This is a question that is asked and answered all the time ( most of the time not answered so well ). There is validity in no-follow link backs to being of some advantage - albeit from all the studies I have seen on the subject, the target terms are basically low laying fruit. But there is the undeniable gain from this strategy when you look at pre ranking vs page ranking after a period of steady no-follow link backs are developed.
Again a little reading on the subject, and terms such as "link profile" Sure you want to mix the good with the bad to show a more natural link profile... BUT I find this idea a bit lame... I have sites that have absolutely no no-follow link backs what so ever and they are ranking just fine. to be absolutely clear here.. I really am a big fan of no-follow links - It is my primary link back strategy in most circumstances. It is not effective in all cases but with the stuff I do, it works rather well.
So lets take this conversation up a notch and discuss a strategy I use with no-follow linking that I have found through testing to be fairly effective even in terms above the little to no competition level.
I personally use blog commenting as my primary source of no-follow links. As I get into this a bit you will understand a bit better why. Forum posting with a link to your site is simply not all that effective. On other forums that I have high post counts ( in the thousands ) that means that I would have the exact same link replicated from the same source THOUSANDS of times.. think about that for about 2 seconds, and you will understand that simply is not good for any "link profile" or any other matrix you think you may need to meet.
I want to say that in the spring of 2015 Google came out with one of their little scare bomb notices on back linking. ( I cant find it specifically right now, if I do I will post the link ) The line that grabbed my attention in regards to the link text was "When in doubt, use your name." Go back to June 2014 where Google laid Google Authorship to rest.. they want me to use my "Name", but there is no longer Google Authorship? HUH?!
So to understand this a little better.. when Google, Bing, or Yahoo drop a service or feature, there is usually a reason, and more importantly a more universal in scale replacement. All 3 and a few more are all partners in SCHEMA. When there is an announcement of a discontinued search feature or function, SCHEMA is a good place to hunt down the replacement. In the case of Google Authorship, there is indeed a replacement, and it lays within SCHEMA. So using an example from
https://schema.org/Person you can see a tag such as:
Code:
Jane Doe
<img src="janedoe.jpg" alt="Photo of Jane Joe"/>
Professor
20341 Whitworth Institute
405 Whitworth
Seattle WA 98052
(425) 123-4567
<a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>
Jane's home page:
<a href="http://www.example.com">example.com</a>
Unless you are familiar with this stuff.. you are probably looking at this going, yeah and? OK, so on a blog you leave a comment, you have to leave a "Name" and then the name you leave holds or is the actual link text, to the link you provide. Having the above Person" tag on your site, you are taking OWNERSHIP of the blog reply by using the "NAME" and then linking to your site. Sure its a no-follow, but with Google and recently with Bing ( I have seen an uptick in positioning with this strategy since about mid November with Bing ) there seems to be some added value on these links.
When you are matching the username on the blog site, with the SCHEMA name on YOUR site, you are developing an authorship profile that can be followed ( via the "no-follow" links )
To cement this idea, lets look at how Google wishes us to tie our Social Media accounts to our site.. again using SCHEMA tags, you can see here:
https://developers.google.com/structured-data/customize/social-profiles how they are doing this. Do they simply want to display your social links for you? OR are they continuing where they left off with Google Authorship, and developing a way to monitor and track an Authors contributions and value across the web?
All indications indicate the later.