You have all probably come across the expression “do follow” and “no follow” many times in your online travels, but do you really know what the expression means?
What are do follow links?
“do follow” are links to your site from another which Google recognises and adds to your sites overall ranking power. Many refer to this as “Link Juice”. In theory the more of these links you have, and the higher the Page Rank of the referring site the better.
However one of Google’s goals is to promote good content which is developed in a natural way and from sites who do not try to manipulate the system as many do with automatic link building software. So for this reason there is a point at which you can have too many links produced too quickly.
The official number of links per day that is acceptable is highly debated and in reality unknown to the general public…………I digress so let’s get back to topic and I will continue this theme after I have explained “no follow”.
“no follow” are links from websites where the owner/webmaster has added the “no follow” command to all outbound links. This tells Google to disregard the links from their when calculating another linking sites search engine ranking. Basically they take away the “link juice”
Why would they make their site do follow?
You ask. Well it’s all personal preference. Sites which are “do follow” tend to attract slightly more people because website owners can gain link juice from these sites.
Either through forum signatures, profile links, comments and many other ways they can place a link back to their own site.
By the way, with the premium commentluv plugin, as a website owner, you can have more control over what to allow as do follow and no follow links. To know more read this post:
Premium Commentluv Plugin: Genius Features You Shouldn’t Miss
However the flip side is that in many webmaster’s views these visitors are potentially worth less than a normal visitor because they may have an ulterior motive and may have little to no interest in the site itself. More so if the site has a high page rank.
Why would you want a link that has no “link Juice”?
This is also a hot debate in general with no real closure. Taking into account Google’s need for fresh relevant content and that they like to see backlinks from referring sites build in a natural and organic way.
It would seem very unnatural to have all the inbound links to be either “do follow” or “no follow” but rather a mixture would be a much more organic likelihood.
How To Tell If a Website Is “do follow” or “no follow”
So now that we have explained the “why” let’s move on to the “How”.
There are many ways to check if a link is “nofollow” but to keep it simple let’s stick to the one i use and one alternative:
1. Check the page source
Goto the page you want to check:
- “view the page source” by right clicking with your mouse
- find a HTML link to the site that is being linked to from the site
- look for something like a rel=”nofollow” href=”http://mysite.com/” or to see link in full html… <a href=”forumdisplay.php?do=markread” rel=”nofollow”>Mark Forums Read</a>
The default setting for links is “do follow” so if you do not see the “nofollow” command the link is “do follow”. The example above would be NoFollow and there won’t be any link juice passing backlinks from this site.
Search tip: When viewing the page’s source code, go to the Edit menu at the top and click on find, a search box will appear and you can look for keywords in the link – it makes it a lot easier to sift through what could be a huge amount of HTML.
2. Use an Addon:
You can download an Addon for Google Chrome – This is only one example of a free tool you can use (no affiliation). I have not used this myself as i find the first method to be quick and easy but it’s always nice to have options if anyone has tried some other tools which work please feel free to get involved and report back.
To close I would personally recommend that you build your links by using a mixture of both “do follow” and “no follow” to help your links hold to a more natural overall appearance. I would also suggest adding some .EDU & .GOV links into the mix where possible.
High PR is also a benefit when link building. A free tool you can use to check a sites PR is PRChecker. I hope you all find this helpful and welcome your thoughts and ideas.
Matt Kerr is the Co-Owner of The Guru Training Academy. He teaches newcomers to the IM business how to create WordPress websites & develop these sites into long lasting and successful businesses. We use a combination of video & text/picture tutorials and one to one live mentoring. Visit Guru Training Academy!
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It’s not that hard at all to identify if a site is dofollow or nofollow with the addon. It’s just a click of the mouse. DoFollow links will be shown in blue color while NoFollow is red. I do agree with you that we need to have a balance of backlinks in DoFollow and NoFollow, it’ll look more natural that way. Good piece of writing Matt.
Thanks Peter.
I think it’s going to be even more important in the next few months. google has just made a load more changes and has lots more on the way. Also they have just negated some of the strength of anchor text. Not taking away from it’s importance just reducing the strength a bit.
Yep. It’s good to know how to tell the difference. However it’s not something to really worry about too much. Just build from good sites and good content
Matt,
Certainly important stuff of figruing out the differnce between nofollow and dofollow. Personally I use the nodofollow plug in on firefox.
I would say, though, that you can over do this. Google does like to see a varied link profile, so SOME commenting on nofollow is expected and not a bad idea. But certinaly I like to do the bulk of it on dofollow and commentluv blogs.
Agreed. As i mentioned above a good mix is needed.
Plugins are great and of course an easy option. My aim here is more a back to basics lesson so people can do this manually if they wish. If the plugin crashes or is offline for a day they have an alternative.
Plus the more you understand about source code the easier it is to learn the next step.
Do follow links are the requirement to get ranking in organic searches under particular keywords. Each browser has related plug-in to differentiate between do follow and no follow.
They are and yes there is. Thankyou for your very helpful input Azam
Sometimes I wonder whether there is or isn’t any value in no follow links at all. I can’t help but wondering… surely Google is cutting off its nose to spite it’s face by ignoring such a large % of links on the net.
