I see a lot of people who will add the nofollow tag to links they are referencing. I am not talking about comment links either I am speaking about links that they provide within their blog post.
There are two reasons I can think of why people do this. One being they don’t understand or are misinformed about what the tag is for. The other reason is they are trying to sculpt their pagerank.
The reason Google’s search query works so well is their system is built on “votes” or backlinks. When I reference another link in an article I am also telling Google this is something related to the topic I writing about. So if I reference a site by pointing a link to it, isn’t it most likely something I am adding value to my article? Why would I add the nofollow tag to it unless it is for a self serving purpose? Wouldn’t you want the same in return if someone linked to your site because they felt it was worthy enough to link to?
- Here are some links where it is ok to add the nofollow
If you are linking to an affiliate link
If you are selling backlinks
You should add it to your feed link
I think people just try and get tricky and look way to much into SEO techniques. Even Matt Cutt himself says you should let pagerank flow freely. Just stick with the Blogging basics and you will be fine.
So tell me your thoughts do you agree or disagree with letting pagerank flow freely? Are there other reasons to add the nofollow tag?