When to use no follow links? What exactly is the purpose of them?

Lynne Level 1

February 14, 2017, 1:59 pm

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Can anyone please explain to me why there are do follow and no follow backlinks? I just want to know whether I should be making some of the links on my website no follow links and which ones they should be.

Does it affect the authority or strength of your website if you only have do follow external links?

I heard recently from someone that all the affiliate links on my website should be no follow, is this true?

I am also selling guest posts and I do promotional posts too, all these links I have made do follow. Will this at some stage affect my website negatively?

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hmsbarman

hmsbarman

No-follow link doesn’t have any effect in the page rank, neither for your website nor for the website linked to. No follow links were introduced back in the year 2005 to combat comment spam on blogs. However if you choose to mention a website on yours why put a no-follow attribute then? This may only show your selfishness.

I put do-follow in all links on my website. From my website you can get 2 natural backlinks from every guest post you submit. Search engines also count on the mention of website as important, simply no bad backlink.

Why affiliate websites links should have no follow? Because you do not want them to rank high! Since you mentioned them in the good way in your website that is enough to tell search engine that link is worthy +1 love vote. Your silence is enough to tell one website is not important and doesn't deserve the vote.

10 years ago

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Lynne

Lynne

Thanks for the explanation. I wonder why I was just told that I should make all my affiliate links no follow because it can be damaging to my rankings?

I have made all my links do follow until now and then I heard that so I am sure you can imagine why I was a little put out. The thought of having to make all the affiliate links on my 3 websites no follow will be no small job!

10 years ago

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clerkboy3

clerkboy3

I have read a little bit about this topic and one common answer to this problem is find a balance between do follow and no follow links. Only do follow links can be a bad idea and bad for seo.

10 years ago

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Cristian

Cristian

I use nofollow links when I don't want to transfer any authority to the page I'm linking too. This can vary widely depending on your niche, type of website and stuff like that. If you usually need to post a lot of outbound link than yeah, making them nofollow should be a good idea. Also, having a community that you don't really moderate closely, nofollow link are advised.

Same for big comments sections of blogs. If you allow dofollow backlinks in your comments you need to make sure everything is moderated properly and you don't get people spamming the hell out of your comment section just to get that dofollow backlink juice.

10 years ago

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Lynne

Lynne

Thanks Cristian - that makes complete sense. I am about to start a community section on my mommy blog, like a social network so I will put that in my notes for something to consider.

Thanks for the great tips.

10 years ago

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jpyy

jpyy

Do-follow links might attract a lot of spammers, even though I'm quite sure blog comments don't effect search engines much anymore. However, of course, though, you can shut out spambots with captchas, but there are some determined spammers who are totally human. Anyways, there might not be a reason to make links do-follow, even to be a nice person - because, as noted, the blog commenting probably isn't a powerful SEO force now.

10 years ago

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overcast

overcast

I use affiliate links with nofollow. Some of the time URL shortner can be used with that option too. I have seen almost every Bitly url gets that in many sites. So it all depends on what type of website you have. And what type of content you are developing. Other than that it could be possible that some people use it for normal links as well. So depends on each person.

9 years ago

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Corzhens

Corzhens

To be honest, I am not still clear with the do-follow and no-follow type of link because I really get confused. What I understand is the standard URL or web page that when we post our link, it is a do-follow. But some sites make their web page a no-follow URL which means the link that I post there will not be recognized by the search engines and it will lose half of its value because only the users who can see the link can give it traffic but not from the search engines anymore.

8 years ago

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