One of the essential processes of website positioning is building its link profile. This task involves acquiring new links that direct to the promoted website. If we want to do this in accordance with Google's guidelines, some types of links should have the rel=”nofollow” attribute, which informs search engine robots not to follow the indicated address. All links that do not have this parameter are treated as transferring the so-called link juice, i.e. PageRank passed by the linking page.
Promoting a website to the top positions in search results requires not only optimizing the site's code and its content. One of the factors taken into account by Google when evaluating a page is also the number and quality of links leading to it. To eliminate from search results pages that acquire links in an unnatural way, Google constantly improves its algorithms (Penguin updates) so that they can efficiently recognize links that are not in line with Google's guidelines for Webmasters and penalize websites that use such methods. So, what is the difference between these two types of links, what do they look like in the code, and when to use nofollow links and when dofollow?
All links that do not have the rel = "nofollow" attribute are treated as dofollow by default. This is the basic form of links that pass SEO power to the linked address. The purpose of this type of link is to direct the user to another subpage or domain, which the owner considers valuable. Google assumes that no website owner would want to direct their users to low-value sites, so algorithms recognize this type of link as information that the indicated site is valuable.
Dofollow links have the form consistent with the following source code template:
<a href="/url-address">Anchor text</a>
Examples:
The anchor of the link is the anchored text, i.e. the expression that the user clicks to go to the target address of the link.
The more links of this type from trusted sources a site collects, the greater the chance it has of achieving high positions in search results. Thanks to this type of link, power is transferred from the linking page to the target address. This applies to both links directing to other domains and links leading to other subpages of the same domain. Therefore, when building a link profile to promote a subpage of a category, we cannot focus solely on links from other domains, but we must include the positioned category in the site navigation, e.g. by placing a link to the subpage in the top menu on the entire site.
The nofollow parameter is intended to inform Google robots not to follow the indicated address and not to transfer link juice to it. Such a link should not be taken into account when evaluating the indicated page.
Before webmasters and SEO specialists started using it for individual links, it was implemented in the head section as a robots meta tag with the following content:
It prohibited search engine robots from following any outgoing links on a given page. This solution was not optimal because we do not always want to block all outgoing links. For this reason, the nofollow parameter is currently assigned to specific links.
For the user, nofollow links are no different from dofollow links. Without insight into the source code of the page, the user is not able to distinguish between these two types of links because they look identical. The difference is visible in their notation in the source code of the page. Nofollow links have the following form:
<a href="http://domain.com/" rel="nofollow">Text Anchor</a>
The rel=”nofollow” attribute can often be found in sponsored article links, as well as in links to partner sites and advertisements. A popular practice is to add this parameter also in links from comments on blogs and those posted on internet forums. This is to prevent violations of Google guidelines, which arise in user-generated content, and to block the transfer of PageRank to all pages linked by them.
It might seem that since nofollow links do not pass SEO power to the indicated pages, they have no value. However, it is not that simple.
A link profile consisting of a very large number of links of the dofollow type only may be considered by Google algorithms as unnatural. After all, if we come across an interesting page, we share its address on internet forums, recommend it on thematic blogs or publish it on social media. At least some of such natural links automatically receive the rel = ”nofollow” parameter. A website acquiring links in accordance with Google’s guidelines should therefore have a certain percentage of nofollow links, which are part of a natural link profile. Diversification of links into dofollow and nofollow reduces the likelihood that Google will consider the links pointing to our domain as artificial and take action for violating the guidelines for webmasters.
The nofollow parameter should be used not only in outgoing links to other domains, but also in links to low-value, for search engine robots, subpages in our domain. It can be implemented in links directing to such subpages as: Registration, Login, Password reminder, Cookies policy, Regulations (especially when the page with the cookies policy or regulations has a description from a publicly available template) or pages without any content.
Nofollow links are considered by some people from the SEO industry as completely worthless and not giving anything to the positioned website. However, tests conducted by the SEO community have shown that this is not entirely true, because even websites promoted exclusively with this type of links were also able to achieve high positions. It can therefore be assumed that for search engines, nofollow links are a natural part of the link profile and also affect the ranking in search results. Nofollow links to valuable websites also help in acquiring natural follow links - the address of a helpful or interesting website linked with this type of link can be published by the reader on another website, forum, blog or their website as a dofollow link.
However, in order to conduct an effective SEO campaign, one should not limit oneself exclusively to nofollow links. The link profile should also consist of dofollow links that pass link juice. The power passed by the linking website to individual links is not constant. It depends on the number of links that are on a given subpage. The more links we have, the smaller the link juice each of them will receive (it is divided among all links - internal and external). Theoretically, the SEO power of nofollow links should be equal to zero, but the tests mentioned above show that this may not be entirely true and even nofollow links can transfer some value to the linked address.
As described above, for a user browsing the site, there is no difference between dofollow and nofollow links. They look and work the same, so you can’t tell them apart. To recognize them, you need to look into the site’s code or install one of the many plugins for Firefox or Chrome browsers that will additionally mark nofollow links.
When browsing the source code of the site, we can easily recognize dofollow links because they will have the following form:
<a href="http://domain.com/">Anchor text</a>
Nofollow links, on the other hand, look like this:
<a href="http://domain.com/" rel="nofollow">Anchor text</a>
It should be remembered that the placement of the parameter itself in the link tag does not matter and it can be at the end, in the middle or at the beginning, e.g.:
<a href="http://domain.com/" rel="nofollow" class="link" title="This is the nofollow link">Anchor text</a>
<a rel="nofollow" href="http://domain.com/">Anchor text</a>
<a href="http://domain.com/" class="link" title="This is also the nofollow link" rel="nofollow">Anchor linku</a>
Links that pass SEO power to the indicated address are always the default version of the link, so we do not need to add any additional parameter to it. Nofollow links, on the other hand, must receive the rel = "nofollow" attribute in the link tag. When creating a page in an HTML editor, adding this parameter is very simple. However, if we use a CMS panel that does not allow editing the HTML code, the matter may be more complicated, because not all platforms allow marking a reference as nofollow. In more popular systems, we can add the functionality of marking links as nofollow using additional plugins that we can install, but in these less known CMS, this solution may not be available.
Links with the nofollow parameter, i.e. blocking the transfer of SEO power, should be placed on links to pages that we consider to be of low value. These may be links to subpages of our website that are of low value for search engine robots, such as: Registration, Login, Cart, internal search results, pages of the type Recommend to a friend, Add to watched, etc. In the case where our website allows users to publish their opinions or conduct discussions, it is worth ensuring that the references placed by them have the nofollow parameter. Thanks to this, our website will not be interesting for spammers, and the references placed by users should not harm our website. In addition, according to Google’s recommendations, if we publish sponsored articles with links on our website, we must mark them with the nofollow parameter.
Moreover, we can also insert this parameter on all non-thematic links, such as a link in the footer leading to the website of the company that created our website, etc.
All other links that we place naturally on our website can be of the dofollow type. Examples of such links may include internal navigation on the website, links referring to sources from which materials were taken, links to the manufacturer’s website, an interesting website thematically related to the issue described on a given subpage, etc.
