Nofollow Links

No follow links and their impact on SEO. Learn how to effectively use and manage No follow links to enhance your website's online presence.

Nofollow is an SEO (Search Engine Optimization), term that describes a link attribute which tells the search engines to not follow or pass on any link equity to a destination page. A website linking to another website is like a vote for that website’s content, which indicates that it’s relevant, useful, and informative. Search engines use this link vote to determine a website’s authority and relevance.

Not all links are equal. Some links can have a negative effect on the SEO performance of a website. Search engines may penalize a website if it receives many low-quality links or spammy links. Webmasters can prevent this by using the nofollow attribute. This marks certain links as not trustworthy or not recommended.

Nofollow links are marked to indicate that the crawler of the search engine should not follow them and pass no link equity. The link is merely a citation to the website source, and does not imply any endorsement.

If a blogger includes a paid link in a sponsored blog post, then they can use the nofollow attribute so that Google won’t penalise them. If a website that allows users to leave links in comments is also using the nofollow attribute, it can prevent spammy links polluting its link profile.

Nofollow is an easy way to manage the flow of link value and stop unwanted links from impacting a site’s SEO performance. Nofollow links don’t pass ranking power but they still have value for referral traffic, brand awareness, and credibility. It’s therefore important to only use the nofollow feature on links that you don’t find relevant, reliable, or recommended.