Whenever we talk about search engine optimization, some of the common
words are noindex, doindex, nofollow, dofollow, meta robots and so on.
All the words hold equal importance in the book of SEO. In this post I
will be explaining about Nofollow and Dofollow. Specially for newbies
who are new to SEO or people who are still not clear about Nofollow or
dofollow, this post will be useful.
Nofollow is an HTML attribute value used to instruct search engines bots that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. It is intended to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of search engine spam, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing spamdexing from occurring in the first place. This is a concept introduced by Matt Cutts and Jason Shellen in the year 2005.
Nofollow links attributes do not allow search engine bots to follow link.That means if the website owner is linking back to you with nofollow attributes, it does not pass on link juice. Only Humans will be able to follow the links. Though some time back Google made it clear that they don’t consider nofollow link attributes but weightage of such links are really less. Even though, it’s a good practice to use Nofollow link attribute to those link, where you don’t want to pass link-juice.
Example of Nofollow Link:
<a href=”http://www.google.com/” rel=”nofollow”>Google</a>
Dofollow links allow google (all search engines) to follow them and reach our website. Giving us link juice and a backlink. If a webmaster is linking back to you with this link both Search Engine and Humans will be able to follow you. The best way to give someone dofollow love is allowing keyword in the anchor text. This means when you are linking to any website or page, use the targeted keyword as anchor text.
Example of Dofollow Link:
<a href=”http://www.google.com/”>Google</a>
Note: By default all the hyperlinks are dofollow. So, you don’t need to do anything to make a link do-follow.
Quick Tip: Try to keep noindex attribute for pages like contact and nofollow attribute for affiliate links on your blog posts. If you are linking to any spam website for any reason, use the nofollow link attribute.
Do let me know if you have more questions regarding basics of Nofollow or Dofollow?
Nofollow is an HTML attribute value used to instruct search engines bots that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. It is intended to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of search engine spam, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing spamdexing from occurring in the first place. This is a concept introduced by Matt Cutts and Jason Shellen in the year 2005.
Nofollow links attributes do not allow search engine bots to follow link.That means if the website owner is linking back to you with nofollow attributes, it does not pass on link juice. Only Humans will be able to follow the links. Though some time back Google made it clear that they don’t consider nofollow link attributes but weightage of such links are really less. Even though, it’s a good practice to use Nofollow link attribute to those link, where you don’t want to pass link-juice.
Example of Nofollow Link:
<a href=”http://www.google.com/” rel=”nofollow”>Google</a>
Dofollow links allow google (all search engines) to follow them and reach our website. Giving us link juice and a backlink. If a webmaster is linking back to you with this link both Search Engine and Humans will be able to follow you. The best way to give someone dofollow love is allowing keyword in the anchor text. This means when you are linking to any website or page, use the targeted keyword as anchor text.
Example of Dofollow Link:
<a href=”http://www.google.com/”>Google</a>
Note: By default all the hyperlinks are dofollow. So, you don’t need to do anything to make a link do-follow.
Important Notice:-
Recently Google have said that they will still count the nofollow link
as an outgoing link in terms of the distribution of page rank from your
page. Though again it also depends on where that nofollow link is
places. Placing a nofollow link at the bottom of the page has least
impact, and when placed at the top of the page, it carries some impact.- Robots Meta Tag : <meta name=”robots” content=”nofollow” />
- Link Attribute : <a href=”http://www.google.com” rel=”nofollow”>
Quick Tip: Try to keep noindex attribute for pages like contact and nofollow attribute for affiliate links on your blog posts. If you are linking to any spam website for any reason, use the nofollow link attribute.
Do let me know if you have more questions regarding basics of Nofollow or Dofollow?
