results for the following search queries: Dog seizures Canine epilepsy Canine seizures Seizures in dogs Without Scrapebox, you’d have to perform each of those searches manually (via Google.com), manually click through each of the top 10 pages, and copy/paste each URL into a spreadsheet for future follow-up. This process would easily take you at least an hour. With Scrapebox, you supply the search queries, and it will perform the searches, collect the URLs of the top 100 results, and supply them to you in an Excel spreadsheet. Additionally, you can use Scrapebox to automatically find the PageRank of the domain of each search result, allowing you to filter out low-PR domains without having to manually visit them. Scrapebox also offers lots of other filtering options, such as the ability to ignore results from domains that would never accept a guest blog post, such as facebook.com, amazon.com, etc. All of the above processes can easily be completed in under 60 seconds. Ready to take your link prospecting capabilities to a whole new level? Let’s get started. Step 1: Load your proxies into Scrapebox After obtaining your proxies, load them into a .txt file on your desktop in the following format: IP:port:username:password IP:port:username:password IP:port:username:password Here’s an example: 123.456.789.012:01234:jayson:awesomepassword 123.478.759.032:01234:jayson:awesomepassword 123.446.899.012:05274:jayson:awesomepassword 129.486.749.012:01234:jayson:awesomepassword 176.495.989.016:01637:jayson:awesomepassword In Scrapebox, click “Load” under the “Select Engines & Proxies” area. Select the text file containing your proxies. Scrapebox should load them immediately, and look something like this: Click “Manage” and then “Test Proxies” to test your proxies and ensure Scrapebox can successfully activate and use them.   Be sure that “Google” and “Use Proxies” are both checked. Step 2: Choose a keyword that best represents your niche or vertical For example, let’s say I’m trying to find guest blogging opportunities for my website about canine epilepsy. I would select “dogs” as my keyword. I could go for a more targeted approach and try “canine epilepsy” or “dog seizures” as my keyword, but I’m likely to find much less (albeit more targeted) prospects. Step 3: Define your search queries. Copy and paste the following search queries into a .txt document on your desktop and replace each instance of [keyword] with your chosen keyword from Step 2. Note: The following is my personal list of search queries that I use to identify guest blogging opportunities. Google limits queries to 32 words, which is why these are broken down into many chunks rather than one long query. Enjoy! “submit blog post” OR “add blog post” OR “submit an article” OR “suggest a guest post” OR “send a guest post” “[keyword]” “guest bloggers wanted” OR “contribute to our site” OR “become a contributor” OR “become * guest writer” “[keyword]” “guest blogger” OR “blog for us” OR “write for us” OR “submit guest post” OR “submit a guest post” “[keyword]” “become a guest blogger” OR “become a guest writer” OR “become guest writer” OR “become a contributor” “[keyword]” “submit a guest post” OR “submit post” OR “write for us” OR “become an author” OR “guest column” OR “guest post” “[keyword]” inurl:”submit” OR inurl:”write” OR inurl:”guest” OR inurl:”blog” OR inurl:”suggest” OR inurl:”contribute” “[keyword]” inurl:”contributor” OR inurl:”writer” OR inurl:”become” OR inurl:”author” OR inurl:”post” “[keyword]” site:twitter.com [keyword] “guest post” OR “guest blog” OR “guest author” Step 4: Load Search Queries into Scrapebox. In the “Harvester” section in Scrapebox, click “Import,” then “Import from file.” Select the file containing the search queries that you just created in Step 3. Scrapebox should then populate with the search queries, looking something like this: Step 5: Update your blacklist. Scrapebox has a “blacklist” which allows you to automatically filter out undesired search results. For example, I know that Facebook.com and Amazon.com will never accept a guest blog post, so I don’t want results from those domains appearing in my list. To edit your blacklist, click “Blacklist” from the top navigation, then click “Edit local blacklist.” After you start using Scrapebox and receiving output lists, you’ll begin to notice undesirable domains that often appear in search results. As you notice these, add them to your local SEO blacklist so they never appear again. Here are

A common question I hear from customers is: “How many links will it take for me to reach the number one position in the search engines?” While this question is common, it’s impossible to answer without knowing a bunch of variables that are extremely difficult to ascertain. However, I think what the customer really wants to know is, “How much will it cost my company before I rank and start making money?” Know Your Competition Before you can estimate how many backlinks that’ll take, you really need to understand and analyze your competition inner plates or both inner & outer plates. As most of us know, keyword competition can make the difference between ranking in a few weeks or years (or possibly, never). You can find out the strength of your competition by auditing their inbound link profile. To start the process of determining how many backlinks it will take to rank on Google, do a quick search and take note of the top 10 websites ranking for that keyword. Once you have the list, use a tool like ahrefs.com to determine