: Viral posts and links This might be a bit of a strange question, but here goes. Over the past month, I have written 2 posts for my website, which have gone viral on social media, which have

@Kaufman445

This sounds like a common misconception and understanding of linkage on the web and a typical view of many that are thinking about this all wrong...

The average natural website's link profile will be made up of a higher percentage of nofollow links than followable links. This is common and to be expected. It isn't always the case though and some websites link profiles will largely be made up of followable links. This factor alone won't determine the organic performance success of a website though, there are many other factors involved.


Just because you have many nofollow links, this shouldn't cause alarm or concern. This won't lead to a penalty nor will be frowned upon by Google. Nor will this categorically not help your website perform/rank. Whilst there is a lot of opinions about nofollow links, more than can be discussed in a single answer to your question, there are benefits that come of them and these count towards a natural and balanced link profile.
The fact that your content is viewed a lot, shared/liked a lot in social media and is generating healthy 'engagement' related metrics will have an indirect influence on your webpage's performance. That coupled with only a few 'quality' links is not confirmation that the page(s) won't perform or rank well. In terms of generating more real and worthwhile links though, that depends upon the nature of what content you are producing. Most content that goes viral tends to be the type of shareable media across social channels and not the type that many other website's would link to - those pages still perform ridiculously well.


Perhaps, for your next piece of viral-intended content, consider what your target audience will find useful which is not well-documented already on the web. Again though, what things to consider to earn natural links is a much bigger topic again that could cause much debate.

Vote Up Vote Down