What is a Nofollow Link and How Do They Affect SEO?

Are you building a website and don’t know what a nofollow link is? Let us help.

We are introducing you to the nofollow link and its benefits to your business. Give attention as nofollow links can be beneficial to your business.

Understanding nofollow links, reasons to use nofollow links and how they affect SEO, in this guide.

Nofollow Links: What They Are?

A hyperlink that tells search engines to ignore it and not count it towards your site’s backlink profile is a nofollow link. By using the rel=”nofollow” HTML tag nofollow links are created.

You are familiar with backlinking, right? Backlinking or incoming links is when another website links to a page on your website. Consider backlinks are an important part of SEO.

Backlinks can be tagged in HTML in two ways- either they are Nofollow or Dofollow. These tell search engines whether or not to pass authorities from one web page to another. Nofollow links don’t pass authorities.

Reasons To Use Nofollow Links

There can be many reasons to use nofollow links:

1. Get prevented from spam with the help of nofollow links.

Especially for comment sections. When a nofollow link is used in the comment section it discourages spammers because search engines don’t consider it when evaluating the linked page’s authority.

2. Build brand awareness with the help of nofollow links.

Nofollow links can help in brand awareness by building trust, audience reach, natural profile and engagement.

3. Increased traffic will be there because of nofollow links.

Nofollow links can drive more traffic to your website by promoting your content, attracting users from social media, mixing up your profile and building brand awareness.

4. Diversify your backlink profile.

Nofollow links can help diversify your backlink profile by making it more natural-looking, protecting against spam and building strong relationships.

Nofollow Links And SEO: How Do They Affect SEO?

Search engine optimisation or SEO helps search engines to understand your content and help users to find your site. SEO can help your site rank higher in search engine result pages (SERPs).

Some practices included in SEO are internal linking, page speed, user experience, keyword research and meta title and descriptions.

By affecting website traffic, no-follow links indirectly impact SEO. No-follow links can help improve a website’s organic search ranking and this is done by showing Google that the site is being linked to high quality website.

No-follow links can affect SEO in many ways:

• Nofollow links can drive traffic to your website which can increase conversion rates and your site will get higher rankings.
• You can avoid penalties with the help of nofollow links, as nofollow links do not pass authorities from one page to another.
• A do-follow link from a low-authority site is not as beneficial as a no-follow link from a high-authority site.
• Your SEO can benefit from no-follow links to diversify your backlink profile.
• Identify low-quality or spammy websites with the help of no-follow links.

Do Nofollow Links Help Maintain Google Algorithm?

Google algorithm ranks websites in search results. This rank is based on a query. The algorithm examines billions of pages. Then it finds the most relevant content for a given query.

Although nofollow links don’t directly impact SEO or Google’s search ranking algorithm, they can contribute to a website’s overall quality and context.

How Google Treats Nofollow Links?

By not treating no-follow links as directiveness, Google only treats no-follow links as hints and Google may not follow them.

But, Google does recognise the existence of the link and its link text, which can help Google understand the linked page’s topics and themes this helps Google recognise that the site is being lined by high-quality websites, which helps in improving the website’s organic search ranking.

When Can I Use A No-follow Link?

You can use a no-follow link in the following cases:

• You should use no-follow links when you publish paid advertisements on your site.
• If you are linking to paid links then you can go with no-follow links. If you are paying for a link to be in a particular place, a non-follow link can help so this paid link does not count towards organic link traffic.
• No-follow links are mostly used in blog comments to prevent spammy link comments.
• If you are linking to widgets or certification badges, use no-follow links.

Conclusion

Although no-follow links do not directly affect SEO, they do affect it. Drive traffic, increase brand awareness and build trusted relations with users with the help of no-follow links.

Google treats no-follow links as “hints”. It does not directly interact with Google but somewhere affects ranking in search engine result pages(SERPs). Increase the ranking of your website with SEO services, with no-follow links coming hand in hand.

Everyone needs to work together to achieve success, that is why no-follow links are also important for your business.