DoFollow & NoFollow Links Explained! Power Of NoFollow Links Revealed

Are you a blogger?

Then Dofollow and Nofollow are the commonly listen words for you. Right?

These are the first terms you learn when you start implementing SEO on your newly cooked blog.

AND you might be listening that you need to create backlinks to get high rank in Google search engine result page.

But do you know that there are two types of backlinks dofollow and nofollow backlinks?

Mostly, beginners don’t know the difference between dofollow and nofollow links. They only know that they need to focus on creating dofollow backlinks in order to gain good ranking in SERPs.

And this is where they make a mistake…

The main problem occurs when they link to low-quality external sources without adding a nofollow tag to the links which eventually create problems.

WordPress adds dofollow links by default when you add a link via WordPress editor.

You must need to read this entire post if you think that dofollow links are the only links you need to create for your blog.

This post will explain everything that you should know about dofollow and nofollow links.

What Is A Dofollow Link?

A dofollow link is a simple link which allows search engines to follow and it passes “link juice” to the website it linked to.

When someone links to your website with a dofollow link, it passes SEO value to your website.

Search engines can follow your website and it counts it as a vote to your website and it clearly shows that your website contains good quality of content that’s why someone linked to it.

All links that you add using your WordPress editor are dofollow links by default. This is how a Dofollow link looks like:

Dofollow backlinks help in ranking, because if you get a dofollow backlink from a high authority website so It passes SEO Value to your website that helps in ranking.

Vice versa, It can also hurt your ranking if you get dofollow backlinks from Spammy, irrelevant, porn and Toxic websites. Because it is a dofollow link so it will pass the SEO value to your website which will affect your website’s SEO.

Even it might bring Google penalty for you…

The same can happens with you if you give a dofollow backlink to an irrelevant, porn or toxic domain from your website.

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What Is A Nofollow Link?

A nofollow link is a link which contains rel=”nofollow” tag in its body. A nofollow link doesn’t allow search engines to follow the link and it also doesn’t pass link juice.

It is easy for the human to click on a nofollow link and visit the page, but for search engines, it doesn’t allow to pass any SEO value to the page it is linked to.

This is an example of a Nofollow link. It Looks like:

You can easily add a nofollow link by adding rel=”nofollow” HTML tag in the link as shown above. This nofollow tag tells Google and other search engines to ignore this link.

As you now know that nofollow links don’t pass SEO value, so it doesn’t mean that Nofollow links are not good for SEO.

Rather, keeping a balanced backlink profile is very important. You will learn more about in later this post.

Must Read:

• How To Install A WordPress Plugin?

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What Is The Difference Between Dofollow & Nofollow links In SEO?

If you look at both the links, they look almost same except nofollow link contains a rel=”nofollow” tag.

As a user, if you see both the links at the same time, it is IMPOSSIBLE for you to tell any difference between both. You can click on both and they will redirect you to the page where it linked to.

The process and the use of both types of links are the same for a human.

But for search engines, there is a HUGE difference.

Dofollow link helps in ranking but on the other hand, nofollow link doesn’t help.

Google only count dofollow backlinks, they totally ignore nofollow links added to a webpage.

But again, don’t think that nofollow links are totally useless. There is a HUGE power of nofollow backlinks that I will reveal later in this post.

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Type Of Nofollow Links

There are the two types of the Nofollow links which you mostly see.

Robot Meta Tag: Robot meta tags use to tell Google bots( and all search engines’ bots) to not follow links of this full page. Basically, it is used when the page you are linking to is not trustworthy.

Link Attribute: Nofollow Link Attribute used when we want to tell search engines to not to follow this particular link.

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How To Check Dofollow Or Nofollow Link?

As I said, both types of links look the same and when you click on them they redirect you to another page where they linked.

There is no difference in BOTH!

Nofollow links have HTML tag rel=”nofollow” added that tells search engines to ignore the link. So, it doesn’t help in ranking…

Whereas, dofollow links let search engines follow the link and pass SEO value to the page where it pointed to, so it helps in ranking.

Now, how you can check if a link is a nofollow link…

Using Google Inspect Tool

For this, you need to use Google Inspect Tool…

Right-click on the link you want to check and then click Inspect.

You will be able to see the nofollow tag as you can see on the above image. If you found nofollow tag then it means the link is nofollow link and if you don’t find it then it is dofollow.

