Using rel="nofollow" when link has an exact match anchor but the link does add value for the user

[ThridHour]

Hi all, I am wondering what peoples thoughts are on using rel="nofollow" for a link on a page like this http://askgramps.org/9203/a-bushel-of-wheat-great-value-than-bushel-of-goldThe anchor text is "Brigham Young" and the page it's pointing to's title is Brigham Young and it goes into more detail on who he is. So it is exact match. And as we know if this page has too much exact match anchor text it is likely to be considered "over-optimized". I guess one of my questions is how much is too much exact match or partial match anchor text? I have heard ratios tossed around like for every 10 links; 7 of them should not be targeted at all while 3 out of the 10 would be okay. I know it's all about being natural and creating value but using exact match or partial match anchors can definitely create value as they are almost always highly relevant. One reason that prompted my question is I have heard that this is something Penguin 3.0 is really going look at.On the example URL I gave I want to keep that particular link as is because I think it does add value to the user experience but then I used rel="nofollow" so it doesn't pass PageRank. Anyone see a problem with doing this and/or have a different idea? An important detail is that both sites are owned by the same organization. Thanks

[DanielMulderNL]

Well if we would be punished for this then I would have no blog at all. I optimize for this exactly and rank nr 1 for months on end with dozens of nice saught after keywords. Like this one google-plus-marketing.nl/google-mijn-bedrijf-handleiding/ keyword Google Mijn Bedrijf handleiding (Google My Business guide)
or this one 
http://google-plus-marketing.nl/google-mijn-bedrijf-opzetten/ for Google Mijn Bedrijf opzetten (set up Google My Business) It a landing page on position 1 since it has been created.

So you see why I dont give a r.. as... what they say. It works just fine for me.

Hope this helps

Gr Daniel

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Hi,

Don't worry about this to much, the case you described is a great example on how you can link without a nofollow in my opinion. As long as you won't do this externally multiple times it's very likely that you won't get in trouble.

[JaneCopland]

I would say that this is absolutely not an instance where you would want to use nofollow. There is a huge difference between this and linking to a insurance company's commercial car insurance page with the anchor text "car insurance". It's sad that Google and the SEO community have jointly scared everyone to the extent that we are afraid of linking to information sources about non-commercial terms (e.g. "Brigham Young" linking to a Wiki page about Brigham Young). Nofollow is meant to indicate that you do not wish to vouch for the source of the information or that you have been paid to include the link and thus don't want to indicate that the link is purely editorial. This use is still true, eight years after nofollow's creation and it would be sad if we reached the stage where people are basically hesitant to link without it in almost every circumstance.

Put this in a commercial context and multiply the rate at which the target page or linking website receives / links out with high-value terms, and you have more of a problem. I have had clients ask me about ratios for years - "can we safely build links with 30% commercial anchor text?" - to which we'd have to say that there is no "safe ratio" for any particular keyword, niche or industry.

Google looks at far more than the anchor text when deciding on what is natural and what should be penalised / filtered. A page about a person or a product might use that person's or product's name nearly 100% of the time and be perfectly natural. I have also personally seen pages with 80%+ brand anchor text be penalised (not by Penguin but manually) because the links were clearly part of a sophisticated but fairly uniform paid link scheme, despite using anchor text links "Brand.com" and "visit their website". A high ratio of commercial anchor text is the icing on the cake for some of these penalties but there is no need to nofollow every link or even a selection of links just because it happens to be exact-match in terms of its destination.

[ThridHour]

Thanks for the great answers. We created the example link I gave above, along with many others that are similar, so they are not natural and they are pointing to other sites also owned by us.

I asked this exact same question on the google product forums and got pretty different answers. This is one answer that the others were agreeing with:

" It really seems like you're over complicating things to me.

1 - if the link doesn't add any value to users, why is it on your website? 2 - nofollow links that are unnatural. Since they are sites owned by the same org, I'd nofollow. If you nofollow, then you're fine. I'd stop focusing too much on exact match/ratios and just keep it logical. Is this link natural? (if not nofollow, but that doesn't make it a BAD link) and is this useful for my visitors (if not, don't add it!). "She mentions she would nofollow the links that do have value but are owned by us.Any thoughts on this response?

[DanielMulderNL]

Your welcome. Well it's to be honest I thought that "write and develop for your users" etc was stating the obvious but maybe I was to quick to draw this conclusion but II agree totally. Thing to me seems that people in general start making things progressively complicated when they start thinking and acting this accordingly while I believe that an effective link structure is the same for users and crawlers alike.

Crawlers and humans both read right to left starting at the upper left corner. All content closest to this point is more important than content after it. Also logical as we also do not place the name of a company at the bottom of the corporate website and start with the disclaimer (ok some people will never learn but I mean effectively function beings). So rule of thumb is we place our most important navigational links at the top left and then to the right. We link in 2-3 words to page because they are important and we want people and crawlers alike to find them. If we make those links nofollow then that’s the instruction for Google NOT to go and index these pages so the can be found. This would be the same if we correspondingly place the same link in the main menu and put a sign with it: to all readers: do not read this page.

Bit strange right? Use a nofollow for links in the main navigational menu that are not as important like your disclaimer and general terms etc. Link there once from a less significant place on the page that is a followed link. Get it?

Funny thing is that this script makes it very easy to see all links with anchors for a page and analyses for each link on the page how well the linked page is optimized for the anchor used in the link. Complicated? Not at all. Just fill in a front page of any website, set option to show links, wait a moment, find the followed links section and click the link to see for yourself.

Link follower script Hope this makes it more clear for you as it's not to difficult once you see the essence?

Gr Daniel

[JaneCopland]

I would say that obsessing over nofollows or no nofollows is over-complicating things much more than simply linking to more information about a subject. The vast majority of content on the internet that links to informational resources, such as the example you've given (even though you own both resources) is not written or linked to with nofollow / SEO in mind. This is what I mean by it being sad if no one can create content and link between properties, whether they belong to one or more parties, without considering Google, SEO and nofollow.

It's shortsighted to claim that links between owned properties should be nofollowed. This is far from a set rule. Google does not consider linking to your own properties to be spam in and of itself. It would consider deliberate link manipulation via link networks to be spam, but is it spam if amazon.com links to amazon.co.uk? If Moz.com links to Opensiteexplorer.org? If Virgin corporation links to its health club chain? Or if I link from my blog to my consulting site? Hell no, it's not. It would be manipulative of me to create 800 websites promoting SEO consulting and link them all to my own website, however, just as it would be spammy for Virgin to write a new blog post every other day on sites they own, linking to their health clubs with the anchor text "gyms in London".

It's very subjective whether nofollow should be used, but I really do not agree that there is a hard-and-fast rule that any link using "optimised" (i.e. descriptive) anchor text should be nofollowed, just as much as I disagree that links to things you own need to be automatically nofollowed. At which point is a link natural if every link on the internet that meets these criteria is "unnatural"?

I agree that if the link does not add value, it should not be there, but in your example, you mention a person and link to more information about that person. Since a quote from that person is the crux of the page's subject, it absolutely adds value to link to more information about that person, no matter how well-known that person might be to the website's audience. I find it hard to argue that the link does not add value.

[ThridHour]

Thank you much. Reading your answer is giving me kind of a "duh" moment. I think if I were looking at this situation from the outside it would be a different story. I definitely am over thinking this. Thanks again!