Do-follow and no-follow are link attributes designed for search engines. These characteristics tell search engines what to do with a particular link or all links placed on a page. If a link has a do-follow tag, it is automatically indexed by search engines. This means that robots follow it and pass PageRank and anchors.
Thus, if the first site places a link to the second site with the tag do-follow backlinks, it increases the second site's link ranking and makes it more attractive to search engines. However, if the first site itself is not very good SEO, its dofollow-link can give the opposite effect. In particular, not to improve, but to worsen the ranking of the second site. Dofollow-links are linked with the appropriate attribute and any link at all if they are not assigned the opposite status.
Search engines do not index Nofollow-links, so they don't pass PageRank or anchor text. Accordingly, nofollow-links do not change the ranking of either the pages to which they lead or those where they are placed. Moderators have the option of not assigning a no-follow tag to each link individually if they need to. They can instead make all links on a webpage nofollow. To do this, add a rel=”nofollow” tag to the header of the page.
History of Do-Follow and No-Follow Backlinks
The Google search engine introduced a ban on indexing links with the no-follow tag in 2005. The company's official statement stressed the purpose of this innovation to combat comment spam. Indeed, before introducing the no-follow attribute, spam promotion through the mass placement of advertising links in the comments on websites flourished on the Internet. Soon after, no-follow links began to be supported by other popular search engines: Yahoo, Bing, and others.
In 2019, Google introduced two additional attributes:
- The sponsored tag is specifically for promotional links;
- Tag ugc for links from users of sites: in comments, reviews, or forum posts.
Google representatives said that adding new tags would help search bots determine the nature of links more effectively. Links can be assigned several tags simultaneously, and they will not “overlap." At the same time, from March 1, 2020, search engines have the right to rank any link, even those marked with the tag nofollow.
When You Can Use No-Follow Backlinks
- Backlinks increase the page rank of the site to which the no-follow link is placed, so to increase the popularity and profitability of their resources, spam services leave a considerable number of links to their resources on blogs and sites. By closing links in comments with no-follow, you can reduce the flow of spammers attacking your site.
- If you need to link to another resource without losing your page ranking, using no-follow is appropriate and justified.
- Selling backlinks is more effective than the no-follow type of SEO links, but there is a disadvantage here (such links cost very little, and not all search engines treat this attribute with the proper respect).
Note that each search engine defines and indexes no-follow backlinks SEO differently. For example, Google follows a link with nofollow but does not count it as a backlink to the site. But Yahoo follows a link but does not count it in its algorithm for calculating page relevance. MSN behaves differently, following a link and taking SEO backlinks into account in its ranking algorithms.
When It's Better to Use Do-Follow Backlinks
Placing a link to another site gives it a part of your PR (page rank), thus improving its ranking. Accordingly, advertisers prefer to buy links from pages with higher PR. This is exactly what search engines are fighting against, and your site may be punished with worse ratings in search results. But there are a few cases where using the do-follow attribute is both justified and desirable.
- The high value paid links - placing a small number of links will not hurt your site but will increase its profitability;
- Exchanging links with sites that have higher attendance rates;
- Increased traffic and demand for your resource - allowing active links in the comments of a customer-oriented site can grow your resource's attractiveness for posting thematic comments. Such an approach results in an increase of the platform's popularity.
However, you need to understand that an excessive number of do-follow links can negatively affect your site's ranking.
It is not easy to find quality resources on the network, where you can easily place a link to your site without a nofollow. These resources are so few that they are included in separate directories and databases do-follow sites. There have been blog owners' communities with do-follow links and services for paid placement of do-follow link pages for a long time.
Advantages and Disadvantages of No-follow and Do-follow Backlinks
There is an opinion that if you assign an attribute no-follow link, then the search engine will not follow it. After literal “nofollow” means “do not follow”. In this case, we kind of forbid the search robots to follow this link. Accordingly, it will not be indexed and accounted for. Experienced SEO specialists choose services to work with both types of backlinks and buy backlinks. You can learn more about here.
No-follow links are considered. Especially if they are in traffic and are in the right place, such links are undoubtedly valuable, and they work. You can argue with that, but this information is provided by Google (especially since this adjustment was made to the help recently, in mid-2020).
When implementing crowd-marketing when guest posting, everyone wants do-follow links with commercial anchors, which makes a quality blog backlink. That's great, of course, but far from reality. The reality is that there are almost no sites that have 0% no-follow links. As a rule, there are quite a few of them. There are a huge number of fantastic platforms that only post no-follow links, and there is no reason not to work with such sites. They give you click-throughs to your target site, recognize your company online, and, in fact, customers.
All SEO professionals know how to get different backlinks. It is better to follow their recommendations and use two types of backlinks to promote blogs, online stores, news sites, and other web resources.
What Does Use No-Follow Links Get You?
- Security of the link profile. If you try to post the maximum number of do-follow links, it will look strange against other sites in your niche.
- Naturalness. When working on a link profile, you need to keep in mind that a "revealing" profile without no-follow and redirect links will draw the attention of search engines and, in the future, can lead to getting hit by filters.
- More opportunities. This is most important. Without fear of getting no-follow links, you have new options in front of you: working with the best sites, the traffic, the traffic, the interesting.
Using no-follow links will open up new horizons for your site. Just imagine if you avoid such links, and your competitors do the opposite? They will be placed on the top sites and communicate in informative forums with their target audience, and you will not - all due to a myth in your head that no-follow is bad.
It is recommended to move away from this stereotype and still use the potential of no-follow links.
Search engines' main goal is to improve the results of the output, significantly raising the expert content. However, the fact that links from Wikipedia and other trusted resources were not counted because they were no-follow created a vicious circle.
After Google revised its attitude to such links, it is safe to say that they work and will work in the future.
Therefore, there is no need to be wary of nofollow. If you get them from quality sites, it will only benefit the link profile of your site.
