SEO – DoFollow and NoFollow Backlinks

Today I want you to show you the difference between doFollow and noFollow backlinks. Before that, I want to talk about some basics of SEO.

SEO means Search Engine Optimization and the goal of SEO is to optimize the ranking in search engines (Google, Bing, etc.). The ranking algorithm of Google contains more of 200 different factors how a website is ranked. In this article, I will only talk about one of these factors, the backlink factor.

SEO backlink strategy

There are many sources which say that if you have a lot of quality backlinks to your site it will be ranked much higher. Backlinks can be comments or links you left on other websites. Not only the number of backlinks is important, also the quality of the backlinks is. One backlink on a high ranked website can be much more helpful than 10 backlinks on very low ranked websites.

In addition, it is very important that your backlink is a doFollow backlink.

What is a “doFollow-link”

Back in 2005, Google added a new element to a link, the “rel” attribute. The goal of this attribute was to reduce the number of backlink spammers. If a link has the attribute “rel: noFollow” this backlink will not be used to calculate the page rank. On the other side, if a link has the Attribute “rel=doFollow” the Google Crawler will follow that link.

Back in 2005, the strategy of many online entrepreneurs has been the following:

• Add a lot of backlinks = high ranking
• High ranking = many visitors
• Many visitors = a lot of money

Now this strategy has changed into the following:

• Add a lot of backlinks with the “doFollow” Attribute = high rankings
• High ranking = many visitors
• Many visitors = a lot of money

How does a “doFollow” link look like?

If a link doesn’t contain the “noFollow” attribute it is a doFollow link and looks like this:

<a href=”http://website.com”>Click</a>

As you can see, there is no attribute like “doFollow” or anything like that.

On the other side, a noFollow link looks like this:

<a href=”http://website.com” rel=”nofollow”>Click</a>

As you can see here, there has been added the attribute “relation” with the value “nofollow”. Now the Google Crawler will not follow this link.

WordPress likes Google

As I already mentioned, Google added this attribute to reduce the spamming of the comment section. WordPress followed Google and released the new version where every comment is signed as “nofollow”.

If you don’t like that you can use the free available WordPress plugin Dofollow. Do you need to be afraid to get spammed?

Not of you are using an anti-spam plugin like Antispam Bee which will remove all the spam comments. Also, you can take care on your own by only approving helpful comments. This is usually a very good idea.

How can I detect doFollow links?

As you know, it makes a lot of sense to add good “doFollow” backlinks so you will get ranked higher on Google etc. But how can you detect whether a link has a “doFollow” or “noFollow” attribute?

To do that we need a developer view of the website. The next step depends on your browser. I’m using Chrome as my favorite browser so now I’ll Show you how you can detect “doFollow” links with a Chrome browser.

At first, you have to find a link. Then click right on the element and select “inspect”. Now there should open new developer windows. In one of them, it says “elements” and there is some HTML code. In addition, there is one element marked. This should be the link you clicked on “inspect”. If the link is a “doFollow” link you should see something like this:

As you can see, there is only the relation “next” and no “nofollow”. And no “noFollow” means doFollow 😀 it is not as complicated as it sounds. If the link is a “noFollow” link you should see something like this:

Here we have the attribute “nofollow” and this link will not be followed by the Google Crawlers.

In addition, you can download a plugin for your browser like “noFollow” which will color all the nofollow links. This can be helpful, but also it can be very annoying with these different colors.

I hope this article was helpful and you now have a better knowledge when it comes to SEO. Did you understand everything? What do you think about banklinks, are they helpful?