What are DoFollow and NoFollow Links? Definition and Difference

Many of you are not aware of the importance of NoFollow and DoFollow links. It is one of the main factors in deciding your search rankings as well as search position in search engines. Here, I will try to provide you the information you need to know about both types of link attributes.

What are DoFollow and NoFollow Links?

Nofollow is an attribute value of a link, which tells search engines that the link should not influence the target links ranking in the search engine’s index and should not crawl towards the target link

Dofollow is a complete opposite of Nofollow. There is no need to use any attribute for Dofollow. All Links are dofollow by default. Search engine bots will crawl through the Dofollow links and PageRank juice will be shared by your site (that is what Google wants!).

Example of Nofollow link:

<a href=”https://www.thegeeksclub.com” rel=”nofollow”>The Geeks Club</a>

Example of Dofollow link:

<a href=”https://www.thegeeksclub.com”>The Geeks Club</a>

Here in the above dofollow example link, you can understand that dofollow is the default attribute of a hyperlink.

Nofollow was used (some sites use it now) to reduce search engine spam as well as comment spam. Some so-called experts used it to control the PageRank of their websites. By using Nofollow link attributes, they were able to control the PageRank juice inside their blogs only, rather than to pass it to the outbound links. But, Google had changed the algorithm in such a way that you can’t control your PageRank by using Nofollow link.

Google also suggests that you should use Nofollow link attributes to paid links and affiliate kind of websites. So, keep your affiliate links behind the Nofollow attribute. Do not directly post your affiliate links to your blogs and sites.

In WordPress, comment field has built-in default Nofollow link attributes. So, don’t worry about your comment field links. But, I suggest not to make all the links as Nofollow because it too may affect your search engine position adversely. Think, if you are accepting the guest posts and you are not providing the link juice to your guest author. Will they come to your blog to write guest posts?

Should you make a Dofollow Blog?

I do not entirely agree to have a blog where every link is a DoFollow. If you do it, then you should be able to tackle the spam comments by using Antispam plugins and security plugins for spam bots.

But, Dofollow blogs encourages more comments. But remember that those who comment in such cases do so because of the dofollow attribute and not necessarily because they may have something to see. But yes it does encourage commenting by bloggers.

I have made all blogs as Dofollow, and my PageRank has not increased, but search positions are good and getting more regular comments.

Now that you know what this means, will you make your blog Dofollow or Nofollow?

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