If you’re new to SEO, you probably wonder what all the fuss is about do-follow and nofollow links. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of it.
Linking is an important part of SEO whether you are linking to another website or your own website is being linked to.
How a website treats links is very important because it can determine how the search engines will treat those links. I am specifically talking about the relationship between do-follow and nofollow links.
It has become more difficult to create and carry out a successful link-building strategy than it was in the past. Many marketers find link building to be the most difficult part of SEO.
If you can find the right balance of follow and nofollow links, you will be successful in making money online.
The article will be discussing the difference between nofollow and do-follow links.
How Dofollow and Nofollow Links Impact Links
Before we start, we need to, first of all, understand the true value of backlinks on the web:
The True Value of a Backlink
To truly understand what is happening with follow vs. no follow backlinks, we need to provide a small background of how most links work in the kingdom of SEO.
When a web page receives an inbound link from another web page, the page gets a little boost in its search engine optimization.
Think of each link as a vote of trust, and the more links you have, the more points you get. In other words, more points = more wins.
Search engines keep track of how many inbound links a web page has, and from which websites. Google determines that if many people are linking to a certain page, it must be excellent.
This means that if there is more than one page about the same topic, the page that is most relevant to the user’s search should be given preference in the search results. We will be able to deliver the best results to our users with this.
Google uses a metric called “PageRank” to determine how many points links get. many SEO people say that “link juice” moves from one website to another through hyperlinks
The more respected the website, the greater the increase in ranking the linked-to site gets. = For example, getting a link from a high authority website like the BBC or New York Times is extremely valuable.
Therefore, link building is undeniably a powerful strategy to boost your SEO, and according to Moz, “99.2% of all the top 50 results in the SERPs have at least one backlink pointing to their site.”Ideally, you want to profit from SEO and your link-building efforts. Link popularity is one of the most important factors in determining a website’s ranking in search engine results pages.
What are Dofollow Links?
Dofollow links are links that search engines can follow to get to a linked website. This means that the destination site gets a boost in authority due to the link from the source site.
The better the quality of the links to your site, the more likely it is that search engines will trust you and see your site as an authoritative one.
Links are Dofollow by default, so they don’t need additional HTML attributes in order to make them follow. Besides the benefits of improving your website’s SEO, including Do follow links also lets you pass on authority to the sites you link to.
If you include Dofollow links in the comment section of a website or forum, you may attract spammers who are trying to improve the visibility of their own websites.
HTML Tag for Dofollow Link
When you create a backlink within your website, whether it’s in a comment, on your sidebar, or within your article content, a normal link will be coded similarly to this:
The “BloggersPassion” here is a follow link!
What are Nofollow Links?
Both follow and nofollow links appear the same to the average web user. This code tells search engines not to follow the link. Nofollow links contain an attribute that tells search engines not to follow the link. This informs search engine bots not to follow the link.
It looks like this: rel=“nofollow.”
In simple terms, no follow links contain a rel=”nofollow” HTML tag. The nofollow tag signifies to search engines that they should not take notice of the link. Nofollow links don’t help with search engine rankings because they don’t pass link juice.
This means that these links will not improve the search engine ranking of the destination URL as Google does not transfer PageRank between them.
HTML Tag for Creating a Nofollow Link
Nofollow links are those that don’t pass link equity to the linked page. For example, if you have a nofollow link to www.example.com on your site, it wouldn’t help www.example.com’s SEO.
Essentially, if a link is tagged as NoFollow, here’s what it looks like:
The “BloggersPassion” text here is a nofollowed link.
From looking at the HTML code, it is clear that the only difference is the addition of the rel=”nofollow” tag.
You can also prevent all links on a page from being followed by adding a “robots Meta tag” with the value “nofollow” in the header. The nofollow tag is used often because it allows the user to choose which links on the web page are nofollow and which are dofollow.
Not sure why this is necessary? Let’s look at a quick history lesson.
History of Rel=” Nofollow”
The nofollow link was created to prevent Google bots from following specific links.
The tag was introduced by Google in 2005 to stop comment spam. Below is a clear statement from Google on that:
” If you have a blog, you probably get a lot of comments from people trying to promote their own websites. This is called comment spam and it’s something we’re trying to stop with a new tag. Links that have the attribute (rel=”nofollow”) will no longer be given credit when determining search results. This is not a vote against the site where the comment was posted, simply a way to ensure that spammers gain nothing from abusing public areas such as blog comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists.
After that, search engines like Bing and Yahoo committed to using the nofollow tag as well.
WordPress and other CMS platforms automatically add the nofollow tag to comment links. In other words, even if you didn’t know about nofollow links, the positive side is that the people leaving spammy comments on your website aren’t getting any benefits from them in terms of SEO.
Google Says Will Treat Nofollow as a Hint
This is Google’s official announcement of the change in nofollow links:
This has now changed. All the links are treated as nofollowed links,” Google now treats all links with the nofollow tag as nofollowed links, regardless of whether they were previously counted as signals in the search algorithm. This has now changed.
