Affiliate Marketing - What is a Do Follow link in SEO 2021?
When you start your own website the goal is to rank highly on SERPs so you can bring in lots of traffic.
That is of course if you want to actually monetize the words you write.
Which if you’re living in 2021, you’re practically leaving money on the table if you don’t.
One of the ways you can do this, amongst many which I talk about on this very website, is by having dofollow links pointing to your content.
But what is a dofollow link in SEO?
Dofollow links are essentially a vouch for content.
If someone has a do-follow link pointing towards your content, they're essentially saying to Google: "Yep, this is awesome content and you should look at this, Mr.Google!"
The more people that do this, the better it is for your site.
Since this increases your SEO rating and helps your site to be favored over others on Google SERPs.
In this article, I’m going to go over what DoFollow links are in a little bit more detail, why they matter, and how you can get them.
First, what is a no follow link?
A nofollow link is just like a dofollow link except it provides no real link juice to the targeted page.
Using this tag means that you're not vouching for the pages content, so Google doesn't associate you very much with the page you're back linking too - which is good for you if you're mentioning a competitor or somewhat of an irrelevant page (such as a widget page or a category page) on your website.
Because of this, in some webmasters eyes it is considered to be a 'useless' link when looking at the grand scheme of things.
Of course, this isn't entirely true.
The SEO value you get from a nofollow link is minimal, yes, but at the very least you get to flesh out your link profile AND have the poetical of getting new eyes to your content, so it isn't all bad.
So then, what is a dofollow link?
Now that we've got nofollow out the way, what is a follow link?
Dofollow links are set by default as soon as you link to a piece of content on the web - there is no special tag for them like there is dofollow.
Search engines crawl any and all dofollow links they find on your website, and ‘follow’ them to the linked website.
(vise versa when someone links to YOUR website)
The link juice is then passed these dofollow links.
Do dofollow links matter?
Yes - knowing what do follow means now, you should understand that they 100% matter.
Ifmy site, affiliateingfromhome.com linked to your blog, then you would get link juice from me.
The reason this is important is that Google sees this as me vouching for your content.
And the more people who are vouching for your content, the better, in the eyes of Google.
But you can't just get links dofollow from anywhere and get rank 1 on the SERP's you want.
No-no, the follow links you’re receiving have to make sense in terms of relevancy.
This is something that changed a long time ago.
SEO's were once pointing any links to their own websites when PageRank first came out to manipulate the search engines into giving them top ranks on the SERPs.
So Google had to change this as bad content was getting ranked on their SERPs.
Now as a webmaster, you need to be much more selective of the do follow links in SEO you give and receive.
Or you could see a huge hit to your overall SEO rating.
In short: a dofollow link helps you rank for your chosen keywords much easier!
How to get dofollow links
Now you know what is a do follow link and why they are important, I want to talk a little bit about how you can actually get them so they can begin increasing your sites SEO value.
Create great content and links will come naturally
One of the easiest ways to get do follow links in SEO is by simply writing good quality content.
Content that is so good people will just have to link to you.
Writing good content is something you should be doing anyway, regardless of what your SEO goals are.
Fact is, if your content is so good, people are naturally going to be talking about it.
This means you can get dofollow links pretty much effortlessly.
This only has a snowball effect too.
The more people that talk about it, the more people see your content, and even more, people talk about it.
This is by far the best way to get dofollow links for your website.
Google will also love you if you do it this way too.
Interact with other blogs in your niche
This will lead to my next point, but interacting with other people's blogs could land you valuable dofollow links.
Some webmasters actually grant users dofollow links when they comment on their blog as a way of saying thank you for interacting.
Doing something like this also helps them too, since you’re engaging with their content, which is something Google love to see.
Now, this can be quite a rare occurrence as most websites have their comment sections turned off.
Largely to reduce spam on the site.
But if there's a site you regularly visit because of its awesome content, I’d encourage you to leave a thank you comment if you can.
Even if you don't get a dofollow link as I've mentioned here, at least you'll be getting your name out there in your community.
