Can nofollow links hurt my site’s ranking?



I’m building links, not for SEO but to try and generate direct traffic, if these links are no-follow am I safe from getting any Google penalties? Asked another way, can no-follow links hurt my site?
Tubby Timmy, UK

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31 thoughts on “Can nofollow links hurt my site’s ranking?”

  1. just one side question, should affiliate or referral links put on ariticles always be set nofollow instead of dofollow?

    I hear often from some people in youtube videos that affiliate links should be set as "nofollow". is it very true?

    And other question just to be double sure.. if affiliate link should go for nofollow link, then what about "referral link"? They two are considered as the same and any referral link on an article also has to be nofollow?

    Can anyone please answer and let me know?? hmm curious to the death

  2. If i have a link on my website linking out which can hurt my SEO, can I add a nofollow tag and will that prevent my ranking from being hurt? It's an affiliate link and I hate to have to remiove them. but my ranking dropped immediately after adding them.. will nofollow fix this?

  3. Should our directory of service providers all be changed to nofollow? If we advertise on a related site, should that link be nofollow? Where is the line drawn?

  4. I run a business and advertise in 2 key directories in the UK. I have been doing this for around 10 years. I now see some 50,000 no follow links to my site but my seo recons that I am being penalised by google? Can this be?

  5. Am I the only one thinking about anchor text here? Surely if I have 1000 nofollow "blue widgets" nofollow exact match anchor text links then I'm going to get hit with Penguin for over-optimizing for blue widgets, sure the proportion of nofollows probably isn't any issue unless you are totally abusing it but what about anchor text!?

  6. It's good to have a bit of variation in your links… 90+% dofollow links don't always seem natural for all kinds of sites.

    Don't agree on "they have always been completely upfront that nofollow links are totally ignored by their algorithms". You wouldn't need nofollow'ed links while building dofollow'ed ones for SEO, that way.

  7. Not true. They kept hush and occasionally flat out lied about the no follow links from twitter and other social media outlets.

    NEVER take anything on face value from Google.

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