Are Nofollow Links Good For SEO And Link Building Strategy?

INTRO: Nofollow link is a type of hyperlink that give instruction to search engine robots do not follow this link, by using rel=”nofollow” tag in html code. Here is an simple html example is given below.

<a href=”http://www.yoursite.com/page1” rel=”nofollow”>your Anchor text</a>

Majority of blog templates has built-in feature allowing visitors to comment on posts and leave a link back to their website, witch cases updating their blog frequently and Google like updating sites. That’s why bloggers do not turn off this feature. On other hand these blogs was the favorite and easiest place for link builders, witch brings result as link spamming. 
Nofollow tag was introduced by Google in 2005 to prevent spam link building. Google suggested to place these tags on comment section or any other place where visitors can leave their link.


Nofollow Link Gives Anchor Text Benefit

Some SEO experts claims with reference to their SEO tests, that nofollow links passes anchor text value. And they are right, they proved it. Any one can prove it by setting up a simple test, lets find a post with low traffic or make one new. find a keyword by searching Google that do not generate a result(you can use a keyword having some competition, it will take more time). now make 2-3 nofollow links using your keyword as anchor text. Wait SE to crawl them. You will find you page ranked for specific keyword, even ranked page did not contain that particular keyword in the body. Yes, i am also going to test. Update: I am working on test its taking too much time, and not generating expected results. I will clear it to you but let me clear it to my self.


Here another question arises, how much nofollow links are weighted for anchor text? it’s really difficult to answer exactly, as Google is unpredictable and changing their algorithm time to time. but I think links from high PR sites can bring more value to anchor text as well as links from more trusted sites like Wikipedia, .edu and .gov sites etc.
However lots of webmasters and SEO experts do not believe on it, some webmasters claims, we tried to build hundred's of nofollow links but in result we do not found noticeable positive change in SERPs. Just waste of time(But I don’t think so).


To Looks Natural To Search Engines

Well, how it will looks like if your blog site has hundred's of dofollow links but only one or two nofollow links. Without thinking, hopefully your answer will be “looks unnatural”. Problem is that Google encouraging every time for natural linking. It is possible that Google is using ratio between nofollow and dofollow  links(or other technique) to find out spammer's activity, maybe they are using or they can use in future. In both cases you are recommended to use both types of links for your link building strategy.
Again, lots of web masters and SEO experts do not believe on it, maybe they are true, but what if Google start using this or similar technique in future.


Good Source Of Traffic

Although nofollow links can brings good traffic to your site. Lets think in this way, what is your target? Whatever you do, your aim is to get traffic, not traffic but targeted and valuable traffic. That can be achieved by putting them in some related forums and blogs. Over there peoples already seeking for info and you can attract them answering and helping.

Disclaimer:This post is not forever green, as you know Google algorithm is changing time to time.