The NoFollow Backlink Myth

I like blog commenting as a link building strategy. If you can add to the conversation, it's an easy way to get both human visitors and backlinks.

But what about "nofollow?"

Nofollow is often ignored. Last year, Ben Fisher did a case study to see if nofollow links counted - they certainly seemed to, based on his results. Neil Patel "broke" the story with screenshots, and that post is now recognized as the "nofollow is BS" authority.

Because I recommend tools like CommentHut and Comment Sniper (which server 2 very different purposes when trying to get traffic from blog commenting), I often get emails from folks asking about the "nofollow" issue - why comment on blogs if it's nofollow, blah blah blah. So it's clear there's still some confusion within the population on the value, if any, of nofollow links.

I thought I'd run the same study as Ben did last year and see if I could get my site to rank for a keyword that (1) is not on my site and (2) only use blog comments to get anchor text links for my keyword. I, like Ben, chose a misspelling simply because I'd be able to see results very quickly that way.

The term: ultilevel marketing

The results as of 5:44pm PST on 2/18/2008 after leaving about 15 blog comments with the help of Comment Hut to find relevant blogs are that I am ranked #1 for the keyphrase in Google, Yahoo and MSN:

Google - ultilevel marketing search results Yahoo - ultilevel marketing search results MSN - ultilevel marketing search results

What does this mean?

1. Nofollow links with well chosen anchor text can pass link juice
2. Blog commenting on nofollow blogs is still an effective way to increase search engine rank for a term
3. Thoughtful and interesting blog comments will always bring human visitors

Some 30 Minute Backlinks users have noted that occasionally, software directories nofollow their links. Clearly, based on the results above, nofollow links *do* still contribute value to a site's rank in all three major search engines. Any links that happen to be nofollow received by way of 30 Minute Backlinks continue to add to a site's overall link profile and ability to rank for it's keyphrase.

This is reprinted from:

http://www.michellemacphearson.com/do-nofollow-links-count-redux/