Total Links vs Ext. Followed Links

[avecsys]

Hi

I'm fairly new to SEO and SEOMOZ.  I've created a campaign for my own site and I've added 3 competitor sites.  There are 1,385 total links to my site and a massive 49,450 links to one of my competitor's site.  However under "Ext. Followed Links", there are 1,045 to my site and only 911 to the same competitor site.

Am I correct that it is the "Ext. Followed Links" which are more important from an SEO point of view as the other links have the "no follow" attribute set?  Or have I got this wrong?

Thanks

James

[THB]

You are correct in thinking that. Nofollow links are used to say "we do not endorse this external reference", which means no PR value is passed (although, Google still reserves the right to actually pass some PR if it feels the external reference is worthy), but the external site will be crawled.  Nofollow does not stop the bots from accessing the referenced URL.

With that said, you need a proper ratio of dofollow to nofollow backlinks to keep your incoming links looking organic.  For example, if 99% of your backlinks are dofollow, Google might see that as being a little fishy.  The biggest mistake people make is to not go for a backlink just because it has a nofollow tag on it.  With all the social media out there these days, and the large majority of them applying nofollow tags on all external url's, it doesn't make sense to not get your links out there regardless.  Google still sees these backlinks and recognizes them as a reference to your site/company, and there is a large signal in their current algo for that.

So don't dwell on it, trust me.  You will find you're just investing too much time for something that you cannot control.  Just focus on creating relationships with relevant sites and the rest will fall into place.  Pay no attention to the nofollow tag.  Take it from a guy who used to be OBSESSED haha.  I read more source-code than actual page content for years!

End note: when it comes down to it, to help put things in perspective, consider a _nofollow_backlink to your site coming from wikipedia.com or something like that.  And then consider a dofollow backlink coming from some no-name, or less reputable site than that.  You're going to see a significant increase in popularity from that one nofollow backlink than any other dofollow backlinks, no what I mean?