As you may know, every time you create a link on your site, it leaks “link juice”. Hopefully most of these links are going to other pages on your site that you want to rank well for.
However, in some cases these links may be one of the following:
- Affiliate links
- Links to other websites (unpaid referral links)
- Links to non-essential pages on your site such as Private Policy page
Although, all of these links may be necessary, excessive dofollow links to these types of pages can lower your page rank and weaken the well of your core site, if you will.
Think of it as a water hose and every time you create a link the hose get’s punctured. Now some punctures are good because the water is still in your garden. However too many punctures will cause the water to overflow and pour out of the garden(your site). Are you with me?
Your home page>>>water hose (page rank)
Hose punctures>>>links (loss of page rank)
Now it’s OK to lose some of this water, but if you start losing too much of it, your plants may begin to die. So how do we tape up some of those holes and keep some of that water (link juice) for ourselves? We do this by selecting which links to create as dofollow and which ones to create as nofollow.
My general rule is this (of course you will come up with your own):
All links are set up as nofollow unless you are a top commentator, guest poster, or I’m giving you special props within an article.
So how do you set up a nofollow link? Basically you need to add this tag to your link:
<a rel=”nofollow” href=”http://insert_link_here.com/”>Inserted_Text</a>
If you are running WordPress, the process is even simpler.
- Just log in into your dashboard
- copy the text you want to link
- click on link icon
- enter your ‘Link URL’ under ‘General’
- click on Advanced Tab
- click on ‘Relationship page to target’ and select ‘no follow’
If you are not running your website on WordPress, you probably will still have the option available to make the link nofollow if you are inserting links or images through a backend system.
If your site is hard coded, i.e. created by a software such as Dreamweaver, you will have to manually insert the html code.
WordPress by default is set up as a nofollow script. However you have the option of switching your comment system to dofollow by using a plugin called DoFollow. Just install, activate and you are good to go!
If the case that this plugin does not work, you can also manually switch to a dofollow system by accessing your wp-includes/comment-template.php file and looking for a code that says something like:
$return = “<a href=’$url’ rel=’external nofollow‘ class=’url’>$author</a>”;
Just remove the nofollow from the code.
Here’s an informative video by Matt Cutts on DoFollow links:
Note: He mentions the negative impact of dofollow blogs IF there is no editorial discretion on the site owners part. This is why as I stated before, I believe dofollow blogs can be beneficial if you can monitor your comments. Of course once your site starts reaching comment numbers too large for you to handle, it may be a good idea to switch back to nofollow.
What are your thoughts on dofollow and nofollow links?
Please share this post and thank you for your continued support!
PageRank hoarding is killing the web as we know it. Don’t do it. Use discretion? Certainly. Become paranoid with your PageRank to the extend that you nofollow a link that deserves credit? Terrible.
Hi Joseph,
Haven’t heard from you in a while =) Yeah, I agree, you should absolutely give credit where credit is due! If I’m writing about another site or referring to a technique I’ve learned from them, I always give props. It’s only the polite thing to do. =)
As well, it’s to my understanding it’s good to give link juice to authority sites…Google likes to see that you are giving recognition to these authority sites. As well, these sites may (if you’re lucky) reciprocate the favor.
Thanks for stopping by…always great to hear your take on things!
Hi Michele,
I am not too familiar with this so i have learnt something today. What i have done is i already have the dofollow plugin installed and my blog is a dofollow blog.
Thanks for sharing the information and this post really enlighten me a lot.
Good for you for having a dofollow system. You should make a note of it on your site…may work to your advantage. =)
I too am in the process of switching to a dofollow system although running into technical issues. The only way for me to have it is to discontinue Disqus which would be a shame since I really enjoy it.
Still working it out. Thanks for stopping by!
Hey Michelle,
Great information here. I especially like the example of the water hose you gave. Fits in perfect. And you are right, it is beneficial to give link juice to authority sites.
You have a wonderful day..
Later..
Thanks Adam…glad you found it helpful. Thanks for stopping by!
I would like the programe to be complety free and to be a full version (not a trail)
I would like the programe to be complety free and to be a full version (not a trail)
Thanks for this Michele, really useful.
Especially for a newbie on SEO like me.
I actually do not care about PR, the most important is content and traffic. I guess for the new blogs, PR will follow.
By the way, your explanation was truly useful, Thanks!
You’re very welcome! PR I think is more of a perception thing I think…although high PR can ultimately provide you with good results in SERP’s.
But not definitive. For example, my site fluctuates between page 1 and 2 for Google for my top keyword which is fairly competitive in less than six months. Yet I still have a PR of 0 for Google for my homepage. So yup, the important thing is content and traffic!!
very useful, i`ve been loking for something like this for a while now
tks
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How important is it to have authority backlinks that are nofollow. I’m trying to find just the right level of do and no follow links.
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PageRank is an algorithim google invented that assesses the strength of a website. The algorithim evaluates a site on a scale of n/a to 10 with 0 being the lowest/weakest and 10 being the highest/strongest. We can check our site’s rank by using a checker pagerank tool.
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Thanks for sharing..wonderful Infomation..Great information here. I especially like the example of the water hose you gave. Fits in perfect. And you are right, it is beneficial to give link juice to authority sites.
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Great Post! Please continue to serve such great quality content! I enjoy reading your posts!
I tend to agree with MRS Moody above. PR shouldn’t be the ultimate goal, but rather a byproduct of the steps a successful website owner takes… i.e. great content and smart online promotion. If your website is intended to make you more business I’d rather have more leads and targeted traffic than a higher PR.
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Thanks for sharing this awesome post I am new to wordpress and learning things this articles adds another lesson to my wordpress learning guide
Yes , I have gotten a right new from them.