Dofollow links are invaluable for website owners because they allow Google and other search engines to direct visitors straight to your blog or website. This type of link makes it easier than ever for potential customers to find you online.
PageRank is an important metric that includes links for awarding points – the more points, the better your website's rank and the better your SEOThese points are often referred to as "link juice" by online marketing expert teams because they can "flow" through websites with the right link structure.
The problem? Almost immediately after its introduction, it became a strategy for many unscrupulous marketers to score points in any way imaginable.
The easiest way to achieve this goal? By leaving comments on posts from popular websites that contain links back to the customers' websites, their profile is strengthened. The more reputable the linking website was—think respected retailers or news organizations—the greater the "link juice boost."
By default, these links were "dofollow," meaning they instructed search engines to follow the link back to the original page and increase its PageRank. To address the growing problem of spam links, the "nofollow" link was introduced: website administrators could add an HTML tag:
Link Text
… to every link on their website, thereby instructing search engines not to trace the link back to its destination, which in turn did not increase PageRank.
Today, dofollow links remain an important part of SEO strategy – a backlink from a reputable website can significantly boost PageRank and help brands stand out. However, the introduction of nofollow links offers website administrators more control.
Most comment sections now contain nofollow tags by default, and page creators can add nofollow tags to blog posts and other articles. Changing these links from nofollow to dofollow is easy, but requires the owners of the target pages to contact the administrators of the linking pages and request the change.
Dofollow links are essential for your backlink strategy. They are crawlable and can help search engines discover more of your content.
Furthermore, they pass link equity (or "link juice") to the target page, which is one of the most important Google ranking factors. While nofollow links only pass referring traffic, dofollow links pass both traffic and link equity, thus helping to improve both organic search rankings and traffic.
In most cases, no action is required to create a dofollow link. If your website is linked to from another website that doesn't add the nofollow tag, search engines will naturally find your page and increase your overall PageRank.
The same applies if you insert links on your own website. For example, you can include links to other reputable websites in your own content and allow search engines to follow those links.
If you have been asked by another brand to include their links on your site, or if you moderate blog comments, you should, where possible, enable automatic nofollow tags or ensure that all links contain the nofollow tag until you are sure it makes sense to follow the link.
This is especially important if other links lead to low-quality or keyword-stuffed content, as this can reflect poorly on your own website.
Simply put? When it comes to external links from reputable websites that point back to your site, dofollow is ideal. Links that lead outside your website and are linked from your own posts or attached to comments on your content should only be dofollow if the linking website is reputable and relevant.
Are you wondering whether a link is nofollow or nofollow? If it's your own website, you can check the HTML code on your CMS administration page to see if the nofollow tag is present. But what happens if the link comes from another, external website? Since you can't see or edit their code, you can't be sure whether the links are dofollow or nofollow.
In this case, it is worth using tools to check dofollow links to determine whether the links increase your PageRank or not.
Examples are:
The first tool is a web-based tool that checks entire pages for nofollow and dofollow links. MozBar is a Chrome extension, while SEOquake is available for both Chrome and Firefox.
Link Analyzer, on the other hand, is a standalone tool that doesn't require a specific browser. Each of these tools is free and works by tracking all links to your website to determine whether they are nofollow or dofollow, and then reporting the results.
The answer here depends on two factors:
Where does the link lead, and what are the advantages of choosing dofollow? Ideally, dofollow links direct search engines to current, relevant, and accurate content, which in turn provides "link juice" to both the external website and your own website.
There can be cases where reciprocal dofollow links are a good idea, especially if you want to increase your website's traffic and the external website has a similar ranking to your own. Ideally, you should use a mix of nofollow and dofollow links on your site to ensure that search engines don't simply view your content as a vehicle for PageRank points.
There is no definitive answer here, as search engine spiders crawl a large number of pages every day. Dofollow links are typically recognized by Google within two to four days of being published.
If your website has low traffic and the dofollow links you create or receive come from similarly small websites, it might take longer for PageRank to recognize these links. However, if you are fortunate enough to receive a backlink from a high-ranking website, you can see the benefit within just a few days.
Dofollow links remain an important aspect of SEO and search engine ranking efforts, but they must be used strategically to achieve substantial benefits.
To find out if a link is "dofollow" or "nonfollow," simply right-click on the link and select "Inspect" in your browser. This will open the page's rendered code and highlight the relevant element. If there is no "nofollow" attribute, search for dofollow links in your browser.
Instead of manually checking the links, you can use the Ahrefs SEO Toolbar to highlight all dofollow links (or any other type of link) on the page.
How do people find dofollow links to your website?
When checking backlinks to your website, you should differentiate between dofollow and nofollow links. However, Google tools (Google Search Console) don't allow this.
To find out which of your backlinks are dofollow, go to Ahrefs Site Explorer and access either the Backlinks report or the Referring Domains report. There you can apply a filter only for "dofollow" links.
Search engines like Google treat dofollow links as the "votes" of a page. For this reason, many high-quality dofollow backlinks are important for search engine optimization and search engine ranking.
However, this doesn't mean that website owners should focus solely on building dofollow links for their site. Nofollow links are also an important part of a natural backlink profile and should therefore not be neglected.
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