Concept of “Nofollow” links can be unknown and confusing for new webmasters. It always results in questions like: Why should I make links ‘nofollow’, Which links should be have ‘nofollow’ tag and How to make links ‘nofollow’. Making specific link ‘nofollow’ is a small but very important aspect of online publishing. Also, it keeps your website or blog in good books of Google Search.

What is ‘nofollow’ links concept

We often link to external websites in articles to allow users to explore more about topics being discussed. Google Search bot follow those outgoing external links to calculate their important, relevance, value (and page rank) – which finally decides their ranking in Google Search results.

While natural linking is fine for useful and relevant links. However, if you have added advertisement link in your article content or website – make sure it has ‘nofollow’ tag. As per Google Webmaster guidelines, you must add ‘nofollow’ tag to links for which you were paid.

Make advertisement & affiliate links ‘nofollow’

To make link ‘nofollow’, just add rel=”nofollow” to the linking code of a web link. Once you make link ‘nofollow’, Google does not follow that link and identify it as paid placement. WordPress users should switch to HTML editor mode while adding rel=”nofollow” tag to outgoing weblinks.

NORMAL LINK
[cc]
Contact Us
[/cc]

LINK WITH ‘NOFOLLOW’

[cc]
Contact Us
[/cc]

Above is example of a weblink with and without “nofollow” tag. You should ‘nofollow’ all outgoing advertisement links in the article content or at any other place on your website including: homepage, header, footer, sidebar.

Video: How to make links ‘nofollow’ in WordPress

Note: If Google detects your website passing paid links as natural links – it may downgrade your website ranking in search results and in exteme case may remove website all together from Google Search index.

Davinder Singh Kainth

A digital creator with 15+ years of experience in Website Design, Development, SEO, and Content Creation to Podcasting at SmartWebCreators.com with the motto of "Be Smart, Keep Creating". A coach, consultant, and your dear geek friend ❖

2 Comments

  1. Best T Shirt Designs on October 10, 2012 at 4:37 am

    Great article, it is important for new bloggers and website owners to know how to use follow and nofollow tags.

  2. Zimbrul on January 24, 2013 at 3:04 pm

    I know there are few plugins out there that automatically add rel=”nofollow” to all external links but I avoid using them as it’s difficult to remove “nofollow” when you really want to “dofollow” some links

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