The Difference Between No-Follow and Follow Links: Which One Should You Use?
Table of Contents
In addition to guest posting on the UpCity blog, Harvest Moon Marketing is featured as one of the Top SEO Agencies in Canada. Check out their profile!
When it comes to ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs), most people know that link building is important. What many people don’t realize is that not all links are made equal. The outbound links you put on your site and the backlinks that point back to yours (in other words, your backlink profile) have an impact on how Google and other search engines see your site.
You need to be careful with who “you hang out with” on the web by letting Google know which websites you trust with follow and no-follow links. Understanding the difference between these two types of links is important for determining which type of link you should use on your site.
How Links Can Affect the SEO Of Your Site
Inbound vs Outbound Links
Links can generally be grouped into outbound and inbound links. Outbound links are links on your site that provide direct access to other web pages and content that may be relevant or helpful to readers but exists outside of the domain of your website. Inbound links, also known as backlinks, are links from other websites that direct users back to your website. When it comes to do-follow and no-follow links, you only have control over outbound links.
What is Link Juice?
When Google and other search engines judge your link profile, they consider both inbound and outbound links, but those aren’t the only link factors that contribute to strong search engine optimization. Dofollow backlinks and nofollow backlinks also contribute varying amounts of link juice.
Link juice is an informal term used to describe PageRank or how a website is able to send power and authority to other pages through links. Understanding link juice is an important part of optimizing your site to achieve the best Google search engine rankings. How much link juice (or PageRank) a page has is directly related to how well the site ranks.
Google believes all links should be earned, and paid links are almost always spammy. To prevent people from exploiting Page Rank or the passing of link juice through links, Google encourages webmasters to use the nofollow attribute.
Nofollow vs Follow Links
When you use a no-follow link, it is telling search engines not to follow that link. In this case, it does not pass any link juice. This means the page being linked to will not be given any of your website’s authority or ranking power.
No-follow links should be used for pages on other websites that you do not completely trust or may have questionable content. They are also often used when linking out to sponsored posts, affiliate programs, user-generated content (UGC), and ads as these types of links have been bought or coerced rather than earned.
No-follow links do have their benefits, however. For example, sites that buy link placement will still get referral traffic from that link back to their site. This increases the overall amount of people visiting their site and potentially seeing (and buying) their products.
You can create a no-follow tag by adding rel=”nofollow” to the link in the HTML. The link would look something like this <a href=”http://www.example.com/” rel=”nofollow”> anchor text </a>. If you are not comfortable coding, there are many plugins on Wordpress which will help you with this.
Follow links are the opposite: they tell search engines to follow them and transfer the authority from your site to the page being linked to. This can help that page rank higher in search engine results and helps you build up your own website’s authority if you link to credible sources and quality sites. Follow links should be used for pages that contain content you trust; this includes linking out to reputable websites, other blog posts or articles related to your industry, and any other pages that have high-quality content like .edu sites.
Sponsored Links
In 2019, Google introduced a new “sponsored” link attribute. This is used to identify link scenarios when money has changed hands. You can mark the link as sponsored for things like paid guest posts, links inserted into a guest blog post, links in paid directories, etc.
This is most often used by bloggers. It is helpful to add this attribute because it gives Google more context into the link and page as a whole, so they can rank it as they wish. That being said, it is not required per se by Webmaster guidelines. Since only Google recognizes this attribute it should be accompanied by a no-follow tag.
You can create a sponsored tag by adding rel=”sponsored” to the link in the HTML. The link would look something like this <a href=”http://www.example.com/” rel=”sponsored> anchor text </a>.
Hear From Industry Experts
Read the latest tips, research, best practices, and insights from our community of expert B2B service providers.
When to Use No-Follow Links
No-follow links can be used in a variety of scenarios; however, they are most commonly used in the following ways:
1. Links in comments or forums
It is likely you have seen spam blog comments on your or others’ websites that are totally unrelated to the content on the site. Comment spam is a black-hat tactic that spammers use to get a free backlink to their site, and it can also occur on forum posts, social media, and other places where UGC is allowed.
As a general SEO tip, since you have no control over what links people post in the comment section of your site or on forums you should work to anticipate and avoid this by marking all links in comments or forms as no-follow.
2. You are not sold on the quality of the site
No-follow links should be used in situations where you are unsure of the content or quality of a website. If you are not totally confident in the site you are linking to, then there is no harm in adding a no-follow tag. This helps to ensure you are protecting your own website’s authority and ranking power by not endorsing untrustworthy sites.
3. Someone has bought a link or sponsored post on your site
If someone buys a link or sponsored post on your site, then you should mark the link as no-follow. In 2013, Google declared that it was a violation of their Webmaster Guidelines to pass link juice onto links that had been bought or sold. They enforce this with their algorithms and even have a tool that lets people report websites that violate this policy.
Why Are No-Follow Links Important?
No-follow links are incredibly important when it comes to protecting against link spam and enhancing the overall quality of a website and search results. Without no-follow links, black-hat techniques would thrive, and search engines would have a hard time determining which sites contain valuable content and which sites simply contain irrelevant or low-quality content.
Choosing relevant and helpful sources is the best practice when adding links to your site. You should create content that is helpful and easy for both users and search engine crawlers to understand. Ensure you maximize your SEO benefit by properly using no-follow and do-follow links.
About the author
Alanna Brannigan
Alanna is the founder of Harvest Moon Marketing. She is dedicated to helping big-dreaming businesses find digital marketing success with SEO, email, and content marketing services.
