Building a quality blog requires a combination of multiple elements. First of all, all articles should be well-written and provide the user with relevant content. Second, HQ images should have all the necessary attributes. The article should follow the proper structure and have all of the necessary SEO elements. Another crucial aspect a good article should follow is the proper use of links and backlinks. However, understanding links is not always easy or clear. There are many rules one needs to understand. Especially, in the changing internet domain of 2022, understanding nofollow and dofollow links is important and Link Department can help you with that. With that in mind, you should research everything you need to know about nofollow link and structure.
Understanding nofollow links in comparison to dofollow links
As mentioned before, link building can benefit your business. They boost the SEO rank of your website. That’s the main job of dofollow links. Whenever you put an inbound link in an article, it counts as virtual a point towards boosting your page. It is commonly known as “link juice“.
However, that feature was massively used to build page rank by spamming links and using other dirty tactics. Before the discovery of nofollow links, you could find many examples of blogs or forums where people would spam links in comments or guest articles, simply to boost their website. Well, all that was put to a stop with the invention of nofollow links.
What is the main use of nofollow links?
As the name suggests, a nofollow link is a link that does not count towards boosting page rank. Nofollow links do not contribute to the amount of “link juice”. If you want to make a link to be a nofollow one, you simply add an attribute to it:
<a href=”http://www.yourwebsite.com/” rel=”nofollow”>Link Text</a>
It is that simple. As you can see, the life of nofollow links seems ugly when compared to dofollow links. They don’t have any other purpose besides stopping spam, right?
Wrong!
Even though nofollow links do not count as virtual points that boost your SEO rank, what they can do is create a good amount of natural traffic for your website. If you have quality content, nofollow links can turn out to be very useful.
So, now that we know what nofollow links do, and how to use them to contribute to your blog, let’s talk about the technical aspect.
Placing nofollow attributes on spam links seems like a lot of work!
Unfortunately, that is correct. However, if you organize yourself in the most productive way, you will quickly understand all the necessary steps.
You can add nofollow links manually, or use a plugin. Since some of the plugins still have issues with Gutenberg in WordPress, let’s talk about the manual way first.
Adding nofollow links in WordPress
Adding nofollow links in WordPress is easy. When you are writing an article using Gutenberg, first:
- Highlight the text you want to use as an anchor
- Click on the “link” icon in the toolbox menu above
- Paste the link
- Click on the 3 dots on the right side of the screen, and locate the “Edit as HTML” option
- This will open the page in HTML code, and that’s how you can add the nofollow attribute based on the example above
If you are using the old classic format, you will find two options in the upper right corner of your editor window. They look like tabs labeled “Visual” and “Text”. When you switch to the “Text” mode, you should be able to see HTML attributes.
Another important thing to remember is that WordPress, by default, assigns nofollow attributes to all links submitted by users. With that in mind, let’s talk about which links to mark as nofollow.
Which links to mark as nofollow links?
By the rule of thumb, all links that lead towards untrusted external websites should be marked as nofollow. If you have your doubts regarding any website, do everything you can to protect yourself. Before marking their links as dofollow, make sure to check the authenticity of the website.
On the other hand, all links that come from websites that have a certain level of authority should be marked as dofollow. To give you a few examples, Wikipedia and New York Times count as trusted websites. To learn more, do a little research about the most influential websites of all time.
Here are some other examples where you should most definitely add nofollow attributes:
- sponsored or affiliate links – they are mostly used for product placement. The reason why you should always mark these links as nofollow is because a search engine may label your website as if it’s selling links.
- sidebar links – when you add sidebar links, you have to understand they will be visible on every page you make. If you have 30 pages, you are “giving points” to all links placed in the sidebar. That is not a good idea, especially if you have external or affiliate links in your sidebar.
- external links – when writing articles, you cannot always find an authority website to back up your writing. If you want to link towards external websites for which you cannot vouch for, set those links as nofollow. The only exception is if you link towards trusted websites.
