What are nofollow links?
Links from websites with great authority in the eyes of search engines can have very high value for your website and not least your SEO. But there is a big difference between those who link using dofollow-links or nofollow links when they point links towards your website.
When an external website links to yours with a nofollow link, what this means to Google is that the person who linked has asked the search engine not to follow the link. The reason for this may be that the linker may not know your website and therefore will not "recommend" your landing page to Google.
By default, all links are dofollow. The way they are changed to a nofollow link is by adding a rel="nofollow" tag to the link. Once this is done, the link will not affect the search engine ranking of the website linked to, as Google generally does not transfer PageRank or anchor text by nofollow.
The above is the reverse of a dofollow link, and therefore the vast majority of website owners would certainly rather have a sea of dofollow links than nofollow links.
Learn a lot more about how to acquire dofollow links in this dictionary article[1] or read on to understand why you shouldn't be intimidated by nofollow links.
Do nofollow links have value?
Note! That nofollow links are not without value. For example, if you get a nofollow link that you've earned, others are more likely to choose to link - and these may well be dofollow. This means that a nofollow link from one website can easily yield a dofollow link from another website.
In addition, nofollow links still drive traffic to your website, so a nofollow link from a site with a lot of visitors may actually end up being a more valuable link than a dofollow from a mediocre site.
Furthermore, a nofollow link might be changed to dofollow. For example, you can contact the website that linked to you with a nofollow link and discuss with them what is needed to change the link to a dofollow link.
Last but not least, Google itself states that it in general does not follow nofollow links. This gives an opening about Google sometimes following them. There are lots of theories around this topic. For example, some in the industry believe that all nofollow links transfer a bit of PageRank. Others believe that only selected nofollow links transfer PageRank and the last group believes that too much is put into the meaning of the word in general and that Google does not transfer anything at all when it comes to nofollow links.
How do I know if a link is nofollow?
As written earlier in this text, a link is always dofollow by default. For a link to be changed to a nofollow, the attribute rel="nofollow" must be added.
If you want to check whether a link is nofollow or dofollow, you can check it via Chrome as follows: select the link you want to check -> right-click and select check -> notice if the attribute rel="nofollow" has been added.
In most cases, you can also use your link tools (e.g. Ahrefs) see which links are dofollow and nofollow.
