DoFollow vs NoFollow Links

When creating a brand online, visibility is crucial. The larger the audience that sees your content online, the more people you can expect to get responses from. To create visibility, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is done on the site. In SEO a lot of focus is placed on creating links within your blog that link outwards to other authority sites. This in effect builds brand authority as visitors to your website can get a sense of assurance from the high profile links that may be posted on the site. Any time a link is created within the blog, whether new content, a sidebar, or even comments of responses from the articles, a unique link to that specific place is created.

The link to content can either be DoFollow or NoFollow. A DoFollow link is a unique link that tells search engines to use a specific path which runs along its page rank so as to influence the outbound link coming from the site. In general, more visitors will visit pages that are ranked highly in search engines, so it is important to create an outbound link.

A DoFollow link is important in creating an outbound link to the site which can be indexed by the search engine bots that are constantly crawling the internet looking for content to index upward. The more DoFollow links pointing towards your website, the more authority your site will have and the site will rank high in different search engine sites over time.

A NoFollow link is the direct opposite of the DoFollow. It is a unique hyperlink which removes any passing on its specific page rank status to other sites. When the NoFollow option is selected, search engine bots aren’t able to search through the links and therefore skip any content. This in effect means that no rise in search engine ranks can be expected.

Different search engines have different uses for the NoFollow links. For Google, the link will be searched by the crawling search engine bots, but there will be no effect to the Google page rank that the site with the NoFollow link activated. Bing, on the other hand, will not scout the NoFollow link and does not include it in calculations. Yahoo follows NoFollow links but does not include these links in ranking calculations.

If your focus is to build authority with other sites, you must ensure that you have the DoFollow activated. This helps your readers view you as an authority, largely from the fact they have other links included in your work. The downside to the DoFollow is that your blog may receive a lot of spam comments and time is needed to sift out all the comments one by one. A NoFollow link does not create authority, but on the other hand does not have spamming problems to deal with. It is also advisable to use the NoFollow tagging for untrusted links.

Summary

DoFollow link allows authority building with visitors through search engine ranking.

NoFollow links do not allow for authority building on search engines.

DoFollow content indexed in search engines and calculations determine placement in search engines.

NoFollow content is not factored in when search engine calculations are being done.

DoFollow links face problem of receiving numerous spam comments.

NoFollow comments do not risk getting spam comments.

Search engine bots crawl DoFollow content and index it in search engines.

Search engine bots may or may not follow NoFollow content and do not use calculations to index content marked as NoFollow.

Links that are not trusted are recommended to be tagged as NoFollow.

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