Rel attribute = noindex, nofollow, ugc, sponsored, me ...

Part Of: Technical SEO Best Practices

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The anchor rel attribute provides a hint to search engines about how to consider the content in terms of its relationship to the page the link is on. It is search engine friendly. Attribute values Include:

Rel="noindex"

Noindex is part of the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP), However, when used on as an attribute on a link it is taken with a grain of salt by internet robots ... The metatag Noindex attribute is honored. On sophisticated content management systems, The CMS may add the noindex to pages that are tagged noindex.

The use of the attribute on a link does not prevent the bot from looking at the URL and determining what the URL is about; And, it applies relevancy to the page that contains the link. Such behavior of the search engine would be the art form of running a document retrial system ... and, usage on sites for such advantage may fall into the disruptive SEO category.

Use cases include:

Breaking News, Which is being updated moment by moment

Content that is under continual updating can not effectively be indexed. Instead, the page linking to the content should be indexed ... at least until the URL under update has been completed.

de-cannibalization

Content too closely related to the content on the page on the same site may compete or cannibalize the page on the SERPs, and there is no benefit to having the competing page in search ... But, the content needs to be made available to the user although does not need to exist on the same page.

Rel="nofollow"

Nofollow is part of technical SEO with all the expected peer-to-peer reviews for use cases. While initially to address comment spam in blogs, it applies to all user-generated content on a website where the webmaster or content creator did not specifically create or review the link.

Use Cases

For User Generated Links

While proposed because of UGC, and still applicable to UGC ... there has been controversy and confusion over the usages of rel="nofollow" ... a rel="UGC" was put forward by Google and has been adopted by WordPress.

The rel="ugc" is shown along with noindex, but there is nothing inferred as to how the content should be treated by search engines.

For Sponsored Links

Another use case for nofollow emerged for sponsored or affiliated marketing links. Google has put forward a rel="sponsored", which can be used with or without the nofollow attribute value.

Sculpting Search Results - Not part of the proposal made for its creation

It has been used by some in SEO to try to prevent link juice from leaving a site. Google has specifically stated the implementation of nofollow does not boost the page rank or authority of pages that use nofollow.

There has been controversy, among people in the SEO industry, over how Google and other search engines should process a rel="nofollow" link. Some say adding a nofollow to an internal link should be processed to sculpt the search results for their site to promote or demote pages on their sites selectively.

Google however is not a non-profit organization that holds elections on how their search engine operates. If Google did hold elections, they would be out-voted ... for whatever that is worth.

Request for professional courtesy

The nofollow is used and was proposed to address the issue of spam that could be posted in the comments, guestbook, or other sections by a person other than the webmaster. A reasonable person would provide a chance for the webmaster to look at what was posted before passing judgment on the page that contains a spammy comment link. The webmaster when reviewing the comments may see and remove the spam, or decide the link is not spam and should remain on the page.

The usage as a request for professional courtesy is consistent with test results from those who test search engines. If the link remains on the page it will be indexed, and be treated the same as any other link.

Links with or without rel="nofollow" get followed and if they lead to harmful content will affect the page that has the link. Pages that become link farms because of comments will be demoted. The only thing the rel="nofollow" does is potentially give the webmaster time to review and remove links that lead to spam or harmful content.

Search engines when seeing a rel="nofollow" may decide to not consider the link when considering the relevant topic of the page.

Rel="me"

A link with a rel="me" attribute is seen as the link points to another page/website which is under the control of the author of the page.

Use Case

The number one use case for the rel="me" attribute on a link is to point to the social media accounts of the author. It is effectively similar to the schema of an author with a sameAs property to the social media site.

Rel="ugc" or rel="ugc, nofollow"

Rel="ugc" was created for user generated content after the rel="nofollow" and specifies nothing more than the linked url was provided by a user without direct engagement by the webmaster of the site.

Like rel="nofollow" links they get followed and if they lead to harmful content will affect the page that has the link. The potential is it gives the webmaster time to review and remove links that lead to spam or harmful content.

Search engines may decide when seeing a rel="ugc" to not consider the anchor tag or content the link points to as relevant to the page. Or; Search engines may decide it is a hidden jem and helpful to the page. Nothing is specifically infered as to how the search engines will use the data point.

Rel="sponsored" or rel="sponsored, nofollow"

Rel="nofollow" has been used for sponsored ads ... Google created and recommends using rel="sponsored" instead. Obviously, the webmaster created the link on the page and created content needs to be paid for in one way or another. Humans are not machines, we need to eat and work.

Nothing can be inferred from the data point about how search engines will handle the content.

rel=“next” and rel="prev"

The rel=“next” and rel="prev" can be used in the meta tag as an attribute to the link tag. They specify the next or prev page for an article that uses Pagination ... there are never two next pages so using them on an anchor makes no sense. Google does not use them as a signal, and each page is considered canonical.

No longer has an SEO usage

Pagination, incremental page loading, and their impact on Google Search

Due to how Google treats canonicals using rel=next and rel=prev can create a cannibalization problem. An infinite or limited "more/continue" to the bottom of the page is generally a better approach.



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