If you’re committed to selling your products and services as effectively as possible, it’s crucial to ensure that as many visitors as possible come to your website. Making your website easily discoverable via Google is a top priority. To achieve this, you’ll need to implement various strategies that fall under search engine optimization (SEO). After all, a good SEO strategy usually leads to a higher ranking in Google.
One of the aspects of a comprehensive SEO strategy is link building. Link building involves acquiring backlinks on external websites. These backlinks then direct visitors to your website. In general, the more backlinks you have, the better your website ranks in Google, although the quality of your backlinks (and the external sites where they appear) is also extremely important.
Furthermore, it is essential for your SEO whether backlinks are follow or no-follow links. There are significant differences between the two. If you read the rest of this article, you’ll understand what those differences are.
What are follow links?
A backlink, or a link to another website, is also viewed by Google as a kind of recommendation. The recommended site thereby improves its own ranking. When you have such a backlink placed on an external site, it is typically a follow link, also known as a do-follow link. After all, you want Google to track this link and factor it into your ranking.
What about nofollow links?
To a website visitor, a nofollow link looks essentially the same as a follow link, with one key difference: a nofollow link has code added to it that prevents the backlink from being “picked up” by Google. As a result, a nofollow link does not, in principle, contribute to your SEO or your Google ranking. You can set a nofollow link in WordPress on a per-link basis:
When to use nofollow links?
If a nofollow link does not contribute to better discoverability, why is this type of link still used fairly regularly? There are various reasons or situations for using nofollow links:
- For paid traffic or links via affiliate marketing.
- For outbound links on your website to social media channels such as Facebook and Instagram:
- If it’s too obvious that you’re paying to buy more backlinks—which may also be of poor quality—Google may give your website a lower ranking instead of a higher one. By adding nofollow tags to these links, you can prevent this counterproductive effect.
- If, for any reason, you post an article on your website with a negative tone about another company, it is best to set any link to that company’s site to “nofollow.” If you do not, they will benefit from your backlink. That is likely not the intention in this situation.
- Interested consumers can still easily find their way to your website via a no-follow link. For the consumer, there are essentially no noticeable differences between follow and no-follow links. This way, you can continue to build your brand awareness and increase the number of website visitors.
- If you have placed a link to another website on your site, and the other site does not link back to your page, you can set the link you placed to “nofollow.”
