SEO or search engine optimization is one of the most important and imperative knowledge that a website owner must-have. Any kind of substance that you seek to put forth on the internet needs to rise in the search index of a search engine. There are certain common words like noindex, nofollow, dofollow, and meta robots.
Matt Cutts and Jason Shellen had introduced the concept of Nofollow back in the year 2005. Nofollow, an HTML attribute value, has the task of instructing bots in program that the presence of a hyperlink isn’t affecting the ranking of the link target within the index of the search engine. It is intended to minimize the performance of such forms of search engine spam.
DoFollow vs NoFollow
The main difference between a Dofollow link and a Nofollow link is that the presence of the rel=”nofollow” tag in the latter. The nofollow links have this attached to them and therefore, they generate no backlink. It can be said that dofollow links have a higher priority in the case of Search Engine Optimization while nofollow links do not hold that much importance.
They can only be used in the case where the user doesn’t want to generate a backlink. However, it is a good practice to use both in your content.
Comparison Table Between Dofollow and Nofollow
| Parameter of Comparison | Dofollow | Nofollow |
| Backlink | With the usage of dofollow links, the users can easily create backlinks. | Nofollow links do not generate any kind of backlink and hence, it is not possible to trace the URL to the website. |
| rel=”nofollow” tag | The major difference between both of these links is that the dofollow URLs do not contain the rel=”nofollow” tag. | In the case of a nofollow link, it contains the rel=”nofollow” tag and this means that there is no chance that it will generate a backlink. |
| Link juice passage | The dofollow link passages the link juice so that the person who is looking through the website is able to go through via the backlink. | The nofollow link does not allow the passage of the link juice. |
| Weight | The weight of dofollow links is more in search engine results. They are easily able to pass link juice and create backlinks. | The weight of such links is very less. This is because they are not able to create backlinks and pass link juice. |
| Usage | They can easily increase the ranking of any page they are put in. | They are only beneficial when the users are only limited to the concept of not passing the link juice but, using the URL. |
| Passage of search engine bots | The passage of link juice and the creation of backlinks allows the search engine bots to pass through using the URL. | Attributes of Nofollow links do not enable search engine bots to follow the connection. |
What is DoFollow?
Dofollow links allow Google to follow them (all search engines) and find a website, providing a link juice and a backlink to the website. If a webmaster connects you with this page, both the search engine and humans will be able to follow you.
Enabling keywords in the anchor text is the perfect way to send anyone do-follow love. This means using the targeted keyword as the anchor text when you connect to some website or article. This is how SEO is influenced by dofollow links.
What is NoFollow?
A nofollow link is a link containing the attribute rel=”nofollow” in its HTML code. This attribute informs search engines not to move authority to the destination page from the link page. As such, from the point of view of SEO, Noffollow links have very little meaning.
It is planned to lessen the viability of particular kinds of internet searcher spam, along these lines improving the nature of web crawler results and forestalling spamdexing from happening in any case.
Main Differences Between Dofollow and NoFollow
- The user can create backlinks. This means that one website when mentions the link to another, can be visited with the help of a dofollow link. This is very helpful. In the case of nofollow, no backlinks are created. Such links are not very helpful but, they can be used in many other cases.
- There is an absence of rel=”nofollow” tag in dofollow links. This means that it can create a backlink to the website it is linked to and this makes it convenient. Example :<a href=”http://www.google.com/”>Google</a>. But, in the case of nofollow, there is a presence of this tag. Therefore, it is not as convenient as the dofollow link. The presence of this tag creates a big difference. Example :<a href=”http://www.google.com/” rel=”nofollow”>Google</a>.
- Link juice passage is allowed in the case of dofollow links. Hence, it is possible to visit the website that is mentioned in the keyword. Hence, it is quite easily visited. In the case of nofollow links, link juice is not passed. This is why it is not possible to keep track and use backlinking. This is one of the reasons why this link is not convenient. This implies that if the owner of the website links with nofollow attributes back to you, it does not pass on link juice. Only humans may follow these links and hence, it is quite different from dofollow.
- The weightage that dofollow links carry is very high. It is very important that these links are incorporated into the content since they have a high weightage in SEO ranking. Nofollow links do not have much weightage. But, it is very good practice to use them because they can easily help in cases when the person wants to use links wherein he doesn’t want the link juice to pass through.
- Due to their high weightage and the ability to create backlinks, they are used very often in practicing SEO. This is because their weightage is very much. Such a high weightage means that the more such links the user uses, the better his ranking will be. Now, the nofollow links don’t carry much weight and hence, their use is mainly user-specific.
- The absence of the rel-”nofollow” tag allows the search engine bots to navigate to the other websites through the target keyword. This is why it can be said that the usage of dofollow links is extremely beneficial to those who want their page to be ranked in the topmost pages of the search engines. While the presence of this tag means that the search engine bots won’t be allowed to pass through.
Conclusion
To summarize the content you put on the internet is influenced by the SEO and dofollow and nofollow links. It is imperative that the user uses both in accordance with his or her needs. They can prove to be quite beneficial in ranking any kind of webpage to the top in search engine rankings. Hence, it is important to create backlinks and nofollow links as well.
References
- https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-50072-6_11
- http://www.elprofesionaldelainformacion.com/contenidos/2019/ene/09.html
- http://www.elprofesionaldelainformacion.com/contenidos/2019/ene/09.html