Links are used both to provide users with access to sources or further information, and to provide search engine crawlers with a signal about the relevance of pages. The attributes of individual links are particularly important for search engine crawlers.
All internal and external links on a website are assigned different attributes in the HTML code. Two particularly relevant link attributes are NoFollow and DoFollow. Both attributes are important for both link building and the correct structure of internal links and should therefore be used correctly.
The following section will examine each attribute in more detail to highlight the exact differences.
NoFollow link
The ” nofollow ” attribute ensures that a search engine’s crawler does not follow the link. Thus, no link authority or power is transferred to the linked page. This attribute was first introduced by Google in 2005 to prevent link manipulation and spam comments.
Today, it is also used, among other things, to link to untrusted external sources or to prevent the crawling of personal or sensitive information, such as a profile page. Paid links in the form of ads or advertisements can also be marked as NoFollow or, more accurately, Sponsored in the HTML code .
The nofollow attribute is used not only for external links, but also for internal links. It is primarily used for backend subpages that are not relevant to users and crawlers. This includes links to shopping carts or customer profiles. Internally, all links that are not relevant to organic search results and should not appear there are marked with the nofollow attribute.
The ” dofollow ” attribute, on the other hand, ensures that a link is accessible to a search engine’s crawler, who can then follow it. This allows the crawler to access the linked page and interpret its content. Unlike a nofollow link, a dofollow link requires no additional marking in the HTML code.
If a website is linked with a DoFollow attribute, it benefits from increased trustworthiness and reputation with search engines like Google. In external linking, this attribute is therefore primarily used to point to trustworthy sources.
In internal linking, however, dofollow links serve to guide crawlers. This attribute is especially important for internal linking , as it makes it easier for crawlers to navigate and interpret the link structure. If the Google crawler follows such a link, combined with the right anchor keyword, it can have a positive impact on the ranking of the linked page.