the quantity and quality of their backlinks. Tip: Acquire their Best Links! While you are working on your backlink analysis, take note of any particularly high-quality backlinks that you can obtain as well. For instance, if your competitor acquired a link from VentureBeat.com by doing a guest blog post, that tells you that VentureBeat may be willing to entertain offers from guest bloggers. Reach out and see if you can become a contributor there as well. But, in most cases, acquiring backlinks without investing heavily in content is difficult or even nigh-to-impossible! Now that we’ve discussed great ways to get a few extra high-quality backlinks, why not round it out by looking at cheaper, easier alternatives? What about $50 Link Packages? Many of us have seen cheap backlink packages on certain forums. There are a number of different packages, but most of them have a set number of backlinks of various types for a price. How good of a deal are these backlinks? When researching this article, I took a close look at some of the popular link packages that you can buy off of well-known forum software. Many of them offered similar deals. Some examples included tiered backlink packages, while others claimed to be “high PR” backlinks. Here are the results of my analysis: Package #1 – Tiered Backlinks In package number 1, you have a multi-tiered backlink package. The first tier had 2,000 article directory backlinks, 50 social bookmarks, and 50 web 2.0 links. For the second tier, they create 10,000 blog comments that point to the first tier. To avoid duplicate content and save money, all content is spun. You can have all of this for less than $50. But what are you really getting when you buy these packages? Let’s assume for a moment that the vendors are legitimate and give you several hundred article backlinks all spun from the same text. I know from testing and experience that only a small percentage of those backlinks will actually get and stay indexed (links don’t benefit you if they aren’t indexed). Furthermore, these types of more links are exactly what Google targets with its link spam updates; buying these types of links is like setting ticking time bombs on the foundation of your SEO initiative. And it’s no longer about a handful of web pages on your site. Automated link spam penalties are often given sitewide. Package #2 – High PR network links In package number 2, I found a different approach. This package claims to allow you to purchase backlinks on the homepage of a website. These types of backlinks are typically more expensive and start at $130 per month. The demise of link networks should teach us that these types of new links are dangerous, and untrustworthy and should be avoided. In April 2012, Google deindexed almost every site on the BMR network and continued to deindex entire new networks as well. Now you may be thinking, “How could they possibly know about this network when there are so many?” The answer is fairly simple when you consider the new Google Disavow Tool. Every time a webmaster gets scared and disavows all purchased links, what happens to that list of sites? It’s possible that if enough people disavow purchased links then maybe they will be next on the deindex list. Even if that doesn’t happen, with Google’s stance on web spam, these backlinks are more likely to cause harm than good, at least in the long run. Link Velocity While we’re talking about buying link packages and dumping tons of backlinks over a short period, let’s discuss link velocity. Link velocity is the speed at which your website is gaining (or losing) backlinks. Many SEOs believe it to be a major factor that Google uses to determine web spam. If the search engines see that your link velocity is going up and down because you’re buying link packages and getting 5,000 links one day and then none the rest of the month, it’s going to look very suspicious. The Risk of Link Spam Google is working diligently to deny the value of link spam. They are working on ways to “go upstream” and deny the value of spam links. They are also using new and different ways of performing link analysis to uncover these link schemes. While some methods of link spam may still work today, it’s obvious from Google’s comments that their search engine is working diligently to remove any benefit. The recent barrage of link spam updates is only one indication that underscores your need for quality links vs. quantity: Give Google What It Wants If you’re like most people who have done SEO for any period of time, you’re sick of hearing the old ‘quality over quantity’ argument when it comes to backlinks. Even so, many of us have seen that the right types of contextual links can prove

