What is a nofollow links?
Many users, entering the world of SEO and improving their business in the Internet world, encounter the term NoFollow link. The nofollow tag is one of the most common tags in the html programming language and its familiarity is very important in SEO.
Using the nofollow tag means that you have asked Google not to crawl or follow the desired page. Using a nofollow link will not change the rank of the destination page.
A question may be raised here, what is the reason for using this link? To answer this question, we have to say that in fact, the no-follow link does not directly affect the ranking of the site in Google results. But indirectly, it improves the SEO of the site.
In this SEO training article, we intend to fully familiarize you with the nofollow link or tag and its difference with the dofollow link, and we will also examine how to use it in the source code of the site.
What is a nofollow link?
All the links on the internet are in follow mode by default. If we add the rel=Nofollow attribute to the <a> tag, it will become a nofollow link. By adding this feature, we tell search engines not to visit the linked page and there is no reason to check that page. In other words, you inform the search robots that this link should not be included in their page rank calculation; But by doing so you still allow search engines to index these pages.
<a href=www.example.com rel=”nofollow”>Anchor Text</a>
Since it is not an easy task to get natural links from reputable websites as follows. Therefore, receiving a nofollow link indicates that the links are natural. In other words, by receiving a nofollow link, Google will more easily accept that the incoming links to your site are natural.
Never underestimate the importance of receiving nofollow links, although this does not directly affect your site’s SEO. But it will cause a significant increase in visits to your site.
The expansion of nofollow links has caused Google to examine them more recently, because most of the website managers are trying to use nofollow links instead of using follow links. The noteworthy point is that most website managers do not know the difference between these two types of links and use CMSs that all their outgoing links are nofollow.
Sometimes, even though people are aware of the difference between these two types of links, they don’t want to link to another site, which is also the type of follow links, because this will increase the ranking of other sites. which will mean that your competitors will surpass you.
It should be noted that most of the reliable sites that have powerful forums have nofollow outbound links. Reputable sites introduce useful sites and outbound links from these sites are monitored continuously, so due to continuous monitoring, Google has considered a value for them.
What does nofollow mean?
As we said, Nofollow is a feature that defines the relationship (rel) between the page where the link is located and the page that the link points to. You determine how each link or page is checked by search engines. This tag is one of the programming commands designed to manage and control the communication of web pages with crawling robots.
The difference between follow and nofollow links
As mentioned, a nofollow link does not allow search bots to crawl that link. For example, if you link to a popular page to increase your site’s SEO. But if the administrator of that site uses the Nofollow technique, in fact, it can be said that this exchange will not have any effect on your site’s SEO, and users can only see the desired link and text.
Unlike nofollow, dofollow link allows Google to check the links. In other words, this is considered a type of link building (backlink).
In fact, both search engines and users can check the links placed on your site pages for other pages (internal and external).
Related content: What is link juice or link extract?
The most important point to be observed in the dofollow link is the anchor text. It is better for the anchor text or the linked phrase to be based on the same keyword of the target page in order to get a better result in Google.
Writing a dofollow link is as follows:
<a href=” http://www.examplesite.com/”>Anchortext</a>
Uses of nofollow links
Nofollow links are used in different parts of websites. These sections are:
• Comments section at the end of articles or blog sites
• Social networks including Twitter, Facebook and…
• Received links from discussion pages and forums
• Guest posts
• News websites
The nofollow links that we have mentioned will increase the number of visits to your site, but they have no effect on page rank.
Advantages of using the nofollow tag
If you understand the nature of the nofollow link, you will realize that Google did not design this tag for no reason. The same indirect effect can also have many benefits for you. There are all kinds of links in the internet world that can have tremendous effects for your site with their new followers. In the following, we will examine some of the advantages of these types of links.
Increase site traffic
Now that you are familiar with the concept of nofollow links, the question arises, how can these links help increase your website traffic? If a website like Quora, which is for questions and answers, links to you, it will increase your traffic. This is also the case on websites such as YouTube and Reddit. The link from the ad report is also a no-follow, but it will increase your traffic.
Preventing website credit loss
Invalid outgoing and incoming links may jeopardize your credibility. Outbound links can easily reduce the credibility of your website. If you use the no-follow tag in outgoing links that go to unreliable websites, your credibility will not be jeopardized. This also applies to inbound links.
Avoid being penalized by Google
The nofollow tag is used in the link that you receive from the advertisements of big websites. Most of the time, links being unfollowed are noticed by Google and have a positive impact on their ranking. It may not improve your page rank in the first stage, but it will create a good visit for you.
If you do not use the nofollow tag in backlinks and reporting ads, you will be penalized by Google and your site may even be penalized by Google.
Related article: What is Link Farm or Link Farm?
As a result, by knowing more about the nofollow link, you can avoid heavy fines and heavy blows that may come to your site.
Preventing duplicate content
On your site, two links with different anchor text may be linked to an internal or external page. If you do not use the nofollow tag in one of them, you will have the problem of duplicate content and it will negatively affect your rank in Google and reduce your rank in Google search pages.
How to unfollow all types of outgoing links
No-follow outbound WordPress link with plugin
There is a Nofollow For External Link plugin to nofollow all outgoing links on the WordPress site. By downloading this plugin, all your links will be nofollow and have the attribute rel=”nofollow” and also target=”_blank”.
Unfollow link in WordPress by code
You can use the following code to unfollow the outgoing links of your site in WordPress. By adding the following code to the function file (Function.php) of your template, the outgoing links on your site will be automatically rel=”nofollow”. It is recommended to use the plugin as little as possible to increase site speed and optimization.