This is a very often question at SM Agency: What Is The Difference Between DoFollow and NoFollow Links?
You're linking out to a company because they paid you. But you don't want to give them link juice that helps their Google rankings because that's frowned upon. What should you do?
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Today we are going to teach you guys about do follow and no follow links.
There are two types of links: do follow and no follow.
Do follow Links
They are telling search engines “hey I'm linking to the site because I want to, pass link juice and have the site rank higher”
No follow links
They are telling “hey I'm linking to this site, but I don't want you guys to help the site rank higher” and that's usually because they paid you or it's affiliate link or there's something that's maybe like sketchy about the site.
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Let's say you wrote a blog post on how someone is doing something terrible, and you know they shouldn't exist, you could no-follow that link.
In general, you usually don't link out to sites with the nofollow. It's mainly used for advertising or let's say your blog comments, so user generated content like all the blog comments on any website.
Any website out there is usually no followed.
WordPress does this by default. Because they don't want marketers to go in, wright tons of spammy comments and get links.
And search engines want you to no-follow links that can be easily manipulated. For example, if you're promoting an affiliate offer and that company has thousands of affiliates like you, Google wants you to no-follow those links. Because if you don’t no-follow them, that site can unfairly rank higher.
So, in general, when someone is paying you or you're making money by linking out somewhere, like an affiliate link or advertisement, you want to use a no-follow.
When you decide who you want to link to, because it’s reputable, you’re citing a source, and those cases even if you’re linking to a competitor, because you are saying “hey, my competition did x, y and z that was really cool” you want to make those link do-follow.
That’s the difference between no-follow and do-follow links and just because a site has more do-follow links, it doesn’t mean they are going to rank higher, or just because a site has tons of no-follow links, it doesn’t mean they are going to rank lower.
There are a lot of other factor that determine a site’s ranking, but of course, the more do-follow links a website has, it supposed to, in theory, help with the rankings.
If you need to get do-follow links and help with your digital marketing to grow your business in terms of visibility, engagement, and profit, contact us today and speak with one of our digital marketing experts to see how we can build the bridge between the point you’re standing at right now and your goals.
