Description: What is Dofollow or Nofollow Links? What is the Difference Between Dofollow and Nofollow Links? How to Create it? A Simple Guide!
Dofollow and Nofollow links impact search engine ranking position(s) for your websites or blogs. Dofollow links are beneficial to good health of SEO. If your blog has a dofollow backlink from a site that means it will count as a vote by the webmaster to your blog. The higher votes your blog gets, the higher ranking(s) your blog achieve in search engines. If your blog has a nofollow backlink that means you will not get a vote by the webmaster, in this case, no effects in your ranking(s).
Many users don't have proper knowledge about dofollow and nofollow links and they get involved in link exchange in such a way that is against to the terms of Google webmaster guidelines. In returns, they get banned. We will discuss more about it in the following post.
Let you are going to add an external link into your blog post, deeply examine the external link that the link has no Google penalty or bad reputation, if it has any types of penalty, then you will be responsible for any damage towards you website or blog. If you've any doubt about the link that you are going to link from your blog, simply make it nofollow.
Few bloggers recommend making your own pages nofollow like Terms and Condition, Privacy Policy, Copyright Policy or About Us page. The reason behind is that these pages are mostly placed on the header or footer sections and these are not valuable for search engines. If you are doing the same that means you don't trust to your own page which is not a correct way. I recommend you to keep remains these pages as dofollow but make them noindex to search engines.
If you have paid links into your blog then it is better to use nofollow attribute in those links which is also recommended by Google. The reason is behind that nofollow links don't impact on search engine ranking position(s). If you have labeled your paid links as dofollow, you're giving a vote to your advertiser that may improve their SEO which is not the correct way to improve ranking position(s). If you caught in these activities, you will be banned. You can read about link scheme in Google webmaster guidelines.
Now, let's move to the comment section of your blog where a commenter can be a part of conversation with you or other commenters. Your commenters can link their blog over their name along with their comments. Should you make these links dofollow or nofollow?
If your comment section has dofollow link, then it is obvious you would get some additional traffic to your blog because people are more interested to get dofollow backlinks. Read more about how they detect that the comment section is dofollow or nofollow. Having so many dofollow links in a limited content page can impact your blog SEO. If your comment section is dofollow then you are responsible for each outbound link. You may regularly check any harmful outbound link, if any, removed them.
If you can manage your time on daily basis for your commenters, you can make your comment section dofollow to get additional traffic, otherwise you can make it nofollow.
The source of this table is from Nofollow Wiki.
Many users don't have proper knowledge about dofollow and nofollow links and they get involved in link exchange in such a way that is against to the terms of Google webmaster guidelines. In returns, they get banned. We will discuss more about it in the following post.
What are Dofollow Links | How to Add Dofollow Links in HTML
Dofollow is a value of an attribute rel in the HTML document which instruct to the search engines that the targeted link should influence in the search ranking, For Example the hyperlink Blogger & SEO Technology is a dofollow link. Here is the HTML code of this link,
<a href="http://www.bloggertipsseotricks.com/" rel="dofollow">Blogger & SEO Technology</a>
The default value of rel attribute is always 'dofollow', therefore, making a link dofollow you don't need to add (rel=dofollow). Therefore, the following code is same as the above one.
<a href="http://www.bloggertipsseotricks.com/" >Blogger & SEO Technology</a>
What are Nofollow Links | How To Add Nofollow Links in HTML
Nofollow is a value of an attribute rel in the HTML document which instruct to the search engines that the targeted link should not be influence in the search ranking, For Example the hyperlink Google Search Engine is a nofollow link. Here is the HTML code of this link.
<a href="http://www.google.com/" rel="nofollow">Google Search Engine</a>
Where To Use Nofollow & Dofollow Links
Dofollow links are votes by the webmasters toward your blog that means the webmaster trust to your blog. Therefore, you should trust your own blog, whenever you create internal links inside your blog make it dofollow.Let you are going to add an external link into your blog post, deeply examine the external link that the link has no Google penalty or bad reputation, if it has any types of penalty, then you will be responsible for any damage towards you website or blog. If you've any doubt about the link that you are going to link from your blog, simply make it nofollow.
Few bloggers recommend making your own pages nofollow like Terms and Condition, Privacy Policy, Copyright Policy or About Us page. The reason behind is that these pages are mostly placed on the header or footer sections and these are not valuable for search engines. If you are doing the same that means you don't trust to your own page which is not a correct way. I recommend you to keep remains these pages as dofollow but make them noindex to search engines.
If you have paid links into your blog then it is better to use nofollow attribute in those links which is also recommended by Google. The reason is behind that nofollow links don't impact on search engine ranking position(s). If you have labeled your paid links as dofollow, you're giving a vote to your advertiser that may improve their SEO which is not the correct way to improve ranking position(s). If you caught in these activities, you will be banned. You can read about link scheme in Google webmaster guidelines.
Now, let's move to the comment section of your blog where a commenter can be a part of conversation with you or other commenters. Your commenters can link their blog over their name along with their comments. Should you make these links dofollow or nofollow?
If your comment section has dofollow link, then it is obvious you would get some additional traffic to your blog because people are more interested to get dofollow backlinks. Read more about how they detect that the comment section is dofollow or nofollow. Having so many dofollow links in a limited content page can impact your blog SEO. If your comment section is dofollow then you are responsible for each outbound link. You may regularly check any harmful outbound link, if any, removed them.
If you can manage your time on daily basis for your commenters, you can make your comment section dofollow to get additional traffic, otherwise you can make it nofollow.
Effects of Nofollow Links in Major Search Engines
Various search engines treat nofollow links differently, few of them follow the nofollow links and few of them are not follow the nofollow links for ranking algorithm. Here is how the search engines treat with nofollow links.The source of this table is from Nofollow Wiki.
| rel="nofollow" action | Yahoo! | Bing | Ask.com | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Uses the link for ranking | No | No | No | ? |
| Follows the link | No | Yes | ? | No |
| Indexes the "linked to" page | No | Yes | No | No |
| Shows the existence of the link | Only for a previously indexed page | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| In results pages for anchor text | Only for a previously indexed page | Yes | Only for a previously indexed page | Yes |
