Affiliate Marketing - What are No Follow links in SEO 2021?
If you’re new to SEO as a whole, you might be wonder what are no follow links?
Even if you just own a website so you can display your portfolio of work, it is still important to know what nofollow links are.
For the purpose of understanding how search engines such as Google may perceive you, and how this can affect your website as a whole.
Though, non follow links aren't as complicated as they first seem, I’m going to clear things up for you here...
In short; What are no follow links? They are links that act like normal links (they send you to where you need to go) but they do not count as a point in the page's favor and do not boost PageRank or help the page's placement in the SERPs.
Basically, they get no love, unlike dofollow links...which are links I'm going to talk about right now so you can better understand not to follow links.
What is a dofollow link?
When site pages (say your own website) gets an inbound like, say from affiliatingfromhome.com, the page where that hyperlink points to gets a little bit of SEO juice.
This is known as a do follow link.
(There is no do follow link html code or 'rel=dofollow' tag despite what you've read online. Do follow links are just links WITHOUT the 'nofollow' tag.)
The reason you get some SEO juice is because this website, vouches for your content because they are linking directly to it.
And the more people you have doing this, the better it is for your website in terms of SEO value.
Google takes note of all of these dofollow link sites.
And they come to this conclusion: If a lot of people are linking to a website or to a specific page, then it must be really, really good!
With this, they give you preference in their SERP’s as you have a lot of people 'vouching' for your content.
This is because, after all, Google wants to please their users.
And by showing them content that people already love (which has been 'proven' by link dofollow), they help to serve this promise to their users.
So then, what are no follow links?
Now you understand what dofollow links are, its time to give you an answer as to what is a nofollow link, specifically what is a no follow link in SEO terms.
A no follow link is a regular hyperlink that does not count as someone vouching for your content, thus it does not help you get a boost in SEO juice*.
*Although I’ve just stated that you get NO boost, you do get some, but it's absolutely minuscule.
Though, it does still give you a link to your content, so you could still get fresh new eyes to your work.
Essentially with a do not follow links tag attached to the hyperlink, you're telling Google: "No, don't count this one" when it looks at all the associated links on your website.
Though ultimately, nofollow tag links are still useful to you and your website overall since you still get a link from a website.
Basically: nofollow links in posts are better than no links at all, but it is nowhere near as good as the rel=dofollow tag - as I've already discussed.
Follow link > No-follow Link > No Link at all
Do nofollow links help SEO score?
Now you know whats a no follow link, its time to see if they're worth your time.
No-follow links are essentially there to tell Google not to ‘count’ it when they are looking for who you are vouching for and who is vouching for you aka. who you're sending SEO juice too and who's sending it right back to you.
So of course, if you're trying to get ranked, a not follow link doesn't really help your cause.
With this in mind, they seem pretty trash, right?
What is a nofollow links SEO value, if anything?
Ultimately, if you were looking at the no follow link attribute through the lens of 'SEO Juice' they would look pretty terrible, since I've already mentioned they give nothing if not very minimal juice to your website.
So to answer your question, no follow links in SEO terms are pretty bad, BUT they are not useless and are still worth having if that's all you can get since they help to balance out your website link profile and no follow backlinks can still bring new eyes to your content.
Do nofollow links have value at all?
Now you know what is a nofollow link and if it helps with your SEO score or not (it doesn't, and if it does it minimal) the next question I need to answer is this: "Do no follow through links have any value at all?".
Well looking past the fact that they offer no real SEO juice, they do add some value to your website if you can obtain them.
For instance, the no follow link attribute is still a link.
Which means people can still click that link, whereever they might be, and tunnel themsleves to your website where theyc an consume your content - this is obviously good because you get new eyes on your content and you could even gain a long term fan of your work.
This is obviously awesome value.
On top of this, despite no real nofollow link juice, they still beenfit your overall link profile as they help to keep your do follow links in balance.
I won't get in this to much here but remember this: For your website link profile, you'll want a good balance of dofollow links and nofollow links.
So even if you can only add nofollow links SEO to your website, then you should still be pretty happy about it!
Are no follow links important?
As mentioned above, even if you add a nofollow attribute to your HTML, at the end of the day, nofollow link SEO ARE STILL LINKS.
Which means they give you the benefit of having: A) a link from someone else website to yours - you can get new readers this way and B) you can add another (let's assume relevant) link on your websites link portfolio, which is always a good thing.
