Link building is an impactful practice that continues to stand the test of time. Ever since the birth of nofollow links in 2005 by the tech giant trio Google, Yahoo and MSN, marketers have been looking for the most effective ways to use follow links and their nofollow counterparts, to increase website engagement.
With a strong understanding of what backlinks are and how to use them, you can create a robust backlink portfolio guaranteed to help your page rankings soar.
Junior marketers, bloggers, copywriters, and business owners, listen up! Here’s a comprehensive rundown of the different types of links and why they should matter to you.
Contents
Types of backlinks in SEO
Backlinks are the primary method by which search engine bots crawl web pages to determine their value. And they have several aliases. You may see marketers describe them as “incoming”, “one way” or “inbound links”, but they all describe the same thing: a hyperlink coming to your website from elsewhere on the web.
This seems simple enough, but there are actually a few types of backlinks used by SEO specialists, defined by their link attribute and anchor types. And for the sake of this blog post, we’ll be sticking to the attributes so we can go over them in more detail.
Broadly speaking, there are two categories of backlink attributes, and these come under “follow” and “nofollow” links. The attributes are inserted within an anchor tag and define the specific function of the link.
What is a dofollow link?
A dofollow link or simply a “follow link” is your average hyperlink. In their code, they contain attributes that inform search engines that the link should be followed by bots in order for them to crawl and index the page. Follow links are useful if you want to transfer authority to your page or if you want search engine bots to explore your page and analyse its content.
How do you identify a follow link?
The only real way you can identify a follow link is to look directly at the HTML code. You can do this by right-clicking in a Chrome browser and clicking “inspect.” On other browsers, you can right-click on the page and click “View page source” to read the page’s HTML.
Another handy option is to download and use the Chrome extension, “Strike Out Nofollow Links.” This extension automatically strikes through any nofollow links on a page, saving you the hassle of scrolling through a sea of code.
What does a follow link look like?
Now, if you followed the steps above and you’re looking at a page’s code, you should see something like the following example.
<a href="http://www.example.com/" >Anchor text</a>- <a> = the link tag containing the link itself, anchor text and the attribute, which lays out the instructions for it.
- href = the link attribute responsible for specifying the URL of your link.
So, for instance, the second link on this blog post would look like the following in HTML:
<a href=" https://beefound.agency/how-to-increase-website-engagement/" >increase website engagement</a>Reasons you should be using the follow link
A popular optimisation strategy is to cultivate a variety of follow links that point back to your site from other authoritative websites. This is because having a healthy backlink portfolio is extremely beneficial to your SEO – positively impacting your website’s ranking or search visibility.
Follow links as votes
In the eyes of Google, backlinks are seen as votes that pass on the gravity of the webpage they cite. This means that the most frequently cited or linked to pages gain an authority and reliability over less well-cited pages, and as a result, they rank more highly.
Protip: Remember that when it comes to backlinks, quality should be prioritised over quantity. There’s no point in linking to swathes of sites if their content negatively affects yours!
PageRank
Since 1998, Google has used a specialist algorithm called PageRank to calculate webpages’ domain authority. Although the webpage scores provided by PageRank are no longer public-facing, the principles behind follow links remain the same: you can pass authority to your site by acquiring relevant, well-implemented and credible links from authoritative sources. So, the more quality follow links you build up between your site and other reputable sites, the better.
Link equity
If you’re familiar with link building, you might have stumbled across the term “juice.” This isn’t referring to a nice fruity beverage, but rather the flow of influence or authority from one page to another. Also known as “link equity”, this SEO elixir of life can really boost your rankings. The more dofollow backlinks a site has from relevant and trusted pages, the more “juice” it receives.
Best practices
Links are considered one of the most important factors when it comes to SEO. When a link is made between the two sites, it can affect your search engine rankings based on a number of factors. If you’re lucky enough to gain a link from a credible and authoritative site, you will see your perceived expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness increase as a result – SEO experts like to refer to this under the quirky acronym EAT.
Boost your E-A-T
You can help boost your E-E-A-T by ensuring that your links are from a diverse number of domains, reliable sources, organically obtained and naturally placed within your content. Google will penalise you if it appears that you’re benefitting from link farming or other spam-related schemes. And, with a healthy reserve, the more authority it holds as a credible and reliable source of content for the search engine and its users.
What is a nofollow link?
In a recent study, 54% of SEOs shared that they believe nofollow links are a valuable tool to improve authority and/or rankings – but what is a nofollow link?
A nofollow link is a hyperlink that includes a piece of HTML code, which characterises the function of the link in order to advise search engines not to follow it. When you add a “rel” attribute, you’re instructing search engine bots not to crawl that particular page and pass on authority or “juice.”