The attributes of a link, such as sponsored, UGC, and nofollow, are all treated as suggestions about whether or not to include that link in a search.
This sentence is saying that they will use the hints as a way to better understand how to use links within their systems.
What’s In it For Publishers?
There is no obvious advantage for publishers to introduce these new nofollow attributes. There are many reasons not to add the new link attributes.
Forensic SEO Audit consultant, Alan Bleiweiss tweeted:
“There’s ZERO incentive to adopt the new nofollow changes. If it has a direct, significant impact on rankings, sure. Forced change. Except Google claims is not going to.
The cost of changing all CMS systems and training teams to fit this new system is more than the motive for doing it in the first place.
Google Treating the Nofollow Attribute as a Hint Gives Zero Benefit to Publishers
Alan raises three important points:
- No incentive for publishers to use the new link attributes
- No benefit to publishers in the form of a ranking boost
- The cost of implementing change outweighs any perceived benefit (which at this point is zero)
Digital Marketing Community Still Absorbing Changes
Mark Traphagen, VP of Content Strategy for AimClear commented on how the search marketing community is trying to understand the changes:
There is some confusion among SEOs about what needs to be done regarding the changes Google has made to how it uses the “nofollow” link attribute.
Nofollow Hint Change May Help Sites Get Link Equity they Deserve
An interesting viewpoint was brought up by link-building expert Julie Joyce, the founder of Link Fish Media.
Did you know that websites automatically place nofollow links on all links? Some say that it isn’t fair that these links should be counted because they believe that it creates an unfair situation. This change from Google means that websites have a better chance of getting the credit and ranking improvement that they deserve.
Google Responds to Criticism
In response to a question about whether Google would be forcing website owners to use the new nofollow link attributes, Danny Sullivan from Google’s SearchLiaison said that Google will not be forcing anyone to use the new attributes and that website owners can continue to use the old nofollow link attributes if they choose.
” The two new attributes are options that people can choose to use if they want more specific information. It’s a choice and we don’t need to put ‘teeth’ into a choice. Use them. Don’t. It’s a choice.”
What’s in it for Google?
Google introduced two new nofollow link attributes. A “nofollow” link is a link that does not pass credit to the linked-to website. User-generated content (UGC) is content that is created by users, rather than by professional journalists or website owners. This is to let Google know that the link is on sponsored content so that it won’t be given as much weight.
Both of those attributes being present can help Google with link calculations.
The sponsored link nofollow attribute tells Google not to give any PageRank credit to the linked site. Google uses the presence of sponsored links on a page to help it understand what that page is about.
Mark Traphagen shared how the sponsored link nofollow attribute might benefit Google:
I guess that a “sponsor” link more clearly explains why the link might not be trusted than “nofollow.” It seems clear that “nofollow” was being used for too many different purposes.
Why Would Google Trust Nofollow UGC Links?
Google has announced that from today (10 September 2019), user-generated content (UGC) links that include the ‘nofollow’ tag will be treated as ‘hints’.
The three link attributes – sponsored, ugc, and nofollow – now work as hints for us to use when determining rankings.
The UGC nofollow attribute suggests to Google that these links could be relevant for ranking purposes. This means that Google may choose to give ranking signals to forum links that have the nofollow attribute.
Forums are useful for getting information because people share their personal experiences with products, services, and advice in the form of answers.
The UGC nofollow attribute can provide a strong indication that a link posted in a forum is likely to be useful for ranking purposes because it’s an honest and expert endorsement.
A link that comes from a forum can be thought of as being trustworthy.
Why Would Google Change Nofollow to a Hint?
People have said that there are fewer opportunities for links because fewer people are creating links.
1. Forum traffic is down. There are fewer people on forums creating links.
2. Blogging is down. There are fewer bloggers publishing and creating links.
3. Video and Audio content does not generate links.
The link signal might be getting weaker over time. Google has confirmed that the recent change to the “nofollow” link tag was made to strengthen the link signal for search ranking purposes.
How Will Google Use Wikipedia Nofollow Links?
However, many Wikipedia articles are nofollow links. While Wikipedia links are generally considered to be high-value, many of the articles on the site are nofollow links. Links from these sites are seen as high quality because of the tight editorial standards.
Wikipedia is considering adding Google’s ranking calculations to its own, which could improve the link signal and make the link calculations stronger overall.
Andrea Volpini, of AI-Powered SEO for WordPress company WordLift, said this about Wikipedia links :
” NLP/NLU today is largely based on models that have been trained using Wikipedia, which includes links.
We use NLP which is based on links from Wikipedia articles. The value of these links is strategic.
An example of how Wikipedia links can be used to extract knowledge patterns is provided in the article “Encyclopedic Knowledge Patterns from Wikipedia Links”.
Nofollow Hints Takeaway: SEO Will Be Impacted
Google has announced that it will be changing how links are calculated for ranking purposes. This change will affect how websites are ranked in search results. This change is fairer because it means that links that were previously arbitrarily nofollowed may now be counted. The change might also result in an increase in link spam. Some people will see this as an opportunity to start selling links that have no following.
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