What is the difference between dofollow and nofollow links?

Dofollow and Nofollow links, what are they? What is the difference between them? And when to use each one of them? Let’s find out.

What is the difference between dofollow and nofollow links?

The main difference between Nofollow and Dofollow is that Dofollow links are directly responsible for enhancing the SEO o your website. They are the backlinks that refer back to your website and help search engines crawl through the website and whether it is good for your page ranking or not. For short Dofollow links transfer the PageRank signals.

On the other hand, Nofollow doesn’t transfer the PageRank signals of your website and they have an indirect effect on the SEO of your webpage. And they always have the tag (rel=” nofollow”) in the code, which shows search engines like Google that the link doesn’t affect the ranking score of the website.

Let’s compare the two of them:

	Dofollow	Nofollow
Purpose	passes the PageRank signals or as it’s called link Juice.	Doesn’t pass PageRank signals
SEO Value	have a high impact on the SEO of the Webpage	have a Low impact on the SEO
Crawled	Search engines Always crawl through them	search engines don’t crawl through them or have a low chance to be crawled.
Indexed	Always used for indexing	Not always used for indexing
Anchor Tag Attribute	No anchor tag attributes	Always have the anchor tag attribute (rel=”nofollow”)
Best Backlink Ratio	75% or more	25% or less

What is a dofollow link?

Dofollow links are the backlinks that refer to your website so that search engines such as Google crawl it. They have a great impact on the SEO of your website as they pass your website authority. Dofollow links are good for your webpage ranking and search engine optimization (SEO).

They are great for improving the page ranking of a website and building its backlinks. Having high-quality Dofollow links increases your chances to rank higher in search engines.

Here are some of the benefits of using Dofollow links:

They pass the PageRank signals.

They are used in search engine algorithms to decide the ranking of the webpage.

Dofollow links help search engines crawl your website and see its content for higher ranking and faster indexing.

They are good for websites to rank higher for their targeted keywords.

Dofollow links show search engines that your website is trusted and authorized.

Different types of Dofollow Links are:

Guest post links
Editorial links
Acknowledgment links
Badge links
Press release links
Testimonial links
Review links
Resource links

What are nofollow links?

Nofollow links don’t pass the PageRank signals. They are a way to tag links and show search engines not to use them as a way to rank the webpage in search engine results. Or not to let them affect the placement of the website among others.

However, nowadays the way search engines treat Nofollow links is different. They may be used to add value to websites if they are helpful for ranking and indexing purposes.

Google announced: “All the link attributes, sponsored, UGC, and nofollow, now work today as hints for us to incorporate for ranking purposes. For crawling and indexing purposes, nofollow will become a hint as of March 1, 2020.”

The different types of Nofollow Links include the following:

Paid links: These types of links include the tag attribute [rel=” sponsored”] and they are used for advertisements or paid placements.

UGC links: this type of Nofollow links have the tag attribute [rel=”ugc”] and they are added to the user’s generated content such as contents and posts.

Multiple rel values: this type refers to the comma or space used to separate between two types, like the following example: rel= “UGC nofollow”.

Nofollow links: These are the main and default types with the tag attributes [rel=”nofollow”]. This is the type that you use when you don’t want any of the other values to apply and when you don’t search engines to link your page with the linked page.

Are nofollow links worthless?

No, Nofollow links are not worthless, in fact, they are good for SEO. Why is that? Because they increase the traffic of your website and enhance the SEO.

Are nofollow links good for SEO?

Yes, Nofollow links are good for SEO, they have an indirect effect on the SEO of the website, and they increase the traffic. Nofollow links increase people’s awareness of your site and brand and they lead to the Dofollow links.

When should I use Nofollow links?

Nofollow links are used when you don’t want the link to pass PageRank. Use them if you don’t want the link to be counted as a vote or affect your placement in search engine results.

What is the purpose of Nofollow?

There are many benefits to using Nofollow links and here are some of them:

Nofollow links drive and increase traffic to your site from other websites.
They increase brand awareness and people’s awareness of your website.
They make your website look true and natural, if you only have Dofollow links this will make your site seem suspicious to search engines.
Nofollow makes webmasters discover your site which lets people discover your Dofollow links and link back to you.
They improve the domain authority of your site and make it more trusted to search engines.

How do I know if my link is dofollow or nofollow?

The process is simple, all you have to do is to inspect the link in the HTML code and see if it has the attribute (rel=”nofollow”) or not. If it doesn’t have it then it’s a Dofollow link.

Here’s how you can do so step by step:

Right-click on a link in your browser.
Click on “Inspect”.
Check the anchor element tag in the HTML source code for the “rel” attribute.
If you see a “nofollow” in the rel attribute, then the link is nofollowed. Otherwise, the link is dofollow.

What is the difference between dofollow and nofollow links?