I’ve come to realize that the SEO community is divided on the matter of nofollow backlinks, with some people defending their merits and others insisting that they are useless for site rankings (and therefore useless overall).
To me, it seems like a no-brainer that the first group is correct and that nofollow backlinks are something to be embraced, even if not sought out deliberately. If you have an opportunity to get a link to your site out in guest content on another, and the price is that that clicking that link doesn’t directly affect your search rankings, that’s still an opportunity you should take.
The bottom line here is that any click, even on a nofollow link, increases your exposure. And if your guest content is effectively targeted, there’s a good chance of that exposure turning into repeat traffic and ultimately higher rankings.
I think the source of the discord over this topic relates to something I’ve observed about Los Angeles SEO companies and Los Angeles social media companies. They’re often two different companies, and they really shouldn’t be.
The only reason for discounting the usefulness of nofollow backlinks is that you’re too narrowly focused on SEO, and you aren’t connecting that to a larger web marketing strategy. If that’s true of your local SEO company, drop it and look for one that is also focused on social media.
