Legacy no-follow copyright link

[skylab]

I'd prefer if your links were set to no-follow. They hurt my SEO (as well as yours) because it's sitewide. Seems like you've made the copyright links pretty hidden. How can I get the links nofollow? And/or can we remove the links but keep the copyright much like vBulletin allows?

 

[Cosmic]

Copyright footers won't harm SEO unless they are primarily on low-quality (spam) sites, which isn't the case with our mods.

There isn't any way to change the links to no-follow currently and modifying the copyright links is not allowed.

Cosmic

 

[skylab]

That is false. They do in fact hurt SEO because your "vBulletin Mods and Addons" link is an external site-wide link. Your first link is set to nofollow while the following link to "vBulletin Mods and Addons" is set to follow. I'm assuming this is done on purpose to gain SEO value out of the links. Seems odd to me that even purchasing the product doesn't allow you to change this and you'd have to purchase a whole separate package to remove the links.

I'm obviously okay with keeping the copyright but I'm not okay with keeping the links, especially if they are dofollow.

How exactly does making it nofollow affect the copyright notice? The only purpose I'm seeing is for you to steal our link-juice.

 

[Cosmic]

That is false. They do in fact hurt SEO because your "vBulletin Mods and Addons" link is an external site-wide link. Your first link is set to nofollow while the following link to "vBulletin Mods and Addons" is set to follow. I'm assuming this is done on purpose to gain SEO value out of the links. Seems odd to me that even purchasing the product doesn't allow you to change this and you'd have to purchase a whole separate package to remove the links.

I'm obviously okay with keeping the copyright but I'm not okay with keeping the links, especially if they are dofollow.

How exactly does making it nofollow affect the copyright notice? The only purpose I'm seeing is for you to steal our link-juice.

Unless google completely revamped their SEO settings in the last week or so and no one told me, they do not hurt SEO - not as of Penguin 2.0 anyway .

You can better control what/how the links are shown with our Copyright Management mod (which is completely free).

We always make it extremely clear what copyright notices and links are contained in our mods in the description of them, and people of course have the option of not installing them if they do not wish to display those footers - or of purchasing the Branding Free license. That's the beauty of consumer choice

Cosmic

 

[skylab]

Do any Google search on site-wide links and you'll find this really isn't new.

Edit: your copyright product link didn't work. new link?

 

[Fillip H.]

I've edited the post with the correct link

 

[Cosmic]

Do any Google search on site-wide links and you'll find this really isn't new.

Edit: your copyright product link didn't work. new link?

I tend to take my advice on SEO from experts and actual experimentation and experience. The fact we are only behind the official vbulletin sites for our targeted search terms would suggest your information is incorrect.

As i said, if the links are on a lot of spam sites with negative SEO (as happened with, for instance, some wordpress skins), then it can be an issue. Panda/Penguin for the most part handle sitewide copyright notices/footers well, and don't give them much weight either way - it adds up for us over thousands of high-quality sites, but will have essentially 0 impact on any individual site.