Nofollow vs. Follow: How Google treats with Guest Blogging.

During the past month there has been a lot of news and talk on guest blogging. To be more exact, the talks and discussions have been on the penalties various guest blog networks have gotten from the Google spam team, most of them manually. For the average internet user it can be difficult to figure out what the outcry (both from Google and the guest blogging community) has been all about.

The center of all this has been nofollow links. Or the lack of them to be precise. In order to be able to explain what a nofollow link is, first we should understand what a follow link is.

When a website gets an inbound link, it gains a boost towards its Google ranking helping the site get higher up in the search results - also known as the SERP. The more inbound links a website gets and the more reputable the website posting the inbound link is, the bigger a boost the linked-to site gets in terms of Google ranking. A link of this kind, which is counted towards the Google ranking of the site, is called a follow link.

On the other hand, an inbound link which is NOT boosting a website’s Google ranking is called a nofollow link. Google simply ignores the link completely and it is seen as what it is; a link that gets the reader to a different website. The way a nofollow link is created is with a non follow HTML tag which looks like this:          

<a href="http://www.website.com/"rel="nofollow">Text</a>

Prior to the introduction of nofollow links, websites - (blackhat) SEO minded websites in particular - were spamming the internet with follow links which would artificially make them rank higher on Google to an extent that blog comments and forums almost solely consisted of self-promotions and a massive amount of links. In 2005 Matt Cutts from Google and Jason Shellon of Blogger realized that something had to be done to stop the madness of spam, so they introduced the nofollow attribute which has helped limiting the link spam on the internet a great deal. Many blogs and forums don’t post follow link, while reputable websites like Wordpress and Wikipedia automatically assigns the nofollow link to all user-submitted links.


This takes us back to the controversy which we have seen in regards to guest blogging. When Matt Cutts on March 19 announced that Google “today took action on a large guest blog network” it quickly became common knowledge that he referred to MyBlogGuest, a guest blog network which had more than 73,000 users in 2013, with an average of 256 articles posted per day. Despite being against paying for links, as Ann Smarty who runs the site pointed out confirming that MyBlogGuest had been hit, it should not have come as a surprise to the blogging world.

Already in 2012 Matt Cutts warned against spammy and low quality guest blogging, and continued to do so until january 2014 where he announced that guest blogging is done due to the fact that it’s too spammy. Truth is that this could probably have been avoided by MyBlogGuest if they didn’t insist that links cannot be nofollowed. Even if they did have a lot of quality content from the guest blogging, the potential of link building for SEO is still there, and even though it’s all speculations on why MyBlogGuest actually got punished, a few spammy blogs with nofollow links is all it takes for the whole network to be affected by it. On top of the penalty to the actual network, many users received warnings and penalties despite not being directly responsible. Although it can be argued that anyone blogging and adding a follow link is responsible of artificially boosting its Google ranking.

The best advice there is for guest blogger is simply to stay on the safe site and nofollow your links. Yes, its a shame i you are a legitimate blogger and don’t get the credit you deserve from Google, but a nofollow link is not completely useless either. If the content is good enough, the nofollow link can still create traffic, and hopefully conversions, to the website. As for other ways to do SEO, social media activity is definitely to some extend affecting the SERP, while it is a good idea to have a look at these 4 effective SEO techniques for 2014!

Calling to action! How to improve your conversion rates

An important aspect to any website whose importance is often overlooked is the call-to-action (CTA) button(s). Whether the aim of your website is to have people buy a product,  sign up for newsletters or downloading a product, the CTA button is vital for your conversion rate. All your hard work of getting visitors to your website and getting them interested in your product will have gone to waste if it is not followed up with an action by the visitors.

When you think about how easy it is to improve the CTA buttons on your website, and how big a difference it could make to your conversions, it is surprising how little attention it gets. There is plenty of focus on SEO and content (which granted are very important aspects too!), but if you want to see a vast improvement of conversions with little effort put in it, follow these 5 simple tips on how to improve your conversion rates by optimizing your CTA buttons.

Effective usage of negative space

In order to really have your CTA button stand out from the rest of your content and grab the attention of your visitors, you need to make use of negative space around the buttons. There is no exact measurement of how much blank space is needed for a certain size of button, but it is worth having principles like the Rule of Thirds of the Golden Ratio in mind when deciding the ratio.

Size and Color

You wouldn’t automatically suspect the two to be related, but in fact they are. When speaking about the size of the button, size definitely matters! If your button is too small it won’t get noticed enough, however, if your button is too big it may overpower everything around it. Somewhere in between will catch the attention of the visitors without overwhelming them.

The color can work as to balance the size of the button. For big buttons you don’t need a very dominant color but instead a color which flows with the design of the page while still standing out (as an example see VIP Affiliates’ CTA button). If you opt to go with a relatively smaller button you should consider using a much more impactful color to really catch the eyes of your visitors.


Language

The words you choose for you CTA button can make it or break it in terms of whether the visitor ends up clicking on it or not. The wording should be straight-forward and simple, but still with an urgency. Like for example: “Buy now!” or “Download now!”. The wording is simple yet with a clear message which is impossible to misunderstand.



Provide extra information

When needed, provide extra information to the CTA button. The extra information can be anything from the price if it’s a call for purchasing (preferably with an ‘only’ in front), the size of the file if it’s a call for downloading, or the length of time for a free trial. What these kinds of information have in common is that they add to the user experience. That being said, it’s important that the extra information text is not nearly as prominent as the text appealing to the visitor to act.

Click Triggers

Sometimes the call, even with the extra information, isn’t enough to get a conversion. Click triggers are basically extra boost you put close to the button to convince people to click it.
Examples of click triggers are:
- Guarantees
- Ratings
- Payment option
- Reviews
- Security message

Try out a few at the time and see what trigger works best for the CTA button on your website.


With a few adjustments there is no doubt that more visitor will take action on your website, and all the hard work you have put into bringing them in the first place will not have gone to waste!