Hello, I am currently removing some old links from my website. I have a reciprocal link with a directory that specializes in links in the wedding / bridal market. However they supply me with a nofollow backlink which they say they cannot change due to search engine penalties if they do. I however have to supply them with 3 (dofollow) links to three different websites of theirs to keep my one nofollow link active. Looking through my log history I can find no trace of any traffic coming from their site to my site. So is there any benefit for me in keeping this topic related site linked to my website? Or indeed would it be beneficial to my site to remove 3 seemingly wasted links outbound from my website? I dont really know whether this is a good or bad thing from an SEO perspective. Cheers Andrew
I would suggest you to forget about that directory and remove any links you pointed to their site. 1 NoFollow backlink for 3 DoFollow backlinks is just not a fair deal in my honest opinion.
There are a few benifits from nofollow links. First, the can provide some direct traffic. This is especially true with no-follow links from popular blog articles or forums with alot of traffic. I would expect next to nothing from a directory. Second, it helps round out your backlink portfolio. You don't want to concentrate exclusively on do-follow backlinks, becuase it look unnatural to Google. But no-follow links even on very popular sites with lots of traffic are easy to get. I wouldn't work too hard on maintaining a single no-follow link from a directory. Furthermore, I would suggest not looking for reciprocal links at all. Remember that your inbound to outbound links ratio is a major factor in your PR rank, and look for quality, relevent, one way links.
They are bullshitting you. Nofollow links are for dem birds. Even if they count for Yahoo and Bing. Most of the traffic happens to come from Google (at least for now). With the recent changes regarding Bing and Yahoo, I am actually not sure for how long.