Backlinks, NoFollow, DoFollow, oh my!
Backlinks from other sites to your website is a standard SEO practice. Links from one website to another are backlinks. These backlinks are essentially a high five from one website to another. These backlinks let search engines know that your content is worth linking to and earn your website a higher search visibility.Most anyone who has a website wants visitors. In fact, some will go to any and all lengths to make sure that when you, the potential consumer or seeker of certain website content, goes searching, that you land on their website. SEO’s consultants everywhere help clients with link building for maximum website visibility.
A quick lesson on link types:
Internal Links
– These links are within your own website that help visitors find what they are looking for. If you write a page or post and inside that content link to another page or post on your website, that’s an internal link.
External or Outbound Links
– These are links coming from your website and linking out to other websites as advertisers, sponsors, references, etc.
Backlinks
– Backlinks are links that come from other websites to your website. So when anyone on the web talks about you or your brand online and link to your website, that is a backlink.
So, we know how important backlinks are, but what about those NoFollow and DoFollow links. It’s really not worth overthinking but for the purpose of this informational blog, I will attempt a rational explanation. DoFollow or follow links count for your search rank. They are the organic linking system. If you insert a hyperlink to your content and do nothing more, you have created a dofollow link that will inevitably help your site rank better with search engines. dofollow links bring that all important link juice. A search engine like Google will add up all the juice from all the links in your site and will use that “juice” as one of the factors in determining your website ranking.
Nofollow links are the outsiders. They might as well be saying, “don’t pay any attention to me”. Nofollow links don’t help your search rank. So, why would you want to use them? Well, new research in the world of SEO is discovering nofollow links may have a useful purpose and it may be that a mix of dofollow and nofollow should be used fairly equally with your external and back links. Nofollow links can be used for links you are being paid for, links you are doing a review in return for something, an affiliate link you are using to earn a commission or maybe the link goes to a page on your website that you would rather Google not worry about (privacy, login, cart etc). Google has even provided a guide for using nofollow links. Bottom line though, even these nofollow links can increase traffic to your website.
So, in the end
Backlinks are one of the most important parts of maintaining a strong and credible online presence. Understanding the different types of links and their value to your website can help you to maximize their usefulness. The purpose of linking to other websites is to build your brand and increase traffic. Google will not penalize a website that may have a couple links that should have been nofollow, they are looking for websites that are using backlinks as a tool in the search game. Be relevant, be honest and do your homework for your particular brand and you will find success in this online maze of links. Until next blog, happy linking.