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20 Comments

SEO backlinks from Indie Hackers

Right now IH adds rel="nofollow" attribute to all links that are posted on the website, including links that are on the user's profile page.

While I understand that it's done with a goal to prevent low-quality links from getting SEO ranking, in the meantime would be nice to reward quality links that are posted by reputable users.

For example, stackoverflow.com does exactly that. The link that's posted on the user profile page will not have "nofollow" attribute if the user has more than 2000 points.

And from the other side, this can also encourage users to be more active on the community form.

Curious what you all think?

cc @csallen

  1. 1

    I agree with you; this would be very helpful for me too. I would love to create and share useful content for other indiehackers.

  2. 1

    I would appreciate this as well, especially if I plan to add valuable content for other indiehackers. Would be awesome

  3. 2

    This is already true for users with > 500 points and has been for about a year, I think.

    1. 1

      This is good, users like me will try to interact more and more and will try to increase their points. They will share more content here as well for this reason :)

    2. 1

      @csallen I checked few profiles that have > 500 points and all of them have rel="nofollow" for the link in their profile description when I inspect the link.

      Here are the profiles that I checked

      Am I missing something?

      1. 2

        Ah it only works for links in posts, not for links in profile descriptions at the moment. This is something I can address eventually.

  4. 2

    If you're interviewed the links are not nofollow

    1. 2

      That's good to know, I didn't know about it. But also would be cool to have something similar for users that have a high score on the platform.

  5. 2

    not sure about the whole website, but profile page might be good

    are they visible without signing in? (checked and they are)

    1. 3

      Yeah, potentially after users reach a certain points threshold (50/100 or something). Then it's like a bit of a reward for contributing to the community

    2. 1

      yes, agree I was thinking also only profile page. That alone might be a good way to contribute to IH's projects

  6. 2

    I think you should allow them to be follow links. From google's perspective they are already assigning some small value to a mention by name, then a no-follow link, and then the big dog - the follow link. You might think about not allowing links for brand new users to avoid hit-and-runs but if you have locked down the free-to-join side of the house then its a big benefit to those just getting started and in need of backlinks from the right kind of sources.

    1. 2

      yes agree, considering that the community is invite-only, this will also lower the possibility of someone spamming the website with low-quality links

  7. 1

    While the rel="nofollow" attribute helps maintain SEO integrity, a more balanced approach could reward reputable users. By evaluating user reputation and link quality, we can encourage valuable contributions without compromising spam prevention.

    1. 1

      Same as what i learned these days.

  8. 1

    I appreciate you sharing your case study with us. You shared some extremely impressive techniques, and I am excited to apply them to https://getsocialstock.com/ , Following this step-by-step guide will hopefully help us to develop our startup as quickly as possible. In the case study, you discussed the same thing. I appreciate your help.

  9. 1

    What would be the threshold? I'm generally for what you said

    1. 1

      Hard to give an exact number but if we go by the example of StackOverflow. It can be around 200 points. Stackoverflow does it with 2000 points, but they also count each vote as 10 points vs IH counts a vote as only 1 point. I think if the post gets enough votes and @csallen likes the idea, they can just run also some stats on the backend to see minimum how many votes the top 10% (or top 1%) of users have and make a decision based on it.

  10. 1

    Sounds good, Marty

  11. 1

    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

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