Links to social sites like Google Plus, Twitter and Facebook.

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Ben Baligad: +jim munro and I were discussing guest post on the comments of a topic last week. I was expecting the panel to comment on it, but I guess it should be posted separately.
  
  We discussed that in guest posts, links to social sites like Google Plus, Twitter and Facebook should be dofollow. This rather indirect, but it's something to work with. ;
  
  Are there any cases left where a site owner can do some guest posting and put a dofollow link directly to his site without violating Google Best Practices?
  
  #nofollow ;#guestposts #dofollow
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  Jann Grond: Yes, if the link adds some kind of value for example.
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  Ben Baligad: That would make the rules more liberal, Jann.  ;Isn't that true for most links? A "dental" anchor for a link should link to a dentist, a "solar" anchor should link to solar power site. ;
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  Jann Grond: What do you mean by "his site"? The homepage?
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  Ben Baligad: "His site" would mean his website, which is all pages, including homepage.
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  Jann Grond: Yeah, then the value thing is right. It doesn't matter if it's a guest post or anything else as long as it adds some value for the visitors. Guest Posting isn't bad because Matt Cutts irritated people. The question is, how it's done.
• 
  PromozSEO: Over doing anything is bad. Guest posting is a part of content marketing which is not safe for link building.
  If you have 80% - 90% dofollow links from guest posts with exact anchor texts, then that is unnatural and bad and eventually can lead troubles.
  Value additions, relevancy, authority, diversified anchor texts, mentions, ;diversified link types, link velocity etc. are important factors of a natural link profile
• 
  Ben Baligad: +PromozSEO ;Thanks for answering. Your post did not answer the question directly, but it did shed some light on other things. I take it that you are in agreement that links, following those rules, to social sites that are dofollow are alright. ;
  
  Do those rules on dofollow links apply to internal links? Several Google Webmaster YouTube videos have said to link your posts together. Matt Cutts also said that dofollow links are alright for internal links.
  
  That was strange to me since all posts are usually connected through sitemaps, categories and menus. But, I linked many of them together using mostly one exact word for an anchor. ;
  
  Should I remove the links, or at least differentiate the anchor texts?
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  PromozSEO: Dofollow inner-links are all good and that is natural for PR flow. But mix inner-link anchor texts ;with different variations, LSI of keywords, use contextual inner-links.
  This is a very good post from +Distilled ;: ;https://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/site-navigation-for-seo/
  
  Sometime we may need to make our inner-links nofollow, read this from +Bruce Clay, Inc. Internet Marketing ;: ;https://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/site-navigation-for-seo/
  
  Dofollow G+ social link is fine but why would I give other dofollow ;social links? Where is the benefit?
• 
  Jim Munro: If you want to build a long-term future, links to your site should be a "surprise", something you discover in your reporting. Generally, anything that you had a direct hand in or influence over will be a miss-step.
  
  +Dan Petrovic ;is in Munich and just about to speak at SMX Munich on "The Fine Art of Link Earning".
  
  https://plus.google.com/u/0/+DejanSEO/posts/6N3GrxMnyAE
  
  Miracles sometimes occur. With a little bit of luck, I'm hoping Dan will have five minutes to spare to clarify this for you, Ben. If not, there's this clip for you to watch.
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  Dan Petrovic: Links are a byproduct of popularity. Work on popularity and links will come too. If you work on links only, you'll have to keep doing it forever. That's a hard job while Google keeps changing their policy on various trends such as guest posts. And no, guest posting for dofollow links is not OK with Google anymore.
• 
  Ben Baligad: +Jim Munro ;Thank you for your efforts to help, and this platform to do it in.
  
  +Dan Petrovic ;It is not a matter of working for links only. You said so yourself in your video that a good post will not necessarily get good traffic. What is left to do when one has worked on a post or many posts that is not getting traffic?
  
  +PromozSEO ; Dofollow to social links is to promote your social profile to the search engines. Your social site is where you post links (nofollow) that point to your site. ;
  
  Google makes many rules that they are not sharing. Therefore, many webmasters, will violate these rules. Google must have a level of tolerance for violations. For example, if a popular news source started allowing guest posts, what will Google do if the links they provide are follow? ;
  
  The reason for my questions is I am going to open my site up for guest blogging.
  
  Yes, the quality part needs to be addressed.
  
  I am trying to decide what links to allow. Right now, nofollow to their site and dofollow to their social site sounds the best.