All External Links Now NoFollow

I like it. I personally think people make way too much of do-follow links. This will help to keep out some of the spammers, too.

Besides, from what I have read google wants links to appear natural and how natural is it to have all do follow links.

Exactly! I feel that people won't write as much for backlinks if they don't benefit as much from them. I also think that if a link is included in content, it will almost have to be natural and useful to the reader instead of just for SEO value.

Not sure I am following this: Okay my blogs I will add a seekyt link, that blog is posted in SEO and it shows the title of my Seekyt article in the blog post on SEO...That is because the Seekyt link is a (do follow?)

My blogs that are backlinked from Seekyt...(related content) are now NO Follow? Because backlinking my blog on seekyt article does not help SEO? Or is it spam?

Going forward...Yes to sending Seekyt traffic from my blogs, but no to sending traffic from Seekyt to my blog? is that correct?

You are somewhat correct. I am trying to "force" all outbound links to be useful and not for sending traffic or for SEO value. For instance, if you wrote an article about modern medical science it might be valuable to back up your claims with helpful links to scholarly articles and scientific papers on the subject. I would not consider a link to another similar opinion article as helpful.

The intention of Seekyt is for writers to send traffic here, and NOT the other way around. I am no longer giving out a free pass and wasting my bandwidth on members whose sole intention is to insert links to their own websites. (This is not directed at you personally, Susan!)

I think that what you have done so far with all of your content meets my criteria and follows our content guidelines. You can still add links, but you won't see value from doing so except for traffic that comes directly from your article (I.e., no real or perceived SEO benefit from linking).

As a general reminder to everyone, Seekyt is intended to be a place to earn money with original content and compelling discussions based around this content. Seekyt is not a place to supplement your backlinking strategy or link pyramid scheme. Based on this statement alone, I will be rewriting the content guidelines in the near future to reflect policy changes that will enforce higher quality content, sitewide.

Greatttt..just keep moving forward admin :)

I think making all outbound links no follow is a bit too much.

"The intention of Seekyt is for writers to send traffic here, and NOT the other way around."

Isn't that only accomplished only by eliminating ALL outbound links rather than making them all no follow?

I'd rather see you tighten the content guidelines in a way that goes after the people who abuse the site (spun content, too many links, etc) rather than implement a black and white site-wide policy that takes away from all of us.

No, because eliminating all outbound links also means eliminating helpful links. This is just phase one of some serious changes coming. It's also not much different than many other publishing platforms online. Internal links remain "dofollow."

The content guidelines are going to be significantly edited in the very near future.

This should not take away from anyone, because it is already in the content guidelines, and posted in a big yellow box on the submit page, that if you are writing with the intent of receiving a backlink, you are in violation of our rules. It's even in the FAQ. It doesn't mean that you can't link, and it doesn't mean that Google still won't see and qualify the link. It just means that the "juice" from the page the link is on isn't going to go anywhere.

As an example, if you have a very successful article that ranks #1 for the keyword "Dog Walking," and then you include an anchor text link in that article, which is dofollow, and links to another site with the words "Dog Walking," you are giving away some of your authority for that term to the other website. You might expect that if your article is the best resource for that keyword in Google's eyes, and then your article says another website is a better resource (which is how the algorithm works), Google might want to rank the other article higher, all other factors being considered equal. If the link is nofollow, you're not giving away the authority.

You could say that I could create some rule about not linking for the keyword you're trying to rank for, but the logistics of managing and enforcing that are practically unreasonable. Plus, the majority of Seekyt authors are not web experts - just people who want to write! They may not know that they are hurting their own article by doing something like this, so this change will technically safeguard some people.

To be perfectly blunt, Seekyt is not in the position to be giving away "link juice" or whatever you want to call it to Infobarrel, Squidoo, HubPages, some other website or to personal blogs. With Google's latest algorithm changes and with some changes I've witnessed over the last few months, this change is almost mandated.

I do not intend to oust anyone from Seekyt or discourage anyone from continuing to publish. However, I'd gladly trade 5 million spammers for 5 good writers in an instant. You can still link! This is, logistically speaking and from an SEO point of view, the best way to enforce these policies.

This change is only meant to discourage the people who you never get to see on this site - the spammers who are signing up only for backlinks. Seekyt has been added to a bunch of lists of "dofollow backlinking sites," and I've even seen articles written here encouraging others to write for other websites and use Seekyt as a backlinking source. I figure this public announcement and the actual results of this change might have a positive impact. No one else should be discouraged from publishing and linking as normal. It is one simple line of code added to the beginning of outbound URLs on this website: rel="nofollow"

Even SEO experts will agree that, while they may not have as much value, nofollow links are still valuable and should still be used as a part of building authority for your website.

