Is the Tool Forcing Sites to Link Out?

[MotoringSEO]

Hi

I have a tool that I wish to give to sites, it allows the user to get an accurate idea of their credit score with out giving away any personal data and with out having a credit search done on their file.

Due to the way the tool works and to make the implementation on other peoples sites as simple as possible the tool remains hosted by me and a one line piece of Javascript code just needs to be added to the code of the site wishing to use the tool.

This code includes a link to my site to call the information from my server to allow the tool to show and work on the other site.

My questions are:

Could this cause a problem with Google as far as their link quality goes? - Are we forcing people to give us a backlink to use the tool? (in the eyes of Google) or will Google not be able to read the Javascript / will ignore the link for SEO purposes?

Should I make the link in the code Nofollow?

If I should make the link a Nofollow any tips on how to make the most of the opportunity from a link building or SEO point of view?

Thanks for your help

[AndieF]

Hi there, quite a few questions here, but I think they all come back round to the same point.

The point being that Google does execute basic Javascript on websites. In particular, if you're using a method like this then Google will execute it:

document.write('Go to this awesome service');

There's a good write-up all about how Google executes javascript on SEOMoz that I urge you to read for more detail.

With that considered, then the answer is that that link on each site would benefit you and you are in effect forcing people to give you a backlink.

I'm not so sure this is a dreadful thing though, you're providing a free service and the link is relevant to the context in which it's being used (presumably).

I guess the thing you need to ask yourself is whether people from 'bad neighbourhoods' are likely to use your code? If they are, you may wish to do a nofollow tag here and rely on other methods to build links.

Hope that helps!

• Andie

[Carson-Ward]

Hi,

This is Matt Cutt's view on the subject:

"The other thing that happens is that people don’t always realize what they are linking to when they reprint these infographics. Often the link goes to a completely unrelated site, and one that they don’t mean to endorse. Conceptually, what happens is they really buy into publishing the infographic, and agree to include the link, but they don’t actually care about what it links to. From our perspective this is not what a link is meant to be."

...

"This is similar to what people do with widgets as you and I have talked about in the past. I would not be surprised if at some point in the future we did not start to discount these infographic-type links to a degree. The link is often embedded in the infographic in a way that people don’t realize, vs. a true endorsement of your site."

http://www.stonetemple.com/matt-cutts-and-eric-talk-about-what-makes-a-quality-site/

Google doesn't want to count links when people are posting them because it comes with the code - they want links to be an endorsement of the site. My recommendation is always to allow people to turn the links off in some fashion, whether we're talking about "powered by" links, widgets, or infographics.

In your case, you could have two different code snippets: one that includes a link back to your site, and another that is either missing a link or nofollowed. I'd think it's totally fair to get links by creating something people want, especially if they have the option to turn it off. You can encourage people to share your site or "ink to the source, but "forcing" them to do so might someday result in links being devalued.