DoFollow Vs NoFollow Links

When adding any links on your blog you have the option of using either a DoFollow link or a NoFollow link. So what are the differences between these 2 types of links?

If you are are looking to increase your pagerank then you will be interested in DoFollow links. Before we go into detail about DoFollow and NoFollow Link, let us examine what is pagerank.

Most of you have probably heard about Google Pagerank. Google algorithm determines the number of quality links pointing back to your website.

DoFollow Vs NoFollow Links

If your website has a good number of backlinks then you will have a high PR. Backlinks are actual links from other websites to yours. In other words, if your website has high quality content, more people will link to your website. Therefore Google consider your website to be relevant and in return, give you a higher pagerank.

Difference between DoFollow and NoFollow Links

In 2005 the attribute nofollow was designed by Google’s head of webspam team Matt Cutts and Jason Shellen from blogger.com

NoFollow is an HTML attribute value used to instruct some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. It is intended to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of search engine spam, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing spamdexing from occurring.

*Taken from Wikipedia

Let’s say you do a link exchange with another website. This person can place your link as either DoFollow Link or a NoFollow link. If they choose to place a DoFollow link then it will help you improve your ranking. However if they use a NoFollow link instead, it will not contribute to your pagerank. Since the whole idea of link exchange it to increase one’s pagerank, therefore a DoFollow link is much desirable.

How to create a DoFollow and NoFollow link

By default all links created are DoFollow links. Here are how you would code a DoFollow and NoFollow link in html

DoFollow

NoFollow

Hopefully this article has shed some light in the difference between the 2 kind of links. This is especially useful when doing a link exchange.

May 13, 2009 | Filed Under Pagerank, Traffic Tips, Wordpress | 9 Comments