SEO Expert, Anthony Yap

No-follow links are those links which have the HTML attribute of “nofollow” and can be seen simply by right-clicking on a text link and selecting properties. If you are using Firefox, the little window will display several characteristics for the link. One of them is called Relation. If you see a nofollow after it instead of external, the link you just checked is a no-follow link.

This attribute has been pushed hard by Matt Cutts in an attempt to scare webmasters into conforming to Google’s standards. He wanted those webmasters who sold text links on their sites to add “nofollow” to all their paid links thereby preventing them from passing “link juice” or PageRank. Google would treat these links as untrusted links so no PageRank or anchor text value would be passed. Understandably, the use of paid links skews the Google ranking algorithm towards the site owners who have money to invest in site promotion versus those who don’t.

There has been much confusion with webmasters “guessing” at how the various major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Live, and Ask) treat these sort of links. Many webmasters believed that the use of these links caused the links to literally be “not followed” or indexed. Now, for once and for all, Loren at Search Engine Journal has laid it to rest by getting the search engine’s nofollow treatment straight from the source - the search engines.

His findings are summarized well in a chart:

I find it interesting that Yahoo displays nofollow backlinks from sites in Yahoo Site Explorer but doesn’t count it towards search engine ranking. Live Search has not offered any information on this topic yet.

In my past article about Google bombing where I mentioned how current President George W. Bush ranked for the term “failure”, I discussed how this technique could be used to manipulate rankings and even hurt a competitor’s business or a person’s name. Matt Cutts, of Google, announced that they have changed the algorithm to reduce the effects of this problem. Reports have come in indicating that this tactic is no longer effective.
Since that time, web entrepreneurs have unnecessarily worried about this happening to them. While some businesses may have been affected by this malicious intent, for most businesses and individuals, the concern is largely unwarranted and over-exaggerated. To put things into perspective, link building is a tedious and time-consuming task. For someone to attempt to rank a site for a non-relevant term, it would have required lots of links. Links cost money (even time=money). The sheer number of links required to rank for generic terms would easily deter most people. That’s why link building is usually outsourced to SEO experts because companies understand the value of their time and focus instead on their core competencies.

I suspect a large part of the algorithm takes into account relevancy of keyword phrase to the site that it is pointing to.  Thus, a site selling electronics is not likely to rank well for sports equipment since none of the keywords and content on the entire site correspond in any way to the keyword being searched.
It is relieving though to know that this tactic cannot be used with much effectiveness anymore. Such malicious behavior online can seriously damage a person’s reputation. Companies getting bad publicity still have to deal with it and one of the ways is through effective online reputation management. One way is to “push” negative search results from showing up in the top 10 is to create separate sites built around the company getting the negative online publicity and rank these new sites separately. The effort should be combined with an effort to contain the problem and not ignore it hoping that it’ll go away. This can be accomplished by simply opening up a dialog with the other party to resolve any “sore” issues. Facing the problem and addressing any hurt caused will go a long way to establishing a company’s reputation and customer loyalty. Remember that it can take as little as one complaint to hurt a business.

A better more proactive approach rather than “complaints handling” is to manage your customers well.

Here are simple key points to take note on customer relationship management:

• Regularly ask for feedback. Sometimes, customers keep quiet about their dissatisfaction. These customers tend to be the ones that will stop doing business without telling you why and leave you wondering why the customer attrition rate is so high.
• Handle complaints when they occur immediately. Don’t hide under a rock and pray that it’ll disappear. Deal with it as soon as possible to avoid it escalating further. The sooner it’s handled, the less probable it’ll end up in some blog or forum post.
• Have a complaint handling procedure. Don’t leave anything to chance. Make sure everyone knows how to handle them and do training on it if you must.
• Get everyone (not just customer service) involved in the servicing of customers and clients in the business
• Track your customer complaints. Just like everything else in business, get it down to numbers and study the trend. If you’ve already put systems in place to handle it and it is still occurring at the same level, find out why. If it’s decreased, find out what aspect of your business made the difference.
• Maintain regular contact with your customer/client. Build rapport and trust with them so they’ll truly be honest with you.

Customer relationship management is really not rocket science as many books will lead you to believe. Often times, it’s just dealing with it face-to-face, heart-to-heart. Unfortunately, when businesses get big, they also get dumb. They become impersonal and faceless. Customers trying to resolve simple issues have to jump through hoops to get what they want.

Instead of thinking how much you can take from one customer, think about lifetime value. How many more transactions will this person have with you. How many friends and family will they send over as referrals. You’ll be on your way to a happier and more fulfilling business when you focus on taking care of the customer.

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Code: DM-2-1106 or by clicking here

The code is valid till 1/15/07.
Great find courtesy of Aaron Wall.