How And Why to Add "Nofollow" Attributes to a Link ?

Browsing different SEO articles on backlinks, inbound links, linkjuice etc on different blogs, You definitely come across these two words which are “dofollow” and “nofollow” as these two are very common words related to SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). I have already covered this topic, If you are new to this kindly read the below article for your better understanding.

• “Dofollow”and “Nofollow” links.

Now the question arises, Why one should add a “nofollow” attribute to a link ?

The answer for the above question is very simple, “nofollow” attribute stops google bots or crawlers from landing to the linked page. To make you understand better let’s take an example, Suppose a webpage contain two links namely A and B. A is “dofollow” and B is “nofollow”, When search engine bots or crawlers enters that webpage, they crawl through link A, they lands at that page as link A has “dofollow’ attributes but when they crawl through link B, they ignore them because it contains “nofollow” attributes. It simply means that we are directing search 

engine crawlers not to visit that page.

Note:- It’s recommended to make all your comments and ad links as “nofollow” to maintain linkjuice.

There are many reasons for adding “nofollow” attribute to a link, The first and foremost reason for adding “nofollow” attribute to a link is to maintain “linkjuice” in our blog or site. For understanding “link juice”, kindly read the below article.

• Whatis Linkjuice, and it’s importance ?

To maintain linkjuice in  our blog, we have tag many bad links or links related to poor content or website, which are not important with respect to our blog contents or which might degrade our blog rankings as “nofollow”, so that our linkjuice will not get tranfered to them, upgrading them and degrading our blog. I am not telling you that large number of “dofollow” links are bad but just want to make you understand that we have to link our contents to trusted sources not to poor and untrusted sources. We always have to give importance to our important posts by tagging poor links as “nofollow”.

Note:- By default, Blogger and Wordpress blogs have “dofollow” attributes for every link.

Now let’s see, How to add “nofollow” attributes to a link ?

Truly speaking, adding “nofollow” tag to links is very simple, just to go to your blog dashboard and edit your post or before publishing, switch to html mode and add rel=”nofollow” just after your link. That’s it, you have successfully added a “nofollow” tag to your link.

For Wordpress, there are many plugins available for tagging all external links as “nofollow”. Just use them as you want.

By default, your “dofollow” links looks like below link, Actually you would not  see a  “dofollow” attribute in “dofollow” links.

<a href="http://www.bloglution.com/">How to Blog></a>

After adding “nofollow” tag your link looks like below pic.

<a href="http://www.bloglution.com/" rel="nofollow">How to Blog></a>

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Article by Sandeep Gupta

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