Understanding SEO can be difficult at the best of times. However, it can be essential to use these critical tools to help channel traffic to whatever website you build to create a better internet presence. This post aims to answer why it is worth your time learning about Dofollow and Nofollow links and shows you how to use them to help build your website up effectively.
Firstly, a bit of background on SEO. SEO stands for search engine optimization and helps individuals find your website easily from search engines like google and bing.
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What is a Dofollow link?
A dofollow link is the default setting for any links you have on your website. This means it’s a link a reader can click on that will take you to another page or website by clicking on the link itself. By adding a dofollow link, let’s say by connecting your website and another website, you can directly affect your website’s rankings on a search engine. This means your website will show higher in any search engine results.
What is a NoFollow Link?
A nofollow link is slightly more complicated, as although they look exactly the same to a reader or website audience, the link contains what is called an “attribute” in the code that informs a search engine bot not to follow the link, therefore not connecting the two sites or pages. This means your website’s ranking on the search engine will not be affected by using the link. Google first introduced this to tackle spam in comments and has become an effective tool to stop SEO spammers from adding links into comment sections to profit the connection.
How do I see if a link is dofollow or nofollow?
The answer to this one is easy. As mentioned before, a dofollow link and a nofollow link look exactly the same to someone stumbling across a website. However, they look slightly different in the coding of a website. The attribute added to the code will be rel=” nofollow”. However, if you had to guess what links would be nofollow links, they usually are blog comments, social media, forums, sponsored content, and press releases. Users can simply see the nofollow links via the source code and even use an extension in a web browser to check. For example, in google chrome, go to the menu button and click on the developer tab, then view source. A window should pop up giving you the website’s code, and after that, all you have to do is scan the page for the nofollow attribute of rel=nofollow, appearing after a link. This is useful for checking out the best ratio of each link type for your website, discussed later in this post.
What are the benefits of nofollow links?
There are many benefits to nofollow links, the first being that the link profile looks completely natural. This stops the website from looking suspicious and therefore decreases its ranking on search engines. To add to this, nofollow links can also increase website traffic as your website is mentioned, even though the link doesn’t directly increase your website’s search engine ranking. Not to mention that as you gain exposure, the amount of dofollow links you receive will directly increase your website’s ranking.
How do I make outbound links nofollow?
The easiest way to make an outbound link nofollow is to follow these simple steps. First things first switch to your website’s HTML editor. This allows you to see the coding behind the website in order to directly edit the code itself. Next, scroll down to the link you would like to make nofollow. After this, add the nofollow attribute discussed earlier in this text to look something along the lines of “<a href=” http://www.example.com/” rel=” nofollow”>Example anchor text</a>”. As you can see, the attribute added there is rel=” nofollow”. It is vital to have a good ratio of nofollow links and dofollow links, usually with slightly more dofollow links than nofollow. However, if you would like to get the perfect ratio, it could be worth examining competitors’ websites and seeing their ratio.
It is worth investing in SEO research and becoming fluent with Dofollow and Nofollow links. This is because increasing site traffic will help to grow your business through increased brand awareness and sales. So don’t hesitate to scour through your website and identify places where SEO training can help the website’s search engine rankings, and consequently, your business’s growth.