If you’re building high-quality links, then every link you build should have some benefit for your domain authority and ranking for SEO purposes. Therefore, building multiple links from the same domain can be a worthwhile strategy, if properly executed. Pro Tip: If you build links continuously from the same external source domain(s), you’ll get far less value than by link building across a variety of diversified link sources to a variety of internal pages on your site. Building links that point to different internal pages is also important so you can maximize the number of internal pages that rank for various keywords on their own. In addition, building too many links from a single or small group of sources, can also make you look like a link spammer. Here we discuss the following: What constitutes a quality source, worthy of multiple references and links to your site? Root linking vs. deep linking from the same source, frequency and best practices Best practices for building multiple links from the same site Diminishing returns in using the same source for link building Should you have multiple links from the same page (not just the same site)? While diversifying your links, using multiple sources and links to multiple internal pages, can improve your standing, there are–as always–ways to screw it up.  We hope this guide clarifies how beneficial it might be to have multiple backlinks from the same site. Anatomy of a Quality Backlink First, you have to understand the function of a backlink, and what elements of a backlink contribute to its SEO value. Remember, not all link building services are created equal. Google looks at a number of factors when it comes to judging your strategy for multiple backlinks, including: The root domain of the backlink (this will always be the same if you’re posting links back to your own site). The individual page of the backlink (posting too many links to one page can be seen as spam, whereas using a plethora of different internal pages can be beneficial). The quality of the source (authoritative sites carry more weight than low-quality sites). The appropriateness of the source (in terms of its relevance to your industry). Anchor text (while anchoring your links with keywords was once beneficial, but doing so excessively can earn you a Google penalty). Context clues (a judge of whether your link is helpful and beneficial to the conversation or just there to promote your rank). Frequency (which we’ll cover in more detail shortly). All of these factors, working together, are what comprise the overall “authoritativeness” of your individual backlinks. Pro Tip: Use our SEO tool to check your backlinks. External Links and Root Links For the purposes of determining the authority and “value” of a given backlink, it’s important to distinguish between individual links and what’s become known as “root links.” Root links refer to the number of referring domains that link to your domain, while traditional external links refer to individual instances of links to your domain. For example, if you have 1,000 links split between four different external websites, you would have 1,000 external links, but only four root links. Google and other search engines tend to place more value on root links than it does on external links. So, if you have 1,000 different links on four different sources, you’ll get significantly less authority than if you have 1,000 different links on 1,000 different sources. In a recent study conducted by Neil Patel Digital, they tested the theory as to whether multiple backlinks from the same referring domains would help or hurt SEO rankings. Here is the data from the control group: They also ran a study that showed the impact of multiple (in this case 3 links) coming from the same site from different linked pages: While one could state there is cleared a boost, we cannot consider this 100% conclusive due to the following factors: The sample size is very small and not random, which could introduce lurking variables into the study and skew the data. There was no R-squared regression run to indicate that the change in data had a statistical correlation between the multiple links and the rankings boost. However, at face value the data is fairly conclusive: there does appear to be a benefit to building multiple links from the same site. Frequency and Diminishing Returns When considering the number of your external links, and the frequency with which you post them on an external site, it’s important to understand Google’s law of diminishing returns. Posting a link on a new domain will earn you a new root link, which is greatly beneficial to your authority. Posting another link will not grant you a new root link, and will not pass as much page rank as your first link, but will still pass a significant amount. Your third link will post slightly less authority, and so on. The more links you post on a given source, the less authority you’ll get from each link. Let’s say you have two cases with an identical number and type of root links and referring domains; in one case, you have 100 external links split amongst those sources, and in the other case, you have 1,000 split amongst those same sources. In the second case, you will have a higher total authority coming from those sources, but the average individual value of your links will be lower. However, this analysis does not take into account the idea that each of your links can point to a separate internal page. Pointing to multiple internal pages can increase the individual page rank of those pages, in addition to whatever domain authority increases you receive. For example, if you have 1,000 links pointing to your home page, you will receive X amount of increased overall domain authority, but the only page more likely to show up in search results will be your home page. However, if you have 1,000 links pointing to 100 different internal pages,

