Understanding Dofollow and Nofollow : The Two Basic Links For SEO

 

Links are responsible for building relationships between two or more websites. Search Engine bots travel from one website to another via Dofollow links.

High-quality links (especially backlinks) pointing to your website play a major role in bringing in more traffic to your website.

So, today we are going to discuss more of two important basic SEO links; DOFOLLOW and NOFOLLOW.

I think you have heard of them earlier. Right?

If not, then let's dive into this article and know more about dofollow and nofollow attributes and see how they help in the search engine optimization of our website.

Importance of Backlinks:

Google uses PageRank to determine how valuable a web page is anymore.

High-value links help your site move up on the search result page.

A good number of external and internal links with the proper use of dofollow and nofollow attributes are going to help in your average session duration.

The "inbound" or "incoming" links are created when one person links to another person's website. These inbound or incoming links are what we popularly called Backlinks.

Understanding DOFOLLOW links:

Dofollow link is an HTML attribute that allows Search bots to follow the links.

When a website owner links back to you with Dofollow Attribute, it means it does pass on a "link juice". Link juice is not a type of juice we drink, it is a term used in the SEO that refers to the value passed from one page/website to another.

That is why it is responsible for the promotion of websites on Search Engine Resul Page (SERPs) by generating a good quality of backlinks.

With dofollow links, both SEARCH ENGINE and HUMANS will be able to follow you and your content widely.

I think now you are getting it.

Let me show you how it does look:

        <a href ="http://www.google.com/">google</a>

Note: By default all hyperlinks are dofollow, so you don't need to do extra work for optimizing them.

Let's see an example to understand it better.

And here's the code behind this:

Isn't it automatic?

Look there is no need to code it to make it Dofollow. As I earlier mentioned that all hyperlinks are Dofollow by default.

Understanding NOFOLLOW links:

Here I'm going to give you everything you need to know about nofollow links.

What are they?,

How nofollow links are important for SEO?,

How are they different from followed links?

and

Why do they really exist in the first place?

Nofollow links are links with rel="nofollow" an (HTML tag). These links tell search engines not to follow the link because unlike dofollow it does not pass any "link juice" or "PageRank" and hence they don't impact search engine rankings.

ORIGIN & HISTORY BEHIND THIS

Nofollow attribute first appeared in January 2005. It is proposed to prevent search engine spam by improving the quality of search results and distorting out spammed articles or websites from falling out in the first place.

As said by Matt Cutts (the man behind the proposal of this attribute) that nofollowed links don't affect PageRank and can still be a good exposure to a new audience, branding, etc.

Nofollow Links vs Dofollow Links: [ This will clear all your doubts about these attributes by100%]

Nofollow links do not allow search engine bots to follow links. While dofollow links allow bots to follow them and further explore the site.

Example: This is a snap from another article of burningball. Let's take a look,

There is a link contained in GREEN TEXT.

And here is the HTML code that clearly explains the highlighted part rel="nofollow" as this link is nofollowed.

Nofollow does not pass link juice/PageRank that means only Human beings will be able to follow the links.

On the other hand, followed links pass link juice and help in creating Backlink (or "inbound links" or "incoming links"). This is the reason why these links are followed by search engines and Humans as well.

Benefits of Nofollow Links: [How Nofollow links are beneficial especially for SEO purpose]

Nofollow links are beneficial in many ways;

• They help in boosting your ranking in the search results and also improve the Domain Authority (DA)  of your website.

• Though Nofollow links are not responsible for creating backlinks for you, they are still countable for driving quality traffic to your page as visitors can follow them.

• They help in popularizing your website and building brand awareness. More people get familiar with your brand.

• and many more...

Now I hope all your doubts have been cleared regarding this topic. If so, then feel free to share this article as much as you can to help others.

Till then!

See you soon.

Rahul Kumar