If you’re working on getting backlinks for your site to improve your page ranking, you should understand the difference between DoFollow vs NoFollow links.
They’re important in determining what happens to your external links and the links going to your site.
What are DoFollow and NoFollow Links?
In WordPress, all in-post and in-page links are set to DoFollow by default.
DoFollow means that search engines will follow the link and factor it in as part of their PageRank algorithm. In other words, the website you’re linking to will get an increase in PageRank. Learn more about PageRank in our SEO for Bloggers guide.
NoFollow, however, is used to tell search engines that a specific hyperlink should not be used to influence page ranking. Search engines don’t follow NoFollow links.
Depending on the purpose of your hyperlink, you’ll need to decide whether to use DoFollow or NoFollow for your hyperlinks.
When to use DoFollow links
If a site you’re linking to is relevant to your blog or blog article topics, that’s when you should make sure that the hyperlink is DoFollow. Google and other search engines love it when site owners link to relevant sites using appropriate anchor text. Ensuring that your links are DoFollow will also increase the page ranking of the site you’re linking to!
If you’re exchanging backlinks with other blogs, make sure that they give you a DoFollow backlink as well!
When to use NoFollow links
If the site you’re linking to isn’t relevant to your blog in any way, that’s when you should use NoFollow links.
For example, at Aspiring Bloggers’ service page, we have a testimonial section with links going to websites we’ve created for our clients. We made sure these links are NoFollow.
Since we’re a blog that offers blogging tips and most of our clients’ sites are travel/health blogs, there’s no reason for us to use DoFollow because we’re completely unrelated topics.
Let’s say we forget to use NoFollow for those client sites. Well, it can actually end up hurting our site’s ranking because search engines will wonder why we’re linking to other sites when those sites don’t really have anything to do with us.
Now that you understand the difference between NoFollow vs DoFollow links, it’s important to remember to set links as NoFollow when it applies.
How to add a NoFollow link in WordPress
Method 1
The easier method to implementing NoFollow would be to download the Rel NoFollow Checkbox plugin below or find it in Plugins > Add New and install it.
Plugin | Rel NoFollow Checkbox
This plugin creates a checkbox that allows you to enable NoFollow when you’re creating a hyperlink. It’ll save you the hassle of having to edit HTML yourself to transform a link into NoFollow.
Method 2
Add “rel=”nofollow” inside of the <a href> attribute of your hyperlink. You’ll need to use the text editor for that instead of the visual editor.
For example, if you this is a normal hyperlink for Aspiring Bloggers:
<a href=”http://www.aspiringbloggers.com”>Aspiring Bloggers</a>
This is with NoFollow:
<a href=”http://www.aspiringbloggers.com” rel=”nofollow”>Aspiring Bloggers</a>
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