Backlinks For SEO : What Is Dofollow and Nofollow in SEO

Backlinks For SEO : What Is Dofollow and Nofollow in SEO

DoFollow Backlinks

Dofollow backlink passes the authority (link juice) from the referring website to the linked website. Crawlers count these links and their anchor texts. Therefore, dofollow backlinks directly influence your backlink profile because they send a signal to search engines what is the linked website about.

NoFollow Backlinks

Nofollow backlink does not pass the authority because the tag rel=”nofollow” in the HTML code of the website tells crawlers not to follow these backlinks. Google does not transfer the authority or anchor text across nofollow links.

New link attributes

On September 2019, Google announced two new link attributes as an evolution of the nofollow attribute to have new ways to identify the nature of links. For almost 15 years “nofollow” was the only way for flagging sponsored or advertised links.

How to check the backlink for seo is dofollow or nofollow?

There are a few ways to do this:

1. Use browser SEO extensions
2. Check the HTML code
3. Use backlink analysis tools

SEO extensions

Various browser extensions will help you to detect dofollow or nofollow backlinks. For example, in the one by Ubersuggest, you can see it both for the outbound links of the website and referring websites.

HTML code

If you know where the backlink is placed, the easiest way is to take a look at the HTML code of the referring website:

1. Right-click on the anchor text and select “Inspect” or “Inspect element” (it can differ depending on the browser) or press “Ctrl+Shift+I” in Chrome.

2. Check the code. If you don’t find the tag rel=”nofollow”, you can be calm because the link is dofollow.

Backlink for SEO analysis tools

If you are analyzing your own or competitor’s link profile and don’t know what backlinks the website has, neither their anchor texts nor placements, you will find this information in backlink analysis tools such as LinkMiner.

Is it bad to have nofollow backlinks for seo ?

No, it’s not. Earning dofollow links from authoritative websites is better since the tag rel=”nofollow” tells crawlers not to pass the authority. On top of that, an optimized anchor text gives a keyword relevance signal to the crawlers.

The type of the links depends on your backlink for seo campaign:

1. Earn backlinks from authoritative websites
2. Get a lot of referral traffic

The first option means that you will seek dofollow backlinks for seo. Generally, if you are doing an email outreach or other link building techniques, the other side should understand that you are not interested in nofollow backlink for seo.

Make sure to check your DF/NF ratio and the overall trend of your backlinks regularly or at least from time to time. Majority of the links earned naturally tend to be dofollow but seeing the nofollow ones gives you an opportunity to contact those people to change them to dofollow.