Hi, I have a big dilemma. Since Google started penalizing PR-passing links, I struggled to gather as many "nofollow" links within good content as possible - for a specific website that I have. For another site I still continued obtaining PR-passing links ("do follow" - as if this existed..., so: standard links with no "rel" setting). And behold: the first site still has no PR (after 3 years!) and didn't do that well in Google search. I followed all Google guidelines - so, I only obtained "nofollow" links, did social media and article marketing/guest posts. Poor results The second site: I still obtained PR-passing links, including a few directory links that I bought. And the site scored PR 3 and did quite well in the Google SERPS! If you follow Google, the "nofollow"-ing will kill your PR, which still seems to be very important in the SERPS. By following Google's guidelines you are killing PR and making it hard to rank well. It seems: links are still VERY important and it seems, no even good visitor metrics don't get close to a few strong backlinks. What is your experience? Did anyone try the "all nofollow links" strategy?
Google doesn't say you not get do follow back links. Also it does not tell you to put nofollow attribute everywhere in your site. Google's guidelines are simple and they say kill your pages. Though no follow links does not give any link juice to your site but they can drive traffic to your site. Also having only do follow links may look spammy to search engines.
Obviously it's good having lots of "nofollow" links from various sources. My current strategy is: focusing 75 % on "nofollow" from various sources.
Why would you want to do something that stupid for? Only ~2% of links on the web are nofollow. If you have 75% --> then that is going to scream to Google: UNNATURAL LINK PATTERN!
I wouldn't call that "stupid". "Nofollow" looks NATURAL, because Google in fact asks sites to "nofollow" their links. Before you call it "stupid", get documented. Google can also determine whether a link is used. I'd rather have a lot of inbound "nofollow" natural links that I get referral traffic from, instead of a few (let's say) "do follow" artificial directory links that are 100 % unnatural. 75 % "nofollow" is a very good proportion. But this is not a rigid rule.
The key message here isn't to always listen to Google. Why do you think Google needs to proactively target link networks? It's not because they are bored. It's because they work extremely well and the only way to identify them is to manually identify them. Those networks are designed to pass pagerank. Paid links and high PR links are the most effective way to rank well in the SERPs. Nothing compares. The key though is the balance between overoptimization and "natural" link building.
Just get relevant links, no-follow or dofollow doesn't really matter as soon as the links are quality and you not overdo link building.
kalseo: both "nofollow" and "do follow" are important, but you must have plenty of "do follow" (in a good balance), otherwise the strategy won't give you much power.