Do Search Engines See Terms Inside Nofollow Links? Options

[hknight555]

I would like to place links on my website to some of my competitors websites.

Because I don't want these links to give them an SEO advantage I will use [color]rel="nofollow"[/color] in the link.

I understand that if I place rel="nofollow" in the link then that link will NOT help my competitors rank better in search engines.

But will that link on my website help me?

I want to know if having the names of my competitors with links to their websites on my page will have any SEO value. Perhaps a person will type in a competitor's name into a search engine and see me somewhere in the results because I have a link like this on my website:

CODE

<a href="http://www.example.com/" rel="nofollow">Competitor Name</a>

[Bradley]

Welcome to HR hknight555!

I knew I hadn't heard them all :-).

The short answer to "will this help me?" is a resounding NO! Unless your goal is to confuse the hell out of your visitors. If you want to show up for your competitors name, buy some adwords.

I'd suggest heading over to the Tips for Newbies thread.

[torka]

If the only thing you have is one instance of the competitor's name on one page, whether it's in a link (nofollowed or otherwise), it's really unlikely you'll show up anywhere useful in the SERPs unless your competitors are spectacularly bad at SEO and have no business partners, never get mentioned in the press, never issue press releases, never get reviewed on anybody else's website, have no blog, don't participate in any social media, etc.

That said, yes, AFAIK you get "credit" for the words that appear on your pages, including words that are in link anchor text pointing at other pages. I've never seen anything anywhere to suggest that somehow you won't get credit for the words on the page just because they are anchor text for a link that's been nofollowed.

Be careful about linking to direct competitors, though. Nofollow only affects search engines, not human visitors. Do you really want to take a chance that your visitors will click through to your competitors? Once they get to the competitor's site, they may not come back to yours. Personally, I would never link to a direct competitor from a site where I'm trying to make a sale or generate a lead. But maybe that's just me. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

--Torka (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mf_prop.gif)

[Jill]

Linking to your competitors? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/giggle.gif)

I wonder how much business that might have been yours will go to them. They'll be like, "thanks for showing me other companies I could try instead of you!"

[1dmf]

wow - does that mean all I need to do is put a few links on my site to SONY, HMV & MP3.com and i'll be no.1 for mp3 music downloads?

Then again it's arguable if they are really my competitors (IMG:style_emoticons/default/lol.gif)

[mosxu]

google measures clicks on an anchor text via its toolbar so it may well be this the reason why nofollowed links or exchanged links are still getting a sort of credit... when it shoudn't as it affects google credibility

[Jill]

google measures clicks on an anchor text via its toolbar

They do? How do you know this?