How to Avoid Getting De-Ranked? No-follow!
It seems our topics for this week revolve around selling text links without getting de-ranked by Google. Despite the number of people saying PageRank hardly matters as a gauge of web site popularity nowadays, they still care anyways. I can’t help but feel we’re in the middle of withdrawal syndrome of some sorts. Whereas in the past, everybody optimized for PageRank, it’s difficult to accept that it might not be as accurate as before. Anyhow, since we all don’t want to get de-ranked, here’s a way to sell text links openly without having to fear Google’s wrath — the no-follow attribute.
I blogged about no-follow in the negative light before. After all, it’s the attribute which prevents us from building backlinks via blog commenting. However, Google had good intentions when they had campaigned for blog platforms to use it as a default. After all, haven’t you been plagued by spammers before? Even worse, these are spammers who won’t be caught by Akismet because they’ll pretend to have read your post and comment on it. The bad thing is even the regulars in your blog, honest to goodness readers whom you’d like to reward with even something as small as backlinks are affected.
To avoid Google de-ranking, however, the no-follow is one solution. If you’d rather not sell text links underground and would prefer to do it out in the open, then you can use the no-follow attribute. You must make it perfectly clear that you’re selling text links for traffic, not for PR purposes and make that your selling point. If you have a high-traffic blog high up in the SERPs, it won’t be too hard getting enough advertisers willing to pay for text links despite the fact that it won’t be for PageRank juice.
Filed under: Tips for Success