Table of Contents
In addition to guest posting on the UpCity blog, Harvest Moon Marketing is featured as one of the Top SEO Agencies in Canada. Check out their profile!
When it comes to ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs), most people know that link building is important. What many people don’t realize is that not all links are made equal. The outbound links you put on your site and the backlinks that point back to yours (in other words, your backlink profile) have an impact on how Google and other search engines see your site.
You need to be careful with who “you hang out with” on the web by letting Google know which websites you trust with follow and no-follow links. Understanding the difference between these two types of links is important for determining which type of link you should use on your site.
How Links Can Affect the SEO Of Your Site
Inbound vs Outbound Links
Links can generally be grouped into outbound and inbound links. Outbound links are links on your site that provide direct access to other web pages and content that may be relevant or helpful to readers but exists outside of the domain of your website. Inbound links, also known as backlinks, are links from other websites that direct users back to your website. When it comes to do-follow and no-follow links, you only have control over outbound links.
What is Link Juice?
When Google and other search engines judge your link profile, they consider both inbound and outbound links, but those aren’t the only link factors that contribute to strong search engine optimization. Dofollow backlinks and nofollow backlinks also contribute varying amounts of link juice.
Link juice is an informal term used to describe PageRank or how a website is able to send power and authority to other pages through links. Understanding link juice is an important part of optimizing your site to achieve the best Google search engine rankings. How much link juice (or PageRank) a page has is directly related to how well the site ranks.
Google believes all links should be earned, and paid links are almost always spammy. To prevent people from exploiting Page Rank or the passing of link juice through links, Google encourages webmasters to use the nofollow attribute.
Nofollow vs Follow Links
When you use a no-follow link, it is telling search engines not to follow that link. In this case, it does not pass any link juice. This means the page being linked to will not be given any of your website’s authority or ranking power.
No-follow links should be used for pages on other websites that you do not completely trust or may have questionable content. They are also often used when linking out to sponsored posts, affiliate programs, user-generated content (UGC), and ads as these types of links have been bought or coerced rather than earned.
No-follow links do have their benefits, however. For example, sites that buy link placement will still get referral traffic from that link back to their site. This increases the overall amount of people visiting their site and potentially seeing (and buying) their products.
You can create a no-follow tag by adding rel=”nofollow” to the link in the HTML. The link would look something like this <a href=”http://www.example.com/” rel=”nofollow”> anchor text </a>. If you are not comfortable coding, there are many plugins on Wordpress which will help you with this.
Follow links are the opposite: they tell search engines to follow them and transfer the authority from your site to the page being linked to. This can help that page rank higher in search engine results and helps you build up your own website’s authority if you link to credible sources and quality sites. Follow links should be used for pages that contain content you trust; this includes linking out to reputable websites, other blog posts or articles related to your industry, and any other pages that have high-quality content like .edu sites.
Sponsored Links
In 2019, Google introduced a new “sponsored” link attribute. This is used to identify link scenarios when money has changed hands. You can mark the link as sponsored for things like paid guest posts, links inserted into a guest blog post, links in paid directories, etc.
This is most often used by bloggers. It is helpful to add this attribute because it gives Google more context into the link and page as a whole, so they can rank it as they wish. That being said, it is not required per se by Webmaster guidelines. Since only Google recognizes this attribute it should be accompanied by a no-follow tag.
You can create a sponsored tag by adding rel=”sponsored” to the link in the HTML. The link would look something like this <a href=”http://www.example.com/” rel=”sponsored> anchor text </a>.
Hear From Industry Experts
Read the latest tips, research, best practices, and insights from our community of expert B2B service providers.
When to Use No-Follow Links
No-follow links can be used in a variety of scenarios; however, they are most commonly used in the following ways:
1. Links in comments or forums
It is likely you have seen spam blog comments on your or others’ websites that are totally unrelated to the content on the site. Comment spam is a black-hat tactic that spammers use to get a free backlink to their site, and it can also occur on forum posts, social media, and other places where UGC is allowed.
As a general SEO tip, since you have no control over what links people post in the comment section of your site or on forums you should work to anticipate and avoid this by marking all links in comments or forms as no-follow.
2. You are not sold on the quality of the site
No-follow links should be used in situations where you are unsure of the content or quality of a website. If you are not totally confident in the site you are linking to, then there is no harm in adding a no-follow tag. This helps to ensure you are protecting your own website’s authority and ranking power by not endorsing untrustworthy sites.
3. Someone has bought a link or sponsored post on your site
If someone buys a link or sponsored post on your site, then you should mark the link as no-follow. In 2013, Google declared that it was a violation of their Webmaster Guidelines to pass link juice onto links that had been bought or sold. They enforce this with their algorithms and even have a tool that lets people report websites that violate this policy.
Why Are No-Follow Links Important?
No-follow links are incredibly important when it comes to protecting against link spam and enhancing the overall quality of a website and search results. Without no-follow links, black-hat techniques would thrive, and search engines would have a hard time determining which sites contain valuable content and which sites simply contain irrelevant or low-quality content.
Choosing relevant and helpful sources is the best practice when adding links to your site. You should create content that is helpful and easy for both users and search engine crawlers to understand. Ensure you maximize your SEO benefit by properly using no-follow and do-follow links.
About the author
Alanna Brannigan
Alanna is the founder of Harvest Moon Marketing. She is dedicated to helping big-dreaming businesses find digital marketing success with SEO, email, and content marketing services.
