If you’ve been searching online for information about web presence marketing, digital marketing or SEO, you’ve probably heard the terms “nofollow” and “dofollow” mentioned a few times and that you only want to achieve “dofollow” links to increase your website’s link popularity and search engine rankings. However, it can be confusing to understand what all the fuss is about or how you can tell the difference between follow and nofollow links unless you have a background in web marketing.
The truth about dofollow links? There’s no such thing as a dofollow link. In fact, by default, all links are automatically dofollow. What this means is that if you place a regular HTML link on a website, the search engines will find this link and count it towards a backlink pointing to your website. On the other hand, a nofollow link is created by adding an additional nofollow HTML code to the link. The purpose of this code is to tell search engines not to recognize the link.
By this point, you’re probably curious what digital marketing benefits one could receive from telling the search engines not to recognize a link. There are, in fact, several excellent reasons for this:
Prevent spam
In an effort to prevent spam links, many websites that allow users to post content, such as Web 2.0 profiles, article directories, web forums in addition to most websites with comment systems have set links to be nofollow by default. This prevents the search engines from associating the website with undesirable links from spammers who often post massive amounts of links in these places in hope of getting some backlinks to their website.
Paid Links
Paid links are often used as a means of manipulating search engine results by gaming link popularity. These types of links are frowned upon by Google, and it’s a best practice to place a nofollow tag if someone has paid to place a link on your page.
In regard to building backlinks to your website in an effort to improve search engine rankings, focus on finding places that allow you to leave dofollow links. However, you should not completely overlook nofollow links as they can often help bring traffic to your website and diversify your backlink profile. If your backlink profile only contained dofollow links, it could look unnatural to the search engines.
To learn more about web marketing, digital marketing and SEO, visit our web presence marketing blog. Ready to get started with your web presence marketing campaign? Contact Post Launch today to find out how we can help your business be more successful online.
