The Perfect Guide To DoFollow And NoFollow Links In 2023
If you are a seasoned SEO, you already know about the importance of links and how important their role is in having a strong SEO strategy. It also gets difficult for Google search crawlers to find a page if it is without links. Apart from that, links also help Google search crawlers determine whether a page is trustworthy or not.
In this article, we will mainly discuss the major uses of links and building links. Furthermore, you will learn about DoFollow Links and NoFollow Links and the ways to create each of these links. Apart from that, we will also give you information about the scenarios in which you can make use of NoFollow links to help search engines find your website’s content easily. Hence, to get fully informed about DoFollow and NoFollow links, read on through to the end of the article.
Major Uses Of Links In Making An SEO Strategy
Links, in general, help you in getting recognized by search engine crawlers. This, they do, with the help of two major jobs. These are explained briefly below:
1. Links help in optimization results pass on from one page on the search engine to another page. The Google search engine algorithm follows the link, and this helps in crawling, indexing, and ranking those new pages where the link is built. Thus, the ranking and the traffic of the page increase as a result.
2. If a high-authority and credible website links to one of your web pages and redirects its viewers to your website, it acts as a vote of confidence on your site. And it gets easier for Google to recognize that your site is trustworthy and implies value to its target viewers on the internet.
A link from an already credible website on the internet in a similar niche ensures that your page is valuable. Hence, Google prioritizes your page in its search engine results page. This boosts your rankings and enhances the chances of getting more traffic on your website, thereby increasing your website’s credibility.
Difference Between Links
Not every type of link that is connected to your website helps in making your website popular and credible. That is where the difference between DoFollow links and NoFollow links comes to the fore. If you are not fully familiar with DoFollow and NoFollow links, you will get to know them in the upcoming sections.
What Are DoFollow Links?
A DoFollow link looks like – <a href=“abcd.com”>youranchortext</a>
The following are the major jobs that DoFollow links perform if you use them in your link-building strategy:
- These links help the website in passing the link equity. With the help of these links, search engine crawlers find the website and follow the website to make it rank better.
- DoFollow links help in increasing the trustworthiness of the website, as it acts as a vote of confidence from a credible website of the same niche. This means the website wants everyone to know about your page.
If you focus on just creating backlinks from your web pages, to improve the rankings of such pages, you must make use of DoFollow links. If search engine crawlers do not follow a certain backlink to your website, there is basically no need for that link.
How To Create DoFollow Link?
There is no particular way of creating DoFollow links. Every link is, by default, a DoFollow link. All the links that you create to link to another useful site are DoFollow links. These links help a website in passing the link equity and also make search engine crawlers follow them to get access to the content of the website and make it rank better.
Basically, if you create a hyperlink and link it to another credible page of a website or a website itself as a part of your link-building strategy, it is a DoFollow link.
What Is A NoFollow Link? – NoFollow Link Meaning
NoFollow links are just the opposite of DoFollow links, as they ask search engine crawlers not to follow the created links. Furthermore, they also prevent the passing of link equity from page to page. This is what a NoFollow link looks like:
<a href=“https://abcd.com” rel=“nofollow”>youranchortext</a>
Now the question might come to your mind – Why create a NoFollow link if it is of no good to my website? or, Do NoFollow links help SEO?
The answer is – of course, NoFollow links are useful to your website, can create a safety jacket for your website, and saves you from link-building accidents.
How To Create NoFollow Link?
You might ask, “What types of links should be NoFollow?” The answer is that you can turn a DoFollow link into a NoFollow link in two steps:
Step 1: Use https:// before the domain name of the website or webpage.
Step 2: Add rel= “nofollow” after the hyperlink reference to the website page.
Before, your DoFollow link looked like this:
<a href=“abcd.com”>youranchortext</a>
Now, after adding NoFollow features, your link looks like this:
<a href=“https://abcd.com” rel=“nofollow”>youranchortext</a>
Situations When You Must Make Use NoFollow Links
Still wondering about the application of NoFollow links in SEO. The following are the major situations in which you must make use of NoFollow links:
1. If you use monetized/ affiliate/ sponsored links to your webpage, using NoFollow links instead of DoFollow will prevent Google from penalizing your webpage/ website.
2. You might have to link to a website where you are not sure about its trustworthiness. In such cases, you must make NoFollow links.
3. You can stop link equity on your page if you make use of NoFollow features on your links.
Final Thoughts
In this article, you basically came to know about the major difference between DoFollow Links and NoFollow links and the situations when you will need to make use of them as per your SEO strategy. Apart from that, you also learned about how to create DoFollow and NoFollow links by yourself. However, you must be fully careful of when to use each type of these links for better results on your website’s pages. Do you know of other better uses of DoFollow and NoFollow links in SEO? Share your information with us in the comments section below.
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