Search Engine Optimization involves some common terms that are very important, such as bots, crawling, Nofollow backlinks, and Dofollow backlinks. Each of these terms has its own importance in SEO.
In this post, we will learn about Nofollow and Dofollow backlinks. This post will be especially helpful for newbies who are new to SEO and still don’t understand Nofollow and Dofollow backlinks.
Before talking about Nofollow and Dofollow backlinks, I want to explain a small concept.
Suppose you are a blogger who has just created a blog. How will Google or Bing know that your blog exists? You need to submit your blog’s sitemap to Google. Once you submit the sitemap, Google bots will crawl your blog, scan the data, and index your site so that readers can find you on search engines.
It depends on you which pages you want to index in search engines and which you don’t. This can be controlled using index and noindex.
What are Nofollow and Dofollow backlinks
Link Juice: When you hyperlink any article or page on a website, Google bots follow the link and pass link juice, which helps improve the article’s ranking and domain authority.
Nofollow Links simply do not allow search engine bots to follow the link. Only humans can follow the link.
Example of Nofollow Link:
<a href="https://vipovi.com/word-counter/" rel="nofollow">Word Counter Tool</a>Dofollow Links allow Google and other search engines to follow the link, giving you link juice and a backlink. If a webmaster links back to you via this link, both search engines and humans can follow it.
When linking to a website or page, use the targeted keyword as anchor text.
Example of Dofollow Link:
<a href="https://vipovi.com/word-counter">Word Counter Tool</a>By default, all hyperlinks are Dofollow. You only need to add rel="nofollow" to make a link Nofollow.
Key Differences
| Feature | Dofollow Backlink | Nofollow Backlink |
|---|---|---|
| Passes SEO authority | Yes | No |
| Default link type | Yes | No (needs rel=”nofollow”) |
| Effect on ranking | Improves ranking | Minimal or indirect impact |
| Use case | Natural editorial links | Paid links, comments, forums |
When to Use Nofollow and Dofollow backlinks
Dofollow
- Linking to a high quality website
- Referencing someone’s original work
Nofollow
- Low quality sites like casino, gambling, or adult sites
- Unrelated content (e.g., linking a cooking site from a technology blog)
- Affiliate links
- Comment sections, because these often have spam
- Any other link you don’t want to pass link juice to
How to Check if is Nofollow or Dofollow backlinks
Right-click the link in your browser and choose Inspect Element.
A window will open showing the HTML code. You can see if the link is Dofollow or Nofollow.
Important Note: Recently, Google stated that Nofollow links are still counted as outgoing links in terms of PageRank distribution, depending on where the link is placed. Placing Nofollow links at the bottom of the page has the least impact, while placing them at the top has a slightly different effect.
Types of Nofollow
- Robots Meta Tag:
<meta name="robots" content="nofollow">This tells bots/spiders not to follow the links on the entire page.
- Link Attribute:
<a href="http://www.google.com" rel="nofollow">This tells search engines not to count the link for ranking purposes.
That’s all for today. Nofollow and Dofollow links are an important factor in SEO rankings. If you found this post helpful, please share it. Connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and don’t forget to subscribe.
