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Nofollow Links: Top 5 Things You Need to Know

Links are fundamental to the web, and according to the Best SEO Company Canberra they are necessary for SEO. Links make it possible for search engines to find your website, and they provide a way for visitors to navigate your site. 

However, you can use nofollow links as well! 

In this post, we’ll explain what nofollow links are and how you can use them on your own website.

Links are fundamental to the web, and they are necessary for SEO

Links are fundamental to the web, and they are necessary for SEO. Without links, there would be no information on the Internet. 

Links also help Google crawl websites and rank them higher in search engines, so it’s a good idea to get started on building your link portfolio today!

When people link to you from their website or blog post, it’s considered an endorsement of your brand or content. 

So, according to the Best SEO Company Canberra when someone links back to your website with a nofollow tag attached, what does that mean? It simply means that person has chosen not to pass along any SEO value from their site by adding an HTML attribute called rel=nofollow. 

In other words: “Don’t follow me over here! 

Follow links and nofollow links.

Although the difference between follow and nofollow links is not too complex, it’s important to understand how these two link types differ.

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A nofollow link is one that does not pass PageRank – Google won’t crawl the page or index any content linked from that page. In contrast, a follow link passes PageRank. You can easily identify a nofollow link by its rel= “nofollow” attribute in the HTML code of your website:

The rel= “nofollow” attribute tells search engines like Google not to use this hyperlink as part of its ranking algorithm when ranking pages in their search results (the “following” text after “rel=nofollow”). 

In other words, if you have a piece of content on your site that isn’t worth being linked to (maybe because it contains spammy keywords), then you should add the appropriate HTML code so that visitors aren’t encouraged to share this content with others via their own websites or social media profiles!

How do I use a nofollow link?

  • The most common way, as per the Best SEO Company Gold Coast to use a nofollow link is by using the rel= “nofollow” attribute on your external links. This lets search engines know that this blog post, for example, contains affiliate links, but not every visitor will be going through them directly and purchasing products or services from our site.
  • You can also include the attribute in an anchor tag (the text within a tag). This will apply to one link only: it won’t affect any other links that appear on your site if you use it this way.
  • If you have images on your website that link offsite—such as product photos—you should add rel= “nofollow” as well so that Google knows what kinds of pages are being linked in order to avoid any potential issues with duplicate content penalties (like Penguin).

There is no need to fear nofollow links.

There is no need to fear nofollow links. There are several legitimate reasons to use them, but there are also ways to abuse them. Here’s what you need to know about this type of link and how you can use it in your SEO strategy:

  • Nofollow links are not bad. They are used as a way of preventing comment spam and link spam on blogs, forums, and news sites. On blogs or news sites where comments require approval before publishing (such as ours), the author may choose to add nofollow links so that search engines don’t count them as votes toward their rankings. 
  • You can use nofollow links on your blog posts too! It’s common practice for bloggers who want more control over what gets shared outside of their own site via social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter.

Nofollow links can still be valuable for your site. 

Even though nofollow links won’t pass on SEO juice, they can still be valuable for your site.

  • Preventing spam: When you’re a relatively new site, people may try to artificially inflate your page rank by linking to you with a nofollow link. A little bit of Google-fu will help you find out if someone is attempting this tactic. You can use the disavow tool or submit a manual review request on Google Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools) to report the offending pages that have been trying to manipulate your rankings and push them down in search results.
  • Protecting yourself from copyright infringement: If someone copies one of your articles and publishes it on their own website without giving credit or linking back to you, it’s annoying but not necessarily an immediate cause for concern—even if it does mean less traffic for your original content. But if they use one of those “reprint this article” bots that are programmed by real writers who want others’ work published under their own name? That could be grounds for legal action against both parties involved. 

Nofollow links have no influence on your website’s PageRank

There are many myths surrounding the topic of link building, but one that seems to be the most prevalent is that nofollow links will help your website gain PageRank from search engines.

This is not true! 

Search engines do not use nofollow links for ranking purposes.

If you want to increase your rankings in Google, then you need to focus on getting high-quality backlinks (i.e., those with a “dofollow” attribute). Nofollow links are ignored by search engines and thus pass no link juice or authority to the linked page.

You should still add a nofollow link even if you didn’t get a linkback

Even though you can’t get a linkback when using nofollow links, you should still add them to your content. A link is still a link, so you might as well take advantage of it.

If you can’t get a link back from the site where your content has been posted (for example, if they don’t allow that), then according to the Best SEO Company Gold Coast at least try to add a nofollow link so that others websites will see that content and think about linking back to it. This strategy has worked for me on many occasions!

How to add the rel=nofollow attribute

If you want to pass on the link juice and get a nofollow tag for your links, there are two ways to do so:

  • Use the rel= “nofollow” attribute in the tag.
  • Use it in the image’s alt text (if it’s an image). This requires that you change a bit of code, but it will work just as well.

It’s important to note that using this attribute is not as effective as adding follows directly into your content because Google doesn’t always recognize them.

Conclusion

If you want to avoid the negative impact of nofollow links, then it’s important to understand how they work. In most cases, the best way to do this is by using good practices when developing your website.

For example, using the rel= “nofollow” attribute on links that direct users away from your site or avoiding spammy SEO practices. 

Because there are many misconceptions about nofollow links, according to the Best SEO Company Canberra it’s also useful to familiarize yourself with what exactly they do (and don’t do) so that you can effectively manage them as part of your overall SEO strategy.