Follow link vs nofollow: what are the differences?

Links are the backbone of your SEO strategy. However, you have to understand the difference between
the DoFollow and NoFollow attributes, otherwise you risk jeopardizing your netlinking.

Whether you use WordPress, Hubspot, another CMS or house code to administer your site, you will be
offered the Follow and NoFollow relationship on each of your links.

Which one to choose ? What are the differences between these two concepts?

Here are the SEO tips we can give you to effectively name your links.

Definition of Follow and NoFollow links

To successfully use links in your SEO strategy, you must first understand the usefulness of each type of
link: Follow and No Follow.

These two are the attributes , in other words, of the indications given to the robots of search engines for
hire or not to follow a link.

DoFollow Link

This is a link attribute defined by default . Indeed, it is judged that when you indicate a link in your
website or your content, it is to redirect the Internet user to a new relevant destination.

The main interest of the links is to cite sources, partners, or to initiate actions within your site such as
reading a new article or completing a form.

As the name suggests DO Follow, you send the message to Google to "MAKE the link" between your site
and the URL you give it. In this case, the pagerank of the external site will enter into the calculation of
your own positioning.

NoFollow Link

If a No Follow is specified on a link, Google crawlers are here told to "DO NOT follow" the link in
question.

In which cases do you need to "break" the link with this external site?

If the anchor words (that is, the words underlined by the hyperlink) are unrelated to the landing page;

Impersonate a spammer by indicating the URL of your site in blog comments or forums;

To master your e-reputation .

Put a link to a site that is denounced or of poor quality. He should be quoted to be precise in his article
but you do not want to give it more visibility or be linked to it in any way.
These links are then considered as outgoing or null links for Google's algorithms. To make connections
Follow No, you only have to check a box in a CMS or manually add the tag relto your link rel="nofollow".

When to use links in your SEO strategy?

Use DoFollow links by default with a virtuous internal and external linking strategy . The notion of
Netlinking is indeed one of the pillars of SEO.

To gain positions, Google will take into account:

the number of inbound links that point to your site, and the authority of each site;

the number of internal links to your site;

the number of outbound links you mention.

Remember that to produce a backlink, the site to which you are referring must also add a link to your
content, in return. Then, your site will be irrigated by linkjuice . This "link juice" is the influence that your
link will have on the site you "feed" based on the authority of your page , the popularity (traffic) of your
site, the age and. the quality of your content.

To extend the metaphor, when you put a NoFollow link in your page, you shut off the linkjuice tap.

Some mistakes to avoid

Here is a list of mistakes to avoid when using Follow and NoFollow links:

Put NoFollow on your internal links. This is a common mistake that negates the richness of your internal
mesh.

Mis-naming the link. Remember to use the correct rel tag:<a href="https://www.codeur.com/"
rel="nofollow">Codeur.com</a>

Put Dofollow Links Everywhere! For example, if you mention your site in a forum or a comment, put a
NoFollow otherwise you risk being blacklisted by Google. You will still benefit from the traffic of this site
without "fooling" Google.

Allow DoFollow comments on your blog. This is not really a mistake as it can significantly increase the
number of comments on your posts, but then you should moderate them. Otherwise, you expose
yourself to spam and commercial chain comments unrelated to your site.

To conclude, not using DoFollow and NoFollow links would be a mistake because they allow you to refine
your SEO strategy and control your online reputation.