Nofollow and dofollow link: what is it for?

Lottie Moore
4 min readSep 17, 2020

In the jargon of natural referencing (SEO) , we frequently use the terms noindex, doindex, nofollow, dofollow, meta description… Each of these terms designates an essential facet of optimization for search engines. In this article, we’ll take a look at the difference between a nofollow link and a dofollow link.

WHY IS IT ESSENTIAL TO HAVE “LINKS”?

You can think of search engine results as a competition for who will have the most “authority,” and links count as votes in that competition.

Every time another (quality) website links to your site, you gain credibility and the more you have, the more effective your SEO efforts will be. In other words, websites that receive more (quality) links will generally rank higher in search engine results for the targeted keywords and phrases.

Links form relationships between pages and websites, and search engines use these links to crawl, discover, and index new pages. They also use links to determine the authority of the pages and their relevance to search queries. Now that we’ve established how important links are to the SEO landscape, let’s take a look at the difference between nofollow and dofollow links.

WHAT IS A DOFOLLOW LINK?

Dofollow links are an HTML attribute used to allow search bots to follow links. If a link refers to your site with a dofollow link, the robots will then take this link into account. They then transmit “link juice”. It really benefits your website to get higher Page Rank.

<a href=”https://www.digitalmarketinglahore.com/seo-services-in-lahore/" rel=”dofollow”>seo services in lahore</a>

Google takes note of Dofollow links. The number of users who link to your page helps it determine its actual quality. The more Dofollow links you have, the more points you will get. The best way to build the link is to use the keyword as the anchor text .

It is important not only to get a Dofollow link from anywhere on the web but also to get a Dofollow link from a reputable website (having strong authority). If you can post a link on Wikipedia or a news site like Ouest-France, you’ve hit the holy grail.

In summary, Dofollow links are links that can help you increase your Page Rank, earn more SEO points, and increase “link juice”. They help to improve your ranking in the SERPs. Dofollow links are real signs of credibility in Google’s mind.

WHAT IS A NOFOLLOW LINK?

Nofollow links do not allow search engine robots to follow your links. These links therefore do not transmit the famous “link juice”.

<a href=”https://www.digitalmarketinglahore.com/seo-company/" rel=”nofollow”>seo company in lahore</a>

The link is perfectly functional for visitors, but it is ignored by the engines. It does not increase the Page Rank or the ranking of the site and has no SEO value. So nofollow links don’t pass any juice, but it can help drive traffic to your website nonetheless. I’m assuming you’ve noticed the “rel Nofollow” tag a few times. If you use the HTML tag of the Nofollow link, your site is not at risk. Search engines will just follow this instruction.

The Nofollow tag can be good for SEO. Most webmasters use this tag to not track unreliable content. These links belong to the family of paid links, forums, blog comments, and content deemed unreliable. We will come back to it …

WHEN SHOULD YOU USE NOFOLLOW LINKS?

Now you understand the difference between Dofollow and Nofollow links. Now let’s take a look at how they are used on your website. Anytime you link to another site that you don’t necessarily want to endorse, you can use the nofollow attribute. Using nofollow links, publishers can instruct search engines not to count links to pages as “votes” for that content.

In other words, the nofollow tag prevents the juice from being passed to other websites that you link to from your site. Here are some examples of when it is appropriate to use nofollow links:

Comments

If you allow comments on your site, you can expect tons of links from people who link to their website in order to receive “link juice”. To prevent them from receiving credits from your site, you can use the nofollow attribute.

Paid links

Want to prevent the links people buy on your site from getting credit? Use nofollow links to avoid questionable SEO practices. This will save yourself sanctions from Google.

User-generated content

Do you allow people to contribute to your website? Use nofollow links to prevent your site from crediting other sites that you don’t necessarily want to vouch for.

In addition to these different examples, be aware that you should use nofollow links whenever links can lead to other sites and you want to avoid endorsing them.

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Lottie Moore

I am SEO specialist. Our clients' goals are our goals.