Using Strike Out NoFollow Links

There is a chrome extension named Strike Out Nofollow Links that you can use to check dofollow or nofollow.

It will strike-out nofollow links on a webpage so you can easily find which links are nofollow with the help of this extension.

Download Strike Out Nofollow Links by here…

These are the two easy methods that you can use to check dofollow or nofollow links on a webpage.

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Benefits Of Nofollow Links

I said above that I will reveal the POWER of nofollow links later in this post, this is the time to reveal…

Nofollow links are not as POWERFUL as Dofollow links are…

Do you think that they help in SEO anyhow?

Nofollow links do help in SEO… Here are the benefits of Nofollow links…

Help In Building Traffic

As I said already, a user can easily follow the nofollow links and there is no difference in nofollow and dofollow links from a user point of view.

A user can easily click on the link and go to the page where it points to.

So, when someone adds your link on their websites, their users can easily see that and click to visit your website which will generate quality traffic for you.

Dofollow + Nofollow Links = Natual Backlink Profile

You should consider creating both types of backlinks for your blog, nofollow and dofollow.

Nofollow link is an important part of SEO and link building, everyone wants to have dofollow links only. If Google found that your blog has 100% dofollow links then it will punish you.

Because if you only focus on building only dofollow links, it doesn’t look natural which might get you penalized by Google.

Nofollow Links Help In Building More Links

Nofollow links bring traffic, right!

It also helps in keeping a healthy backlink profile which is good from Google’s point of view.

Do you know that nofollow links can bring more links for you without any work?

Let me tell you how:

Someone added your post on his blog as a reference for their readers to read more about the topic. Readers will come to your post and read the post.

There are high chances that they will link you too in their post if they found your post useful for that particular topic.

The same happened with Brian Dien, founder of Backlinko.

He wrote a guest post on Noah Kagan’s blog. Noah nofollows all the outbound links from his blog…

So, Brian got a nofollow backlink back to his website which sent HUGE referral traffic to his site.

But the MAGIC is…

Lots of people who read Brian’s post by the link added on Noah’s blog ended up with linking back to him with dofollow links.

So, this is the POWER of nofollow backlinks…

These reasons are enough to tell you the importance of nofollow backlinks and the main benefits is, They keep you away from Google penalties.

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Difference Between Nofollow and Noindex

Noindex is also another commonly heard word in SEO. But if you are thinking the both, nofollow and noindex are same then you are WRONG here.

Noindex is an HTML tag that tells Google and other search engines not to add this page in their INDEX. So, Google bots will not crawl the page where you added Noindex tag.

On the other hand, Nofollow stops Google and other search engines to follow the link. It doesn’t pass link juice, search engines totally ignore nofollow links.

Noindex should be used for the pages like a Contact page and other pages that you don’t want Google to index.

On the other side, affiliate links in your blog should be nofollow.

Both are completely different things, so don’t get confused.

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How To Add Nofollow Links?

Adding Nofollow links are petty easy with WordPress. You don’t need even need to play with HTML.

WordPress allows its users to add nofollow tag to external links via WordPress editor.

In Gutenberg editor, select the text you want to add external link in and click on Add Link option or use Ctrl+K.

Enter the URL in the box where you want to point your link to… and click on the Down icon then click on Nofollow.

This is the default option by WordPress Gutenberg editor that you can use to add Nofollow links.

If you are not using WordPress then the simplest method is to add rel=”nofollow” tag in HTML Link.

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FAQ About Dofollow And Nofollow Links

You might have some questions in your mind, I have tried answer all of them in this FAQ section.

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Conclusion

You should consider building both dofollow links and nofollow links for your blog to maintain a natural backlink profile.

I know nofollow links not helpful in ranking but it will help you to generate more links as I mentioned above.

And having a nofollow link from a high authority website is good than having thousands of dofollow links from fewer authority websites.

I did a mistake, I bought a Fiverr gig which was offering 5k backlinks for only 5$. This was the biggest mistake I made in my initial days.

The guy created 9k backlinks, 4k as a BONUS! 🙂

Most of the links he created for me were dofollow and all were from spammy low-quality websites. Dofollow helps in ranking and it also hurt your ranking and SEO of your website, the same happened with me.

But now I overcame from this situation by using the Google disavow tool.

So what we learn is A Nofollow link from high authority website > Dofollow links from low-quality websites.

I hope you found this post useful if you did then must share it with others… AND share thoughts about Dofollow and Dofollow links in the comments section below.