Which will be invaluable for the future of your business.
Write guest posts for other sites
One of the other ways you can get dofollow links is by posting content on other people's sites.
Now of course you can’t just hack into someone's blog and brute force your content upon their site.
You'll have to get in touch with them to see if they'd be open to something like this.
Whether you’re also wanting them to write on your site, or you just want to be part of an awesome blog like there's, people are usually happy for you to write on their website.
A good bit of sucking up goes a long way here too since sites can be getting hundreds of emails a day.
But why would they want to give you a dofollow link?
Simply put, they get something out of it too, free content!
Though be warned, this sort of thing is a bit of a grey area in the eyes of Google.
There is nothing wrong with writing content for other people, as long as no money has been exchanged.
Also, one thing to keep in mind when you're trying to get in touch with these website owners;
Know what you're getting yourself into.
If you're writing for the purpose of getting a do follow links and not just to get your name out there, make sure you're getting what you want!
Don’t be afraid to ask preciously what you're getting in return for writing high-quality content for their blog.
(Don’t) Buy links
Understanding the dofollow link meaning might have you now desperate for links, but don't bother buying them.
One of the ‘bad’ ways you can go about getting dofollow links is by just buying them from other site owners.
Essentially, you find a website that you like (because it has lots of SEO juice) and you request for them to link back to you, in return for cash.
Now I want to make it clear I am absolutely against this method, mostly because it's a rip-off, but because it's against Google terms.
And I can not consciously recommend something like this to you without telling you it's a bad idea.
It's your website at the end of the day, do what you want, but don't be surprised if Google wipes your site from existence like the astroid did to the dinosaurs.
Now obviously I’m not going to point you in any directions on how you could do this for your own website, as I think it's a foolish idea.
But I thought it was worth a mention because you’re going to see other users mention it.
So it's worth telling you right now it's a BAD idea and you SHOULD NOT do it.
Instead, do what I suggested in the first place.
Write killer content and people will have no choice but to give you free dofollow links.
Do dofollow links help SEO score?
If you understand do following meaning, this one should be obvious.
As mentioned, yes, having dofollow links pointing to you will help massively with your SEO score since the websites back linking to you are vouching for your content, which as discussed is something that Google takes into consideration when they are ranking your pages on the SERPs.
Essentially, the more dofollows you have, the more chance you have of taking the number 1 spot.
Of course there are plenty more SEO signals that they look at, but this is a huge one if you want to leap frog over your competitors and steal their views in no time.
Are dofollow links important?
Yes, for the reasons stated above - they help you rank on SERPs and steal your competitors audience - dofollow links are a super improtant if you want to achieve your SEO goals.
You need to make sure you're doing all you can (using the tips outlined above) to get dofollow links pointing directly to your website so you can make those SEO gainz.
Do i need to add do follow links to my website?
I've talked about getting dofollow links pointing to your website, but I have yet to mention featuring dofollow links on your own website.
As we've learnt, links are dofollow by default there is no 'link rel dofollow' like there is for the no follow tag, which means that if you've linked to anything ever, whether its on your own website or not, you've' more than likely got dofollows featured already.
But now you've got some new knowledge on dofollow, it would be ideal to know when you should be featuring follow the link hyperlinks and when you should be subbing them out for nofollow links instead...
Let's cover that now.
When to use do follow links?
Do follow links, whereever they point to, give link juice to the page.
Because of this, you might be giving away your link juice to a competitor, because you're talking about an affiliate item they feature.
This obviously isn't ideal since, as established, they are a competitor.
Meaning you're essentially telling Google "they are better than me at what we both do, so consider their content to be more important than mine". Making Google favor their work over yours in the SERPs.
So its important to be selective with who you send links to.
For a competitors, I would always use a nofollow link - ideally you wouldn't link to them at all but sometimes you NEED to.
On your own website, when we are talking about internal linking, you'll want to do follow your most important pages and nofollow the rest.