Reasons you should be using the nofollow link
For the most part, links with the “rel” attribute embedded in the link tag are created to avoid endorsing or passing on authority to the page that is being linked to. This is particularly useful if you want to avoid being penalised by Google for including a paid-for backlink on your page or drive traffic and conversions from links via social media. This is perfect if you aim to generate leads for your business.
Fighting against spam
If your site allows anyone to comment without moderation or you’ve included links or embedded widgets you don’t necessarily want to endorse, the nofollow tag is your friend.
The “rel” attribute of the nofollow value was originally created to combat comment spam and advises search engine bots not to follow, crawl or generate link juice. This is a great way to reduce spam interfering with your business by preventing it from leeching off your domain authority, and has been a longstanding tactic to deal with forum link spam.
Driving traffic
It’s really important to note that, whilst bots are less inclined to follow the link and pass on authority, it does nothing to prevent users from clicking on the link and visiting your page. In fact, a smart combination of both link types can help your page rank better!
Ultimately, we want to cultivate backlinks so that new visitors can find our websites and a larger number of links equates to a greater flow of incoming traffic, paving the way to more dofollow links.
Avoid overoptimisation
It’s not uncommon to see webpages overoptimise their content by including an excessive number of subpar links just for the sake of link building. You can avoid using too many dofollow links by considering how to balance a mixture of the two link types across your content.
Social media
It’s not so difficult to overlook the power of nofollow links when you contemplate that, apart from a few exceptions, every link on social media is of the nofollow kind. Every time your link gets shared, you’re effectively generating a nofollow backlink – that’s a staggering potential for conversions.
Types of nofollow links
There are four types of nofollow applications that you can follow for a range of different circumstances such as those above.
No follow attributes
This application of the “nofollow” value is the most well-known. By including it within the link tag you can provide a hint to search engine bots that will discourage them from crawling the hyperlink you’ve added to the link attribute. You would use this type of nofollow backlink if you wanted to link to a site you’re not fully behind, but wouldn’t consider spam. This is useful if you fancy embedding widgets and infographics into your content without endorsing their creator.
The nofollow attribute is written as follows:
<a href="http://www.example.com/" rel="nofollow">Anchor text</a>Sponsored content attributes
Nofollow links should also be used to indicate to Google that your link is associated with advertising, sponsored content, and guest blogs among other links acquired from paid relationships. If you fail to use the correct nofollow attribute, Google may well classify your link as backlink spam and lower your page ranking in response.
The sponsored content attribute is simply written as “sponsored” and, like your nofollow attribute, should follow “rel”.
<a href="http://www.example.com/" rel="sponsored">Anchor text</a>User Generated Content attributes
If you’re looking to bolster your SEO strategy relying on user-generated links isn’t the recommended way to go. In fact, in the past Google penalised this tactic and especially those considered “spammy” such as unmoderated blog comments, profile pages of users and advertisements. Whilst they won’t necessarily harm your online presence, they won’t help you gain “juice.”
The nofollow attribute is used to mark user-generated content such as comments and forum posts that don’t pass on any authority or occasionally even detract from your domain value. These attributes are realised as as “ugc” and look like the following:
<a href="http://www.example.com/" rel="ugc">Anchor text</a>Mix and match
Another upside to the nofollow attribute is that you can mix and match your “rel” value with another on links. For instance, you may want to clarify that a link is both user-generated and sponsored like so:
rel="ugc sponsored"Follow or nofollow, that is the question!
Now you know what a dofollow link is versus a nofollow link, how do they compare? As your average internet user, it’s impossible to distinguish between a dofollow and nofollow link without inspecting the code. You can click on, copy and follow both link types as you might expect. When it comes to SEO, however, they act very differently…
Follow vs. nofollow links
Not all links are made equally, as we will see. There are particular needs and situations that call for follow links as opposed to nofollow links and vice versa.
Follow link round-up
To sum it all up, follow links are the cat’s pyjamas! You want to cultivate a healthy number of dofollow backlinks across your site to build up “juice” and, hence, your site’s online authority. This, paired with carefully placed nofollow links, is a brilliant recipe for a successful backlink profile.
You can work towards this by creating high-quality content that will encourage natural links, by gaining editorially placed earned links and by ensuring that the backlinks you do include in your own content are from a variety of authoritative and relevant sources, formatted correctly within the HTML.
Still confused?
41% of SEO experts consider link building the hardest part of search optimisation, so don’t feel discouraged if this is a lot to take in.
With enough practice, you can get your head around this particularly technical topic and ensure your site is performing at the top its game. And you don’t have to do this alone! Chat with our hive of search engine optimisation specialists to help you polish up your online presence.
Or for more helpful guides on SEO and link building, check out the rest of our digital marketing blog.
