As long as I have been blogging, it has always been a good thing to include links to outside sources in your blog posts.
Now backlinking is still a gray area for me. Yahoo still won’t let me participate as an expert and answer questions because of some erroneous online advice I followed years ago. That incident is what spurred this social media message I created. Feel free to share it by the way.
Last week however, I received an email from the webmaster of one of my favorite companies. I link to them frequently because I believe in their product and their customer service is stellar. Yet it seems they must have upset the Google gods and were going through all the incoming links to their site with the proverbial fine tooth comb.
Google must have smelled something spam-like and now this company is caught in their cross hairs. That’s why they asked me to either include a rel=nofollow in the anchor tag or remove the links altogether. I chose the later and removed the links.
If you follow the link above you’ll learn that this whole no follow business has to do with controlling the manipulation of Google’s page rank data.
So if Google suspects foul play, well that’s a big deal and you’ll have to jump through a lot of hoops to get back in their good graces.
Thus the reason for the email asking me to remove the link or add the no follow.
For a minute, I thought I had done something wrong.
That perhaps the rules of the blogging game had changed and I was unaware.
Jill Manty of Manty Web Designs assured me that I had done nothing wrong and to keep linking!
Linking to companies, people, products is still a best practice when it comes to writing blog content.
It’s okay to oblige those who ask you to “link to my site!” If it makes sense of course. Just remember, no paying for links. You will surely upset the Google gods and feel their wrath.
Related articles