These 'important pages' can be anything from pieces of pillar content you want everyone to see or products that do really well for you in terms of eCommerce value.
Again, there is no special tag you need to apply like reldofollow or rel dofollow or something like that - dofollow is applied by default once you hyperlink anything.
How to check do follow link
There are two ways you can check if a link on your website or anyone elses is do follow: manually or with a backlinks checker extension.
I'll show you how to do both, although a link back checker is the easiest and will save you a lot of stress.
Manually check for dofollow links
Firstly, you'll need to visit a website of your choosing, for this example I'm going to go to Joe Biden's Twitter and use the link in his bio for this example.
Find a link you want investigate, right click it and click the 'inspect' button - you should see another box pop up on the right handside (if you're using Chrome) that is full of HTML and perhaps CSS.
It should look something like this:
Now, you're going to want to find the link in the HTML (the bit on the right side) and see whether or not it has any rel tags such as "nofollow" or "sponsored" if it does not, then great, this means its a dofollow link!
If it does however have any of these tags, then it is not a dofollow link.
Pretty simple right?
Well this task gets even easier if you're using a do follow link checker extension.
Use a Chrome extension to find dofollow links
There are plenty of backlink dofollow checkers out there, but the one I've stood by far quite a few years now (this extension is how ) is 'NoFollow', a Google Chrome extension.
It works like this:
You can go to any website on the web, and see whether or not a link is dofollow or nofollow by simply looking at the link on screen.
If there is no red box around the link, then it is a do follow and if there is, then its a nofollow.
If you're a visual learner, here is an example of how this do follow nofollow link checker works:
As you can see there are two links on this page, one of them has a redbox round it - meaning that this one is a nofollow and the other one, without the red box, is a dofollow link.
Pretty simple right?
Well that's because it is! No need to inspect elements to find out whether or not your favorite websites or a competitors are hanging out do follow links to places, you can simply see it as soon as you go to their page.
How to create a dofollow link
As I've mentioned plenty of times already, dofollow links do not have any sort of special tag you need to hardcode with your links, like nofollows need.
So there is no need to find a dofollow link generator or anything like that.
Links are dofollow by default, so its easy to remember how to add dofollow link in your content.
So ask long as you're attaching a link to your text, then you're giving out backlinks to a website you're linking too - which can be good or bad for you, depending on where you're sending them.
Below you can some dofollow html, as well as nofollow and sponsored post tags.
How to change nofollow to dofollow in
Using the previous image, you can easily change a nofollow to a dofollow by simply removing the 'rel="nowfollow" tag from the html.
Here is dofollow and nofollow HTML code side by side so you can see the difference between the two:
How to add do follow link in WordPress
If you're wondering howt o make link dofollow in WordPress, then you're in the right place - this entire website using the WordPress backend so I've been in this situation before!
By default, links are set to dofollow, so there is no need to 'add' anything!
BUT - your links might have been set to nofollow by mistake, so I'm going to show you a way on how you can check your links in WordPress to make sure they are set to link dofollow SEO correctly.
Go to any post on your WordPress backend, and find a link in the piece of content.
What you're going to do is left click the link, and an option box should pop up, just like this:
Now, you're going to want to make sure 'nofollow' is not checked.
And that's it. Your link is dofollow!
Conclusion
Time to wrap this thing up.
Dofollow links are creating by default as soon as you add a hyperlink to a piece of text or an image, so need for any special link dofollow code or link dofollow attribute or anything like that.
These same links will pass on SEO juice to wherever you link them, that could be sent externally to another website or internally, a page on your very own website.
Having many link as dofollow on your website will allow you to flesh out your own link profile which is key to the overall health of your website, as you can spread love (SEO juice) around your own pages but you can spread the love to content on the web that you wish to vouch for.
What is a Do Follow link in SEO 2021? Read more on: Affiliating From Home Blog
from Affiliating From Home - Feed https://www.affiliatingfromhome.com/what-is-a-do-follow-link/
Comments
Post a Comment