So yes, no follow links are still important to you and your website despite nofollow links SEO value being minuscule, as previously mentioned.
Are no follow links useless?
If you're wanting SEO juice right away, yes SEO link nofollow are completely useless to you, since they provide a minimal amount.
But as mentioned, they still have the potential to bring new eyes to your content (because it's still a link at the end of the day) and it can also help to build your bank link profile, which is something we know Google loves to see.
Can no follow links hurt you (and your SEO)?
SEO nofollow links are not going to hurt you or your website on their own, no.
As having nofollow links pointing to you can bring new eyes to your content and help buff out your back linking profile as discussed previously.
Though, if you have to many link nofollow SEO pointing to your website, compared to dofollow links then yes they can most definitely hurt you.
Especially if these links are coming from irrelevant sources - sites that aren't within your niche.
Why is this?
Well, to many links pointing to a website looks spammy in the eyes of Google, especially renofollow links.
At the end of the day, you just want to make sure you're always assessing your link building profile; making sure that you've only got no follow links SEO and dofollow links SEO from the right websites - and you're also using them correctly on your own website when you're pointing to other peoples work too...which is what I want to talk about next.
Do I need to add no follow links to my website?
Simple anwser: Yes.
The long answer is this;
From what we know about the no follow link meaning, you should have learned that using the rel nofollow link tag for hyperlinks means that you or anybody else can link to content across the web without giving your SEO juice away - you can still fulfill the intention with your backlink (showing content to back up your point) without shooting yourself in the foot (since you can avoid giving away SEO value to a potential competitor).
Let me give you an example; let's say you run a blog about running and one day, you decide to create an article about running shoes.
You want (and need to, so the reader as a good experience) to link to the running shoes you're talking about but by doing this without a link rel nofollow aka dofollow, you're going to be giving away SEO juice to someone else in your own niche.
Which means, you're essentially telling Google, 'Yep, this is my competitor AND their better than me'.
Obviously this is not ideal if you're looking to be the one stop shop for running content.
So, adding a rel nofollow tag allows you to link to relevant content whilst not giving up your SEO juice in its entirety.
When to use no follow links?
Generally you want to add nofollow to external links so you don't give SEO juice away to a website that you absolutely love and can truly vouch for (and it isn't one of your competitors).
Most people make all external links nofollow - but it's all really up to you as an SEO.
As for internal links, nofollow links should only be used if you're linking to pages on your website that you don't want to send juice too.
Aka, if you're linking to product/post category, these tend to not need juice, so 9 times out of 10 they won't be ranking for anything on Google anyway - so they don't need the link juice.
However, if you've got a piece of pillar content the world needs to see, use a dofollow aka use a normal link without the the no follow code applied.
Or if you're talking about a product that does really, really well for you, then send link juice its way with a do follow link!
If you're still wondering when to use a no follow link, I'm going to talk about internal nofollow links and nofollow external links below!
Should I use nofollow on external links?
YES, use nofollow for external links.
Although I've given you an example above, here is a little checklist to see whether or not you should be using the no follow link html code on external links:
- Nofollow external link if you sold the link.
- If someone paid you to post the content on your blog
- If you think you're going to be penalized for NOT using a nofollow (if the website you're linking to goes against the rest of the links you've sent out)
- The person who designed your website.
- Nofollow social links you have on your website.
- Nofollow redirects on your website.
When to use nofollow on internal links?
Nofollow links should only be used on internal links that you don't want to send SEO juice too; usually these links are things like post categories, widgets and content that isn't one of your main juicy pieces of work you don't want to waste your SEO power on.
It's as simple as that.
Otherwise, link away.
Should affiliate links be nofollow?
Affiliate links dofollow or no follow links affiliate?
Good question! Especially if you're an affiliate marketer like me, you've probably sat and pondered this one for a while!
There is nothing wrong with sending dofollow links to the affiliate sites you're using, they might even like the fact you're doing that because you're helping out their link profile - but at the end of the day, they are in the same niche as you.
Which makes them your competitor.
And if they're a competitor and you're sending them links without href nofollow, this could hurt your rankings.
Because of this, I'm going to suggest to add nofollow to affiliate links.
How to know if a link is no follow?
There are a few ways you can see whether or not a link is nofollow; you can either manually do it or you can download some sort of no follow extension or nofollow plugin to do it for you.
