Dofollow and Nofollow links
-
What is the difference between dofollow and nofollow links? I know that some sites/blogs only let you post nofollow links. In such a case how do I know if a comment I posted on a certain site will be a nofollow or dofollow? How about big traffic sites such as Huff Post. Do they only allow nofollow links?
-
Dofollow letting the bot crawl the target page
-
Thank you for the help Tom!
-
dofollow links pass "SEO Juice".
nofollow links do not pass "SEO Juice".
If your curious as to whether or not a particular blog allows for dofollow links, you can view the source code of the webpage using any common web browser. Find the link in question, and look to see if it includes "rel=nofollow". If that tag doesn't exist, then the link is dofollow.
-
Presuming that you're going to be linking to your website in the comment, I'd probably keep it limited to your own niche, but there's definitely room for a few comments from other industries.
If your comments are engaging, provide value to that blog's community and are not on blogs that are spammed to death, then you won't be doing any harm. The key is to comment something of worth and to integrate yourself into the community.
I always think of blog commenting as a way of establishing a community presence and to raise unaided brand awareness. Any subsequent link of page strength is an after-thought for me.
-
Thanks for the reply Tom, you were really helpful.
I had another question regarding the process of commenting on blogs/articles. Should I only comment on blogs/articles that are relative to my own niche or can I also comment and link from blogs/articles that are outside my niche?
-
Hi. Everything Tom said and I also wanted to add another extension to this - If you use Firefox this is for checking nofollow and dofollow links. When you add the extension, if you right click and select the nodofollow it hghlights nofollows in red and dofollows in blue. I use it all the time.
-
A dofollow link will pass the SEO strength, or "PageRank" of the page to the site that it links to. A nofollow link, in theory, will not do this. That's the main difference between the two.
By that logic, you may assume that a nofollow link will not help you rank for a keyword, but I don't think this is completely the case. Having a link to your site in any capacity may improve the "authoritativeness" of your site. SEOMoz uses Page Authority and Domain Authority to measure this and, while not an official Google metric, it stands to say that if you have 2 identical sites, one has 5 nofollow links from newspapers and the other has none, Google may well think that the site with the links has more authority or trust and may treat it more favourably. We all know how much Google loves to promote real brands.
As for seeing if a link is dofollow or nofollow, you can either inspect the element in the source code, or a convenient and hassle-free way to test is with the SEOMoz toolbar. That toolbar contains an option to highlight the links on the page - green links are dofollow and pink links are nofollow. If you check previous posts on any website, you should be able to see a pattern of whether they allow for dofollow or nofollow links - but in the end, this is at the discretion of the webmaster.
Hope this helps!
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Disavow links old links
We have built a lot of sites and there a few sites we no longer manage or want any association with. When I have looked at webmasters I can see 20 to 200+ odd links back to our site. The page however at source has no reference to our website. I have searched the code but there isn't anything. Is it safe to disavow these or just leave them?
Technical SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
How to Break Up a Page with Too Many Links
My client has a live page with 100+ links subdivided into 10 categories that each have great potential keyword targeting opportunities. I'd like to improve this page and my intuition is to split it into 11 pages, one page with links to all the others and a bit of content about each. Here's an example of the potential IA: Dog Rescue Groups
Technical SEO | | elenarox
Golden Retriever Rescue - description
Poodle Rescue - description
Cocker Spaniel Rescue - description
Poodle Rescue - description
Labrador Retriever Rescue - description
etc. --------- Golden Retriever Rescue
Link 1 - description
Link 2 - description
Link 3 - description Is this a good idea and will I see a big traffic drop overall at first? Also, these are all internal links, not external.0 -
Outbound Links
I have a page on upstrap-pro.com that provides weights of cameras and lenses. The user/buyer of my on-slip camera straps needs to know the weight his camera and lens to determine the proper pad size... large to small. We have put together a long list of the most popular customer cameras. The way it was done (by my daughter) was to also provide a via a link to dpreview.com which is an excellent site for camera information including specifications etc. My personal feeling about this is mixed. I can do it by having it open dpreview.com in a new tab but then the user/customer could still get distracted and go down the rabbit hole. On the other hand dpreview is such a good site that if they are new to photography and don't know about it, they should. I don't get a dime from dpreview. If fact I doubt they would ever link back to me because they do not write about camera straps. I hear mixed things about outbound links. In this file there are quite a few outbound links to dpreview to keep it consistent. I could do a nofollow on all of them but I read that this is the easy way out. Google is jump ball and I have no clue what Cutts and his merry men are going to decide is cool or not cool. I'd like some thoughts or options... Thanks... A small part of the file below. Canon EF 14mm f/2.8L II USM Wideangle prime lens Canon EF 22.8 oz 645 g Canon EF 14mm f/2.8L USM
Technical SEO | | Asteg0 -
Nofollow links if you have more than one link on a page to the same destination.
Hi, I am wondering if someone can confirm that its best practice to have nofollow on secondary links on a page. For instance the contact page may have a link in the navigation and in the the blurb down the page have another link to the contact page saying contact us here etc.. So in this instance i would put a nofollow on the secondary link in the blurb would this be the best way to impliment this. Many thanks Chris
Technical SEO | | InteractiveRed670 -
Would nofollowing the footer throw an unnatural blance between followed and nofollowed links?
I have been getting errors for too many on-page links. All the major navigation pages are found in links within the navigation tabs and are identical to the footer links. So my question is, would nofollowing the footer look unnatural and throw off the balance between followed and nofollowed links on the site and negatively effect SEO?
Technical SEO | | smilingbunny0 -
OSE - still showing me links are there when they are not?
Has anyone else had the issue for a couple of months now where ose is showing links that are live when they are not. I am doing seo for a big e-commerce website so it is important i can find out what the anchor text distribution is for the domain. How is this possible when ose shows me links which are not live? There's been 2 or 3 updates and still showing expired links in our back-link profile. This is very frustrating and has led me to see if anyone else can recommend an alternative which is more up to date? And yes before seomoz reply, i know you only update a certain percentage of the web.
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Is blogger could for building links
Hi i would like to know if blogger through google is a good way to build links and traffic. I have started to use blogger and would like to know if i am wasting my time using it for link building and traffic building for my main site
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860