Understand SEO Basics: DoFollow & Nofollow Link

Some of the common words that are key in search engine optimization are doindex, noindex, dofollow, nofollow, meta robots, etc. In the book of SEO for lead generation, all these terms are of equal importance. In this post, my focus is on Nofollow and Dofollow. I will be explaining what they are so that those who are not clear about what both mean can have an idea and also especially for those who are new to SEO.

Do You Know?

An HTML attribute value that is used to initiate the search engine bots to not let hyperlink influence target ranking of the link in the search engine’s index is called “Nofollow”. Nofollow is intended to reduce the efficacy of some types of search engine spam so as to enhance the quality of search engine results and averting spamdexing to occur in the first place. This concept has been introduced in the year 2005 by Matt Cutts and Jason Shellen.

What is the difference between Nofollow and Dofollow?

A Nofollow link does not permit search engine bots to follow the link. Thus, when an owner of a website is linking back to you with nofollow attributes, it does not document on link juice. These links can only be followed by humans and practicing this attribute to links where you do not want pass link-juice is a good option. However, some time ago Google stated that they don’t use nofollow link attributes, even though the weightage of these links are less.

Example of Nofollow Link:

<a href=”http://www.google.com/” rel=”nofollow”>Google</a>

Dofollow links permit all search engines to reach the website by giving link juice and backlink. Also, search engines and humans, both will be able to follow you if a webmaster is linking back to you. In order to give someone a dofollow love, the best way to go about it is by permitting keyword in the anchor text, which means that when you link to any website or page; in the anchor text use the targeted keyword.

Example of Dofollow Link:

<a href=”http://www.google.com/”>Google</a>

Note: There is nothing you need to do in order to make a link do-follow because all the hyperlinks are by default dofollow.

Important Notice:

Lately, the nofollow link will be counted as an outgoing link in regards to distribution- of page rank from your page, by Google. However, it then again depends on the placement of the nofollow link. For example, if placed at the bottom, will have the least impact.

No-Follow Types

⦁ Robots Meta Tag: <meta name=”robots” content=”nofollow” />

This tag tells crawlers / bots / spiders to not follow links on the full page.

⦁ Link Attribute: <a href=”http://www.google.com” rel=”nofollow”>

This link communicates to search engines to not count links in terms of ranking pages.

Quick Tip: Make an attempt to keep noindex attribute for a page such as contact and keep nofollow attribute on your blog posts for links that are affiliated.

If you have any other queries and /or concerns regarding the basics of “Nofollow” and “Dofollow”, kindly let me know.