Google recently introduced new guidelines for “nofollow” tags along with two other tag options you can use for your MSP company’s SEO. If you use “nofollow” attributes as a way to protect your site from giving credit to certain outbound links, then you should know about Google’s attribute changes.
Have you heard about the new ways Google will crawl and calculate links?
Read more to find out what you need to know about “nofollow” and what the new tags mean for your SEO strategies.
What are NoFollow Tags?
“Nofollow” tags are link attributes that let Google know you don’t want to give credit to a link. Most likely, you have reasons why you don’t want to follow certain links.
Here are the most common reasons for using “nofollow” tags:
- Spam links in comments – When users include links in their comments, you could get thousands of comments that just want to use your site to get a link. So, when you add the “nofollow” tag for comment links, you deter these spammy links.
- Advertising links – If you sell advertisements or banner ads on your website that link to the advertisers, you can make them “nofollow.” This lets Google know that it’s a paid link and doesn’t relate to PageRank.
These are just two reasons for using “nofollow” tags on your MSP company website, but there are many others.
Introducing the New NoFollow Link Attributes
Google started using the “nofollow” attribute about 15 years ago. It was developed to fight link overload in comments. Webmasters still use it today to flag sponsored links.
But, on September 10, 2019, Google announced two additional link attributes to give you new ways of describing the nature of the links for search engines.
The new link attributes along with the changes for “nofollow” are listed below:
rel=”ugc”
This relates to User Generated Content. Google recommends using this tag for links from users, such as forum posts and blog comments.
rel=”sponsored”
This tag is for sponsored links. When Google’s spiders crawl your site, they recognize this tag as an advertising or sponsored link. It’s also used for any money-making link.
rel=”nofollow”
You use this tag if you want to link to a page, but you don’t want to endorse it. Using “nofollow” doesn’t give any ranking credit to the page.
Originally, the “nofollow” tag told Google not to count any of the links with this tag. With the new changes, Google reads “nofollow” tags as hints to let them know which links to include or exclude from searches.
Google says that the changes give them important information about understanding links and improving searches.
How Do Google’s Updated Attribute Changes Affect You?
If you used “nofollow” tags in the past to block advertising links, you don’t need to make any changes. Google will still support the tags you have. However, you can include the “UGC and sponsored” tags for more clarity.
Using these new attributes helps Google process and analyze your MSP company links. So, if you’d like to take advantage of the “nofollow, ugc, and sponsored” attributes, Google will be crawling and indexing them beginning on March 1, 2020.
