Understanding the ‘No-follow’ attribute in SEO

For those SEO ‘first-timers’, understanding the importance of link attributes is paramount when it comes to your link building and networking activity on the web. The ‘no-follow’ tag attribute was introduced by Google in January 2005, the idea behind it being that websites could nullify link value by adding the ‘no-follow’ attribute to meta tags in order to stop link farming and spamming on websites and forums. There are tools available online to help SEO’s decipher ‘no-follow’ attributes on popular websites, however there has been much controversy within the SEO community regarding it’s permanent establishment on the internet. When selecting social media sites and other entities as part of your SEO strategy, be sure to consider the precense of ‘no-follow’ tags on your targetted web pages.