Backlinks are a big deal in the world of SEO. Most backlinks pass authority, causing Google to evaluate your site as being more trustworthy. And of course, more trustworthy sites are more likely to rank higher in search results. But what about nofollow links? What are nofollow links, exactly, and are they important for your SEO strategy? Nofollow Links: The Basics By default, Google bots crawl the web on a constant basis, following links and using them to determine how PageRank is passed. This is also an opportunity to evaluate “bad” backlinks and penalize the sites they point to. As you might suspect, a nofollow link prevents Google from following the link as usual. Nofollow links are established with a rel=”nofollow” HTML tag, which instructs Google to ignore the link. In the backend code of your site, this is the only distinguishing feature of a nofollow link. When live, a nofollow link is indistinguishable from a standard dofollow link. It looks the same, it can be clicked the same way, and there’s no immediate clue to a user that the link is nofollow. Why is this important? For starters, most search optimizers are heavily focused on improving their authority with PageRank. They employ link building strategies to establish more links to earn more authority and eventually rank higher. Because nofollow links don’t pass PageRank, they can’t help your rankings directly. Note the importance of the word “directly” here. Google has verified this directly: “Google does not transfer PageRank or anchor text across these links. Essentially, using nofollow causes us to drop the target links from our overall graph of the web.” Why Do Nofollow Links Exist? You may be wondering why nofollow links exist, and why they’re used by various websites, if they’re not so different from standard links. Originally, nofollow links were conceived as an idea to fight back against link spam. In the early days of SEO, practitioners would take any opportunity they could to build a dofollow link back to their website. They would spam blog comments, issue meaningless press releases, and post actively on forums to get more links to their site. The nofollow tag allowed blog owners and other webmasters to fight back against this tendency by making certain types of links nofollow by default. They could also issue the nofollow tag to reduce the impact of a dofollow link they deemed questionable in the body of a guest post. This is useful for nearly everyone involved. The blog gets to preserve its reputation by ensuring it isn’t used for spammy backlinks. Google gets to fight link spam and calculate better search engine results. Web users encounter less spam. And webmasters are incentivized to find better linking tactics. Nofollow links are also recommended for use with paid links. Generally speaking, Google frowns upon paid links. But this is mostly because paid links are considered to be a form of ranking manipulation. If you use a nofollow link, there can be no direct ranking manipulation, since nofollow links don’t pass authority. Problem solved! You can even find a reference to this in Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. It states, “Make a reasonable effort to ensure that advertisement links on your pages do not affect search engine rankings.” It then recommends using a nofollow tag for this purpose. How to Tell If a Link Is Nofollow     You can apply nofollow tags to links on your own site, but how can you tell if a link on an external site is nofollow? Sometimes, publishers and external sites will inform you directly about their nofollow policies. But it’s much more reliable to simply check your backlinks yourself. Right click anywhere on the page you’re inspecting and click “View Page Source” or simply click CTRL + U. The code might look somewhat incomprehensible to you if you’re not used to it. But don’t worry. Use CTRL + F to find the link you’re looking for, and see if it has a rel=”nofollow” tag. The Non-SEO Value of a Nofollow Link When people hear that a nofollow link doesn’t pass PageRank, they immediately get turned off. After all, isn’t the whole point of link building to earn PageRank and rank up? Yes, for the most part. But it’s important to understand that nofollow links have a lot of value that has nothing to do with SEO. For example: Referral traffic. This is the big one, so it deserves to be mentioned first. Nofollow links have the power to generate referral traffic to your site. When someone clicks on a link in a blog post they’re reading, they don’t care whether Google is using it to pass PageRank or not. All they care about is reading the content on the other side. Depending on the publisher, the context of the link, and other variables, you may be able to generate thousands of new visitors this way. Brand visibility. Simply including dofollow links, with a named reference to your brand, is enough to increase your brand visibility and raise brand awareness. This is especially powerful as you build your reputation as an author and reach bigger audiences through bigger publishers. Increased attention for your content. Referral links also serve to promote your content. In some cases, just mentioning your content (such as calling out statistics in original research you conducted) can serve your brand well. Otherwise, the traffic you generate for the content will make it more popular. In some cases, a single nofollow link can help make a piece of powerful content go viral. The Value of Nofollow Links for SEO No PageRank, no SEO benefit, right? Wrong. In fact, in addition to all their non-SEO related benefits, nofollow links can have significant value for your SEO strategy. Importantly, Google says this about nofollow links: “In general, we don’t follow them.” If this is the case, it implies that Google occasionally does follow nofollow links. That may sound like a conspiracy theory, but there’s some real evidence to support this. For