What many people don’t know is that nofollow links, or links that do not influence SEO rankings, exist on the internet. Linking in SEO is one of the most used strategies to build credibility and following for every website. It is one that is used often to strategically lead internet traffic towards a destination URL. It is not common knowledge, but not as surprising, that not all links to or from a website are intended to produce trails or valuable internet traffic.
Why are Nofollow links used?
Nowadays, backlinking doesn’t always guarantee internet traffic. It could look like a normal hyperlink that leads a reader to a different website. However, a nofollow link will not be recognized by Google and will not be counted as “internet traffic”. No matter how many readers click on a nofollow link, that data will not be used for SEO ranking. Basically, the main goal of a nofollow link is for a blog owner to control backlinks to and from their websites. This is to prevent spammers from abusing comments and referrer lists.
It is not necessarily sad, however. It is more of making sure to add an extra layer of security for your website. How does a normal and a nofollow link differ? When coding in a nofollow link, it is simply adding a rel = “nofollow” tag on the HTML code.
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When to use a Nofollow link
Affiliate and Sponsored Links
There are different ways to use a nofollow link when writing posts or creating content for your website. Nowadays, it is one of Google’s primary requirement to identify ads, sponsors, or paid content. This is why (for paid content or links) some coders use rel = “sponsored nofollow” tags. Then when identifying comments and forum posts they use rel = “ugc nofollow” tags. This stands for user-generated content.
Some External Websites
Nofollow links are best to use when you add external websites that you don’t trust. Linking to or from well-known websites adds credibility to your page or blog. However, linking to and from less popular or less credible websites does not necessarily do that much help.
How to create a Nofollow link
What must be taken important note of is the fact that nofollow links are not automatic, even on CMS webpages. The rel = “nofollow” tag must be manually added to the code. However, there are CMS (like WordPress) that have plug-ins to easily identify if a link should be a normal or nofollow link.
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