You can increase your reach using do follow and no follow links on your web content, which are also vital to your search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine ranking.
In this post, you’ll learn more about do follow and no follow links and how you can use them to improve your web metrics, such as more traffic and sales.
What is a do-follow backlink?
In 2005, Google introduced the term “do follow the link,” which aims to reduce spam indexing and improve the results of search engines. As implied by the SEO term, a do follow backlink passes the so-called link juice or authority from the referring site to the linked website.
These links and corresponding anchor texts are crawled by search engines, like Google, directly influencing your backlink profile. They send a signal to different search engines regarding what the linked website is all about.
Here are the important things you need to know about do follow links:
- By default, all website links are do follow links. So, it means that you have to modify them to become no follow links. You can do it manually or set it automatically by changing your website setting.
- Do follow links help a website achieve a good rank on search engine result pages (SERPs) on Google. The SEO authority is shared by these links, delivering link juice or authority to your website, which improves your site rank.
- Do follow links directly impact the search ranking algorithm on Google.
Advantages of do-follow links
- Attract more website visitors
- Get more comments on your blog post or web contents
- Make your blog post or website popular
- Enhances the content rank for multiple keywords
- Increases your web page preview
- Improves your blog authority in the eyes of search engines
- Positive impact on the search ranking algorithm of Google
- Encourages others to link your web page or blog with theirs to get backlinks
- Builds a good brand professional relationship
- Boosts website activity for more commentators
Disadvantages of using do-follow links
- Using do follow links on your website increases your chances of dealing with spam comments. It means that you might end up wasting your time moderating every comment.
- Also, there’s a likelihood that you lose your link juice or authority and your page rank because of linking to other sites or blogs, affecting your search engine ranking.
What is a nofollow backlink?
As opposite to do follow backlinks, no follow backlinks don’t pass the authority or link juice from one website to another. It means that crawlers won’t follow these backlinks and search engines don’t transfer the anchor text or authority across no follow links.
The right balance of using do follow and no follow links would help you empower your outreach strategy to attain your SMART goals for your website and business.
Here are the benefits of building no follow links:
- Help Search Engines Understand Your Website: No follow links still pass information to search engines about your site even if they don’t crawl it, which lies in the anchor text of the link. This gives your website a small boost in subject authority.
For instance, advertisement links are usually no follow. However, their existence allows Google to treat your backlinks as natural, giving you all the credit you deserve and building trust between your website and Google.
- Build Awareness: One way to reach more consumers is to build no follow links because they act as a connection between consumers and the products and services. No follow links can also boost traffic, back statements up with solid social proof, and help you provide additional details about your product or service.
- Invaluable in Local SEO: Unlinked brand mentions or “implied” links are useful for your brand because it optimizes your website for local search. The search intent of users is more clearly defined with no follow links as compared to regular search.
NAP citations, consisting of your business’ name, physical address, and business phone number, can help boost your local SEO, most especially if there’s a no follow link attached to them.
How to check dofollow & nofollow links?
So, how do you know if a backlink is a no follow or do follow backlink? There are different ways to do it, such as checking the using browser SEO extensions, HTML code, and using backlink analysis tools.
- SEO Extensions: Browser extensions (tools embedded into your browser) can help detect do follow or no follow backlinks. These tools allow you to see both the outbound links of the linked website and the referring website.
- HTML Code: Check the referring website’s HTML code. A
rel="nofollow"tag would mean a do follow backlink. - Backlink Analysis Tools: If you’re analyzing your competitor’s or your own link profile, a backlink analysis tool is very useful. Also, it’s a helpful tool to use if you don’t know what the anchor texts, placements, or backlinks the website has.
Which backlinks should I use?
The type of backlinks you have highly depends on your previous and existing link building campaign. You can earn high-quality backlinks from authoritative websites and obtain higher referral traffic.
Seek do follow backlinks if you want to earn high-quality backlinks from high-DA (domain authority) websites. If you’re into email outreach or strengthening your link building techniques, do follow links should be sought.
However, if you’re planning to get higher referral traffic, no follow backlinks shouldn’t bother you at all.
Ok, so… now what?
Striking a perfect balance between do follow and no follow links would bring your website promising benefits, such as increasing your traffic, page rank, or reach and sales. Search engines tend to crawl or scan web content with do follow links, impacting your SEO and page ranking. It means that do follow backlinks have associated authority value to your SEO.
On the other hand, no follow links are simply present in your website to help increase your traffic without SEO value or impact on your site rank.
When choosing between the do follow and no follow links, it’s important to know your purpose to avoid making your web pages a scam platform for commentators and other websites.