I've heard how people are using the nofollow code on back links to other sites. They do this so their PR won't be drained by multiple links away from their site. But... People keep telling me that backlinks back to you help your site grow. My question is... even if your backlinks to you are hyperlinked on other pages, with the nofollow code, will it still help out in some way? Any info on this would be much appreciated. Thanks.
A no follow backlink will not help you to rank better in the search engines however if you get a no follow link in a prominent position from a popular site it will be beneficial because you will gain some traffic from it.
if the site linking to you uses "nofollow" you won't get any PR from that site. however if say a PR0 .com site links to you using nofollow and a PR6 .edu links to you using no follow, you'll probably still get more benefit from the edu based on other criteria which establishes it as an authority site. thus, your ranking could go up, but not your PR
It will help you rank better in search engines in general. Why? Because I know for a fact that Nofollow is a term used by google, not Yahoo, not MSN, or anything else. All links help, nofollow or not.
the common misconception with "nofollow" is that it is exactly like "noindex". But, that is not quite right. "nofollow" means no pagerank flows. So, by saying "nofollow" is used to sculpt pagerank is right. But, thinking that "nofollow" has no relevance at all in terms of ranking is also not quite right. Google have stated that you can use "nofollow" like a condom. So, if you dont know much about the other site, and you are not sure whether you want to fully endorse the link, editorially, then you can use "nofollow". This suggests that "nofollow" links have less weight, in terms of contributing to ranking, but, does not suggest they have no weight at all. Hope that helps.
So a "no follow" tag may still help with Search Engines? I am not so much worried about page rank.... I know this will come with time. I am looking for traffic, I feel that I'll get about a 1 in 6 chance of establishing a reader base. I could honestly care less about a page rank, what I want is traffic.
A link may be "no follow" but this doesn't matter, links were not developed to be put into an algorithm by google, google made algorithms based on links because they are important. Any link has value, it is just a question of how much. Besides, google allows people to see PR because then they get paranoid over it and it gives them a way to control webmasters, in reality if you get a sitewide link from wikipedia (all no-follow) I can assure you that you will be on the top of any keyword.
"Nofollow" tag means no PR is passed through that link. As for traffic, yeah the backlinks from an authoritative site with nofollow tag helps you in generating much more traffic than a site having low or 0 PR. A site with low PR and nofollow tag hardly gives you any traffic. But a site with high PR generates traffic since it has more value.
You will get every thing about nofollow. Just visit this link: What does Rel="nofollow" Actually Means? Thanks.
Even more helpful is the Wikipedia page on it. Yes, nofollow and other methods can be used to silo the PR back through your site, assuming you have good internal linking. What is the value of siloing the PR? You'll have more internal PageRank to pass to your start page. What does PR really do? It is probably the "tie-breaker" when two or more pages in a SERP are equally ranked. Other than that, PR has little value. As to .edu and .gov sites, that is highly debated as to the "extra" value of it, if not related to your page/site in and of itself.
I've read that it depends on what Search Engine you are targeting. With Google, a nofollow tag means the link will absolutely have no value but in Yahoo, a link with a nofollow will get you indexed in Yahoo's search engine but that's it, it does not add to the authority of your site.
Sites like Wiki may have no follow on them but if you are actually outting your links on relevent wiki pages without spamming you will gain the benefit of traffic. The traffic from Wiki pages make them great links but often people will spam up a page and that page will stop accepting links.
I think links with no follow tag don't pass any PR juice. They may help a site to be crawled by search engines, not sure
So you are saying Google will still 'look' at the link and weigh it to help in SERPs just not pass PR to it?
Even if "nofollow" it will help your site get indexed faster. Also, they might be a good source of traffic.