Nofollow links – the value they provide in 2022
So, as we already stated, the nofollow links character is not that clear cut. They have a much deeper influence on your SEO. They affect your SEO results and add to your authority but they do not do that directly. So, their value exists but it is not that clear and easy to explain. Just because of that there is no harm for you to use a mixture of backlinks both dofollow and nofollow. Nofollow links will still drive some traffic to your website and boost your SEO. There are a few reasons that you should understand and consider. These are the reason not to avoid Nofollow links and to further exploit them in 2022:
- The increased traffic
- Generate SEO boost
- Are valuable in social network signals
- Have value in influencer marketing
- Cause a domino effect
The increased traffic
Nofollow links do not boost your SEO directly but they do generate traffic to your website and content. Meaning that they still work like any normal link and direct people to your web pages thus increasing the number of page visits. So, you still benefit from those backlinks through the increased traffic. Also if they come from a high authority source they will contribute largely to increasing your brand awareness.
Generate SEO boost
You can also generate an SEO boost through nofollow links. This seems impossible as the website tries to restrict the SEO effect through nofollow links. However, Google can see the intention and what is happening. It still knows which pages are linking to your and can transfer some of the SEO effects to you. This is done through an algorithm that gives you an unexpected SEO boost. This boost is not as considerable as with dofolow links but can be very valuable. Companies managing backlinks and SEO will use this fact to add to the SEO even when it’s not expected. It can prove to be very valuable in the long run.
Valuable in social network signals
Social networks are gaining importance and value for SEO in recent years. This will also be true for the coming years and 2022. However, all of the links from social networks are nofollow. But there is a clear influence that social media has on any online business and activity. This value is in the signal that social media can give and provide for your SEO. As brands are always a topic on social media this means that they are able to create a buzz and add to the visibility and brand awareness. As social media is sharing your brand and website it is raising interest in your web pages thus generating traffic and finally conversion. So social media will generate traffic even with the use of nofollow links. So, you can directly benefit from these over social media channels.
Google will also follow these signals to assess the popularity and interest of a webpage and brand. As a result, it will assign some rank to it based on these social signals. So, any SEO effort today should strive to invest in social media and influencers. The results can be quite surprising if you consider that these are nofollow links.
Have value in influencer marketing
Using influencers is not new but it is gaining in value in recent years. The trend in 2022 is to use a lot of influencer marketing. They provide nofollow links to your website. But, the key is to get involved with influencers with huge followings. In these cases when they mention and market your webpage or product you can get a response from a huge following. In this way, you are effectively generating interest and traffic from a huge following increasing your traffic. So marketing your products through influencers and their blogs and vlogs generate traffic and profits even though they primarily use nofollow links.
Cause a domino effect
Using a lot of backlinks even if they are nofollow can cause a domino effect. A large base of backlinks generates even more backlinks in the future through a self perpetual process. As a result, you can get a very high ranking. Overtime and with a spread of nofollow links that will start turning into dofollow ones. So, using nofollow links is like pushing the first domino. Over time all else will fall into place and give your web pages the ranking and visibility you need.
Are there any downsides to using too many nofollow links?
The answer is yes. Even though these links do not count towards your search rank, Google will take preemptive measures against all websites that spam nofollow links. Sometimes people just don’t care about this attribute and they continue to post multiple links without real need.
With that being said, you can always reward the best users who contribute to your website by allowing them to post do follow links.
Another way to boost your website is to hire professionals that will help you get powerful backlinks for faster rating. They can find a balance between dofollow and nofollow links.
That’s what you need to know about nofollow link
So, these are the basic things you need to know about nofollow link. Viewing nofollow links only from the aspect of SEO development is not the only way. You should strive to understand how these links function. They add a lot of value to your web pages and content. By generating direct traffic, visits, leads, and customers they can lead to conversions and profit. So, using them will drive your profits and company upward even if not adding to your SEO.
This is the true purpose of any marketing and SEO effort so the conclusion is that nofollow link effort works. After you understand this you will be able to use them and generate adequate content that will generate good visibility of your webpage and generate good SEO results. In this respect, nofollow links are more valuable than ever. So, investing in them may prove to be fruitful and provide great SEO results.