Whenever you will starts focusing on SEO I am sure you will cross paths with the link-building process. And one of the most confusing question the majority of people has is differentiating between nofollow and dofollow links.
Normally, someone who started SEO recently will go through YouTube tutorials and related articles. As it helps in understanding the key concepts while building your knowledge base at the same time. However, such tutorials and guides often confuse the user and you end up searching more until they satisfy your concern.
Detailed Comparision Between Dofollow & Nofollow
Instead of wasting your time in clearing those confusing suggestions from different individuals on the internet, we recommend focusing on SEO improvement. Hence, we have created a detailed comparison between Dofollow & Nofollow links to help you get started with building without any confusion.
What Is A Dofollow Link?
As the name specifies, “Dofollow” means to follow something. But when it comes to SEO, the following is turned into passing the authority juice to an external source. We know you are wondering what is authority juice, it is the value your website/blog holds.
Whenever you link out to a different web page, URL, or related elements without using the “rel=nofollow” attribute, it certainly means that you are pointing out to that external source along with your site authority. Such types of links are considered Dofollow links.
What Is A Nofollow Link?
Unlike the Dofollow links, a Nofollow link does not pass authority juice to another source. In simple words, a Nofollow link is a link with “rel=nofollow” attribution within the HTML code. Not to mention it helps search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo for differentiating between the low quality and high-quality links on the web.
Therefore, a lot of webmasters prefer to keep the low-quality links such as Pingbacks, Comments from random users, and spamming. So it won’t have any negative effect on the overall SEO score during the crawling process.
When To Use A Dofollow & Nofollow Link?
We often forget to specify the link type when publishing new content. Due to the fact, that maintenance of links on your website is an important practice for healthy SEO, we suggest making necessary changes to the link type during content creation.
But how can you decide when it is the right time to use a Dofollow or Nofollow backlink? Are there any guidelines or certain scenarios where using a particular link type is mandatory? These questions are very common and we know you are having a hard time solving them.
Therefore, we have made this quick overview of various scenarios where you should use Dofollow or Nofollow according to the situation. Let’s go through them one by one.
1. High-Authority Sites
During the process of content creation, there are times when we link out to other credible sources of information for user assistance. As the link back is meant to offer more value to the reader, the links are pointing out to high authority sites in most cases.
For instance, assume that you are creating a detailed guide on “What Is SEO Copywriting?“. In this situation, you may have to link back to high-authority sites like Wikipedia for assisting your reader in understanding complex terms.
Passing on the authority juice in such a case is beneficial for your site. Hence, using Dofollow links for high-authority sites is a common practice.
2. Comments & Ping Backs
One of the most common links that we have to deal with is comment links and ping-backs from previous posts. No doubt allowing your visitors to share their personal opinion is a great way to interact with them. As they can give you feedback regarding your content and suggestions if you need any improvements.
Although, it has some downsides as well which is spamming links. A lot of people take advantage of comments to feature on niche sites and spams unnecessary comments to get a backlink for their site. In such a situation, implementing the “rel=nofollow” attribute to all the links in the comment section comes handy.
Similarly, if you have pingbacks enabled on your site, your previous posts may be getting mentioned as pingbacks. This can create a situation of content cannibalism if not treated properly. Therefore, it is suggested to convert those pingbacks into Nofollow links ASAP.
3. Promotional Activities
Apart from pointing out to the high authority sites for reference, we often include links for promotional purposes in our content. These links range from affiliate marketing links to landing pages which are used to promote different products/services.
What type of links they are? Should you make them Nofollow? No, for links with promotional purposes, you can use a more specific attribute known as “rel=Sponsered”. This link attribute is specially made for the links which are paid placements and related to selling or promoting a particular product/service.
There is no visual difference in Nofollow and Sponsered links but it sends a hint to the search engine crawlers about the link being a promotional one. Although if you like to keep things simple, you can use the Nofollow link instead.
Dofollow VS No-follow
As you already know most SEO professionals consider Nofollow links as low-quality links without enough SEO value. However, you should not forget that a balanced number of Nofollow and Dofollow backlinks are recommended to keep your SEO on track.
It goes without saying that dofollow backlinks are the best in terms of SEO. But having too many dofollow backlinks can sometimes backfire your SERP positions. Not to mention, it is not clearly stated anywhere that how many dofollow or nofollow backlinks a site must use for better rankings.
Bottom Line
Following others and implementing something that is already working, is sometimes the best approach to save your time and resources as well. So if you wish to cut the hassle of worrying about the difference between two link types, following a well-established blog and its usage of links is the right choice.
In conclusion, if you are worrying about nofollow links pointing at your URL, stop doing so. Because nofollow backlinks do not have a negative effect always. It is completely natural if some nofollow backlinks are pointing to your domain. Do share this informative content with others and feel free to ask questions if you have any.
