When it comes to links, whether you are linking to another site or your site is being linked to, knowing what type of link you get matters in search engine optimization (SEO). In this article, we will be talking about the difference of dofollow and nofollow links, and why using one over the other is important in Internet marketing.
Let us first understand how the search engine works.
Search engines like Google are always looking for clues about which pages in the Web are the best to feature on their search results pages. One of the factors these search engines consider is the links from other websites and which page they are linking to.
Normal links that point towards a different site are called dofollow links. This type of links passes the link juice to a page and help boost its page rank. The more natural these links appear to be, the higher it is likely to make the page rank up higher in search engines.
What is link juice? It is a digital marketing slang that refers to how powerful a certain link is. This is what many people are after to get a traffic boost to their website.
Think of it this way. Website A, an authority site, links to Website B (your website). Google knows that Website A provides reliable information and would therefore consider the pages they link to as reliable as well. This means, Website A has passed some of its link juice to your website.
A nofollow link on the other hand points to another site, but does not pass the link juice it has, as it carries the nofollow attribute in the html coding of the page where it appears. This is where people get confused. We tend to click a nofollow link and still get sent to another website. However, in the eyes of search engines, nofollow links simply points to other sites but do not transfer any link juice at all.
We can say that Website A links to your website using a nofollow link. Google knows that Website A has linked to your site but this does not help increase your page rank.
The tag “nofollow” was introduced to help reduce the likelihood of spamming in a page. Before people knew about nofollow links, they could easily go overboard and start getting links by any means necessary. Some website owners would pay people to mass link to other sites – usually abusing the comments in a page to help increase their own search engine page rank.
When search engine caught on to this tactic, they introduced the nofollow tag to prevent this activity and provide a level playing field for all websites. Most websites today automatically use nofollow links to reduce people from spamming, but there are still some people who try.
Search engines today also penalize websites that use too many dofollow links that appear spammy. Your goal here is to have organic links (or at least organic-looking links) to show that you are not manipulating your rank.
Knowing which type of links to use can be tricky. A majority of websites will try to incorporate dofollow links as this is the only way for other sites to link back to you. Make sure that your dofollow links are relevant as adding dofollow links carelessly could look spammy to search engines.
For anything that is not relevant, but you want to include links for your readers to see additional sources, using a nofollow links would be best. Other links such as affiliate links, advertising links and sponsored links should be nofollow.
You also need to be careful when mentioning your competitors on your blog or website. Be careful not to use a dofollow link so that you do not pass any of your link juice to them. Search engines experts working at Comperio Ltd companies or anywhere else understand how no-follow and do-follow links should be used.
In summary, you can use dofollow links when you want to link to relevant contents, contents that your readers or customers will find useful and internal links. As for nofollow links, you need to use these when linking to affiliate links, comments, sponsored links, irrelevant content and footer links.
To help you get more dofollow links to your website, always produce good quality and informative content. You can also guest blog to other relevant websites and link out to others who are willing to link back to you.