How to check nofollow links: The Manual Way
If you don't want to add nofollow plugin to your chrome, you can manually no follow link check by yourself (althoguh I would seriously recommend using a nofollow link checker plugin to make your life 10 times better).
Let say you're looking at a competitors website, and you want to get an idea of what their link profile might look like; who their giving juice to and who they are not giving juice too.
You will need to access the HTML code of the site and look out for the no follow links SEO tag to find this out.
Heres how you can do this:
Visit a website of your choosing, for this I'm going to go to Forbes and pick a random Article.
So, in this random Forbes article, we can see a few links.
Nothing out the ordinary, but how do you check if these links are nofollow or not?
We'll, if we right click one of the them, and click the option that says 'inspect' we'll get a another window that pops up on our screen which will be full of HTML code.
The next thing to do is to find this link on this new window, and we are looking for the nofollow meta tag 'rel=nofollow' which should follow it.
If we cannot find this code, this means the link in question is a dofollow link.
But as you can see from the image above, a nofollow tag has been applied, meaning that Forbes isnt sending SEO juice to the page they are linking too.
You can do this on any website of your choosing, go put it into practice yourself!
Using a nofollow Chrome Extension
By far the best way to check page for nofollow links is to use some sort of plugin or addon - and the one I will recommend is 'NoFollow' which is a chrome extension that you can get for FREE in just two clicks.
Essentially what this no follow link plugin does is that it outlines any and all links across the webt hat feature a nofollow - so you can figure out why your competitors are linking too and you can also check your own websites so you know if your nofollow tags are working as intended.
You will see any nofollow links with a red box around them, although you can turn it to a line so it can strike out nofollow links instead with this nofollow link plugin, if that's what you wish to do.
Using my Forbes example again, you can see the same links I inspected earlier have a link through them, which means finding out if links are no follow or not is much quicker when using this nofollow links plugin.
How to add nofollow to your links
Phew.
You've learnt plenty about nofollow: no follow links meaning, why its used and whether or not you should use it, among other things.
Now it's time to know how to no follow link for the purpose of your own website.
The most common way to add no follow to your links is by simply editing the HTML code of your website to feature the meta nofollow tag, but this isn't always possible, especially if you're someone who is using WordPress to run the back end of their website.
Luckily for you I'm going to show you both ways on how to make a link nofollow.
No follow link HTML code example
Below is a nofollow tag example you can use to add nofollow to social links or add nofollow to link of your choosing within your very own HTML.
As you can see, the HTML link nofollow code is pretty simple and can be applied to any link you currently have on your website.
Is this the only?
No!
Next up is how to make a nofollow link if you're using WordPress!
How to add nofollow link in WordPress
What if you can't access your HTML code for whatever reason? Or you're not as tech savy as other SEOs?
Well not to worry, I've got a great way you can add the no follow link code, without actually needing to add the nofollow HREF yourself!
In a previous bit of content on this very page, I linked to my favorite chrome extension.
And if you go look back you'll see that, that link has been set to no follow!
All you need to do to achieve this is to add a link of your choice to a piece of content and then right click that same link and you'll see the same box I do below:
Then you just want to make sure the 'set to nofollow' box has been checked and you're done!
To remove no follow, just come back to the link in the future and un-tick the same box.
Boom!
That's how you add nofollow to all external links or to any link across your site!
The Google no follow update: Sponsored Post Tag
In the early year of 2020, Google made a slight change to the nofollow tag and how you should be using it in certain circumstances.
Previously, if you featured a sponsored post on your website, you always had to add a nofollow tag to the link if you wanted to avoid being penalized.
But since the update, you need to add the sponsored tag aka rel="sponsored" to the link instead of add relnofollow tag.
If you're unfamiliar with this meta tag, here is an re=sponsored example:
So if you ever feature a post with a sponsored link, be sure to implement the tag I've shown you above to stay in Google good books!
Conclusion
Well, that's what nofollow is!
We've learnt that nofollow links are still important for your site, as although they give you no SEO juice (or give it away if you're back linking) they do still provide the opportunity to get views to your page, which in the long run could be really good for your website.
On top of this, nofollow links help to build out your link profile to something that looks way more legit than if you only sent out dofollow links - an aspect of SEO which is really important if you want to be in Google's good book and get your website ranked highly for your chosen SERPs!
What are No Follow links in SEO 2021? Find more on: https://www.affiliatingfromhome.com/
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