How can I check a website to see if it is "nofollow"?

[damon1212]

I'm a little new to SEO, so maybe this is obvious to some . . .

I'm attempting to build backlinks by submitting articles, posting on forums etc.  I just wrote my forst article for ezine and submitted it.

I was feeling pretty good about myself until I mentioned it to someone trying to sell me their SEO services and he said that ezine articles are considered "nofollow" on all their links.

Well, that was pretty frustrating to hear!  It got me wondering, how many of these other sites have all their posts and blogs listed as "nofollow"?  Is there a way for me to figure it out ahead of time?  Obviously, there are only so many hours in the day and I would rather focus on posting on sites that will actually help me build backlinks!

Thanks for your help in advance!

[MarieHaynes]

There are a few ways.  If you have the SEOMoz toolbar installed, you can click the nofollow button and it will highlight all of the nonfollowed links in pink for you.

Or, you can check the source code.  To do this right click on the page, and select "view source".  then, do Ctrl-F and search for "nofollow".  This will show you if the whole page is set to be nofollowed (i.e. meta robots noindex, nofollow) and if an individual link is nofollowed.

As a side note, I don't do much article submission.  I do believe that the links from ezine are followed, but the link juice you get from them is usually minimal.  The way that an article would have more link juice on ezine is if other people from high PR sites linked to it.  But, if it's that good an article that it deserves links then it would be much better to have it on your site.

Similarly, forum sigs are usually not terribly helpful for ranking unless you are targetting a really,really non competitive term.

[Entrusteddev]

Hi Damon,

Get the SEOmoz Toolbar, it has a function to highlight NoFollow links. very handy!

http://www.seomoz.org/seo-toolbar

Regards

Aran

[bemcapaz]

Never had used before their toolbar but its just great, i was using the SEO Site Tools but just turned that off now

[StalkerB]

Will still require a manual check before hand but 'Right Click > Properties' will give you a link relationship.

For FF you'll need - https://addons.mozilla.org/af/firefox/addon/element-properties/

Alternatively you can get a nofollow highlight plugin

FF - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nodofollow/

Chrome - http://floridaventureblog.com/2009/03/highlight-nofollow-links-chrome-plugin.html - (Not tested)

Then you can see at a glance if a page comment does give followed or unfollowed links, though you still have to visit the page first.

[damon1212]

Thanks everyone, very helpful!  I DO have the toolbar, and now I know how to use it!  

My head is swimming learning all this stuff!

[MarieHaynes]

Ain't it fun?  

[TaitLarson]

Hey Domaon,

This happened to me once and I was furious.  I would contact the publisher and show them this article.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/

Basically it explains that the site gains no additional PR to it's other links by  nofollowing your links.   Who knows maybe they'll chance their stance on nofollowing links to use submitted articles.

That said there are good reasons why a link can have a nofollow attached to it.  However, if you contributed an article to an ezine that selectively publishes user submitted content you deserve a "dofollow" link.