What if a site wants to buy links purely for visitor click traffic, to build buzz, or to support another site? In that situation, I would use the rel=”nofollow” attribute. The nofollow tag allows a site to add a link that abstains from being an editorial vote. Using nofollow is a safe way to buy links, because it’s a machine-readable way to specify that a link doesn’t have to be counted as a vote by a search engine.
The nofollow command allows you to sell links and not worry about being penalized for selling links. Thanks for telling us how to cheat, Matt.
The reason you may want to use the nofollow command is because it tells the search engines not to follow that link. Google’s algorithms give a negative vote to sites that sell links. By notifying the search engine that you are selling links you are saying I don’t want to be included in that algorithmic computation. This is a good strategy if the links you are selling are beneficial for driving traffic to your advertising customers and you are not merely selling them for pang rank benefit. Does it work? According to some reports, not all of the time. But we say, it’s worth a try. It won’t hurt you.
