NoFollow and DoFollow: An SEO Discussion

In the world of SEO, linking and link building are significant.  Furthermore, how these links are treated is also important because of how search engines will treat them in turn.  Two important words that get tossed around with linking concepts are DoFollow and NoFollow.  To simplify, we’re going to discuss the implications of the use of the NoFollow attribute for links.

What are NoFollow and DoFollow?

Whenever you create a link on your website, no matter where the link is located (article, comments, etc.), a typical link will be coded as follows:

<a href=”http://www.webmovementllc.com”>Web Movement, LLC</a>

As you can see, this is your average and typical link with an href and how the link will be represented textually.  Now here’s the same link, except tagged with the NoFollow attribute.

<a href=”http://www.webmovementllc.com” rel=”nofollow”>Web Movement, LLC</a>

The additional attribute rel=”nofollow” is what defines a NoFollow link.  Without the code, like in the first example, makes the link DoFollow, as there is no actual DoFollow tag.

Simply put, if a website does not use NoFollow and links to your site, search engines will acknowledge the link and presume that where your site is linked is in some relation to yours. If the site does use NoFollow, then the link would not be acknowledged by websites.

How Does NoFollow Affect Me?

Say your site is linked to a well known and popular site.  If the site doesn’t use NoFollow, then you will be benefited from the search engines because a high profile site linked to you, which can increase your page rank.  If the same site uses NoFollow, then you reap none of the benefits the site has to offer for you.

Does this mean that you should avoid sites and blogs that use NoFollow? Absolutely not, but I wouldn’t place a lot of emphasis on getting linked from them.  The links will still bring traffic to your site, theoretically, but won’t influence your page rank.

How Do I Know Whether or Not a Site is NoFollow?

The simplest way that I know whether or not a site uses NoFollow is by viewing the site’s source code and looking for rel=”nofollow” in the links.

Final Thoughts

When trying to increase your page rank, it’s important to scope out sites that do not use the NoFollow tag in them.  There is a really neat Google powered search engine that InlineSEO.com has put together that searches DoFollow blogs. This can help you find blogs and sites in your niche that do not use the NoFollow tag.

Finally, our site is DoFollow, so please feel free to leave some comments. We’d really appreciate it. :)