They don’t actually “ignore” the links Simon. They still crawl, index and rank those pages. The links to your sites from those pages however add no strength to your sites ranking.
do follow links helps google to find out internal link of a website…where no follow links can’t.
Lol thanks for your input as well Mohd
I think anything more or less having there on impact relying only on dofollow it’s a bit risky because it just pin a Google spam checker alarm.I think balanced strategy is more helpful and safe because Google give more importance to natural links instead of spam bots.
Yes it is risky doing all of one type. A good mix is imperative.
I think the exception to the rule would be if you used social networks and nothing else for your marketing. In that case google would have no problem with all do follow as they are now leaning more towards social networks as a major authority.
You explained this very well, thanks for the tips and I will be more aware of these links.
You are more than welcome Michael.
i think there a huge explaining on what is the important on nofollow link. Eventough, it always better to have dofollow linke, we always need nofollow link . At least, it can drive traffic — the one thing more important than pagerank
Thanks for your input tokoonline. Not 100% sure exactly what you are trying to convey though.
Even though no follow links don’t pass on page rank, they are still valuable in getting indexed as well as followed by visitors. In that sense it’s at the very least promotional for your blog.
Agreed. Almost all links add value of some sort to your site as whole.
I had heard that Google no longer pays any attention to ‘no follow’ rel tag - but I do not know if that is true or not. Has anyone else heard that too?
They are aware and do pay attention to all links. As i mentioned above though they do not add ranking power to your site from no follow links.
They are, in my opinion, however a vital part of your sites info-structure as a whole.
I think both link are equally important in SEPR, according to google. just importance i.e link juice passing to link varies.
They are indeed Krishna. Thanks for joining the convo
Hi Matt,
a very nice summary of the do-follow/no-follow-question, something that is overrated in my eyes because it’s all about natural link-building as you note. And the owner of a do-follow-blog can make it all no-follow within seconds. So nothing to worry about too much because we have only influence on what others do.
Thanks for sharing your insights.
Take care
Oliver
My pleasure Oliver. Thank you for the comments.
Gagan says
Hi - Am finding most of the blogs , forums as ‘no follow’ - does it still make sense to leave comments on no follow - rather spend energy n time on generating do follow backlinks from Articles.
Do both but lean in favor of do follow. It’s healthy to have a mixture of both. All just one type and you will stick out like a sore thumb to google.
Well Thanks for sahring useful post! I think both links are important but do-follow will pass your pagerank and search position with your backlink keywords. No-follow link can increase your blog traffic like comments on blogs, forum posting. One thing more Yahoo and Bing search collect both links no matter your link is do-follow or no-follow.
Thank you.
I glad you found it useful Ajnabii
Owen Richason says
“…there is a point at which you can have too many links produced too quickly.” Google’s Matt Cutts himself has reiterated time and again that search engines prefer natural and organic to machine contrived efforts-whether it’s link building or content.
Agreed Owen. Always best to manually build your backlinks. Not sure what that comment has to do with the post above though.
Hi matt,
Pleased to meet with you, I always check the link do / nofollow using firefox addon called NoDoFollow.
cordyceps says
I found many nofollow links be showed at the “links to your site” in google webmaster tools.So,these nofollow links will benifit the page rank,will they?
They do indeed. As mentioned above Google wants natural links coming in so you cannot have all of one type as there is just no way on earth that would be natural.
William says
Its getting tougher and tougher to get back-links especially now with the penguin update. It wouldn’t surprise me if most if not all article directories and web 2.0 properties would go no-follow. Ive have been struggling with this whole S.E.O thing, and now its become much more complicated. Truth is, i feel a little faint of heart and I’m at the point of almost quitting this whole internet business thing.
Hi William,
I fully understand where you are coming from and the frustrations of SEO. Don’t give up yet though. You may be just on the crest of the hill.
If you need help we can teach you good SEO practice. Panda is not as scary as you may think. If you would like a chat just let me know.
Very essential stuffs indeed, Matt! I have heard about that dofollow and nofollow links are so important for the site search rankings. Google pay attention for both dofollow and nofollow links. Thanks for published an important SEO conception.
At first I had a brief idea about do follow and no follow but after reading your engaging article I agree that with Google regularly making changes and updates,,,these small things also matter a lot..thanx Matt for sharing
You are welcome Shitij. It’s not something you need to worry about too much as both are relevant but it is a good thing to know.
Do follow links are the requirement to get ranking in organic searches under particular keywords, thanks for posting this.
Dofollow links automatically create one of the top backlink pyramid that increase organic SERP.
Google no longer pays any attention to ‘no follow’ rel tag
Read more: Do Follow or No Follow? How to Tell The Difference and Why Should You Care?
Hi matt
Is there a huge difference in googles eyes then about do follow and no follow surely if they want it natural and want to see no follow as well then they are still important as well. I hadn’t really thought much about it until now. Time to delve a bit deeper.
So for that thanks lee
Dofollow and nofollow links are both very important, But we must be able to use them for good SEO.
Wonder full post.
Most people thinks that Nofollow backlinks are the waste. But if you are concentrating in only generating dofollow backlinks than Google will penalize you.