With Seekyt gaining more authority by giving away less of it, this change should create a positive atmosphere for growth and increased traffic in the future. This will positively affect everyone.

Finally, most of our competitors already do this. HubPages and Squidoo, for example, both have this policy in place, and still many people see value in linking from those sites.

This sounds like something that is smart to do, Admin. I have seen those lists you mentioned that send droves of people coming just for a link to their stuff.

A few years back, Xomba had a huge problem with tons of people using them for nothing more than a back link for their Triond articles, Info Barrels, Hubs and Blog posts. They never wrote one single thing just for the sake of the site. The Admin over there was pretty livid and probably felt used in some way.

Those of us who want to make money on Seekyt agree that the authority should stay here with us. I am so glad you stay on top of all this, Admin!

If this keeps out the spammers I'm all for it. Keep moving forward admin. You are on the right track and protecting all of us by making sure Seekyt is valued now and into the future by the all powerful search. Thanks for that.

How can any of us be sure that google will decree that no follow or do follow means nothing at some point. They are in control for now. SEO is ever changing these days who knows what the future holds we can hang in there and deal with it or quit. There are no other options.

Good point and you are absolutely right. It does not matter if you are the biggest site out there or if you are a small, personal blog. If you intend on using Google's services, you have to play by their rules.

I completely sympathize with Seekyt's need to control spam, and i know first hand how being listed as a "dofollow" site is like an invitation to spammers and bots. My blog has never attracted a ton of comments, but one day I started getting a flood of irrelevant comments with links to irrelevant sites. I traced where the traffic was coming from and found my blog was linked on a list of top 200 dofollow blogs. I emailed the owner of the site to remove that link and the problem stopped. Still, it was a waste of my time cleaning up that mess.

It's the admin's right to do what they have to do to protect their investment and keep Seekyt a viable business, a site that readers trust.

At least Seekyt hasn't gone the route of adding those pernicious in-text pop-up ads that everyone hates. From a reader's point of view, making the links no follow is an imperceptible change that doesn't detract from their experience. That's the important thing.

Well put!

This is perfectly consistent with the mantra every good writer knows: it's all about the content. Create great content on Seekyt, link out to stuff that increases your readers benefit, link back from articles and blogs that compliment what's written here.

We all win when Seekyt establishes good anti-spam policies, and unlike other sites, on this one, we get great information, a chance to comment openly and fair-minded listening.

Keep up the evolution, Tyler!

Okay I added hyperlinks in my article for seekty articles and related articles on my blog. I know that they are no follow. but when I clicked on them they did go to the articles, so it really only means that the Google bots will not follow the links and they will not be ranked on SEO...if that is the case I a am fine with this...because the links were informative only. They were not meant to spam.

Exactly! This is meant for robots to not follow the links. Readers can still click the links and go to the website :)

It's important to understand the concept of nofollow and dofollow links. The attribute "nofollow" instructs some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target's ranking in the search engine's index. The main goal of having external nofollow links is to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of search engine spam.

As admin has already stated, having this type of external links doesn't mean you won't get traffic from these links, on the contrary; this change will increase Seekyt's Page Rank, and consequently, the Page Rank of individual pages (if the on-page SEO is performed well - this depends on each individual writer). Of course, this scenario will help everybody draw even more traffic to their Seekyt article, and potentially to pages writers link to. That being said, this change is a win-win situation for "true" Seekyt memebers!

The only thing that changes significantly is that you don't get the chance to increase the Page Rank of external pages that you linked to (SEO value or "link juice"), which is only natural and logical if we want Seekyt to become a better-quality or high-authority writing site.

Personally, I'm very pleased with the change, and believe it will definitely help making Seekyt a better writing website because this will decrease the number of spammers or people who just want to use Seekyt for backlinks to other sources, and increase the number of high-quality writers and articles.

Admin will have much less work performing antispam actions, and much more time to implement upgrades and new ideas aimed at existing members who are trying to bring the site to a higher level with their contributions, too!

Well done!

Thanks Jasmine!

Important to remember that we're not writing for search engines, but for readers. If they need to implement no-follow to cool out spammers, I'm all for it.

My practice is to cross link as fully as it makes sense, between Seekyt and complementary articles elsewhere and back again. Once in a while, it gets viral and views jump up everywhere. Then, ranking goes up and by implementing my own good practices, I've pretty much nullified the limitations.