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Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Technical SEO
  4. Dofollow and Nofollow links

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

Dofollow and Nofollow links

Technical SEO
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  • greenfoxone
    greenfoxone last edited by Mar 12, 2013, 8:06 AM

    What is the difference between dofollow and nofollow links? I know that some sites/blogs only let you post nofollow links. In such a case how do I know if a comment I posted on a certain site will be a nofollow or dofollow? How about big traffic sites such as Huff Post. Do they only allow nofollow links?

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • mayrudy996
      mayrudy996 last edited by Oct 16, 2020, 10:51 PM Oct 16, 2020, 10:51 PM

      Dofollow letting the bot crawl the target page

      https://zimabdko.online/

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • topic:timeago_earlier,8 years
      • greenfoxone
        greenfoxone @TomRayner last edited by Mar 13, 2013, 3:33 PM Mar 13, 2013, 3:33 PM

        Thank you for the help Tom!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • TextMarketing
          TextMarketing last edited by Mar 12, 2013, 11:49 PM Mar 12, 2013, 11:49 PM

          dofollow links pass "SEO Juice".

          nofollow links do not pass "SEO Juice".

          If your curious as to whether or not a particular blog allows for dofollow links, you can view the source code of the webpage using any common web browser. Find the link in question, and look to see if it includes "rel=nofollow". If that tag doesn't exist, then the link is dofollow.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
          • TomRayner
            TomRayner @greenfoxone last edited by Mar 12, 2013, 9:47 AM Mar 12, 2013, 9:47 AM

            Presuming that you're going to be linking to your website in the comment, I'd probably keep it limited to your own niche, but there's definitely room for a few comments from other industries.

            If your comments are engaging, provide value to that blog's community and are not on blogs that are spammed to death, then you won't be doing any harm.  The key is to comment something of worth and to integrate yourself into the community.

            I always think of blog commenting as a way of establishing a community presence and to raise unaided brand awareness.  Any subsequent link of page strength is an after-thought for me.

            greenfoxone 1 Reply Last reply Mar 13, 2013, 3:33 PM Reply Quote 1
            • greenfoxone
              greenfoxone @TomRayner last edited by Mar 12, 2013, 9:36 AM Mar 12, 2013, 9:36 AM

              Thanks for the reply Tom, you were really helpful.

              I had another question regarding the process of commenting on blogs/articles. Should I only comment on blogs/articles that are relative to my own niche or can I also comment and link from blogs/articles that are outside my niche?

              TomRayner 1 Reply Last reply Mar 12, 2013, 9:47 AM Reply Quote 0
              • littlesthobo
                littlesthobo last edited by Mar 12, 2013, 9:33 AM Mar 12, 2013, 8:27 AM

                Hi.  Everything Tom said and I also wanted to add another extension to this - If you use Firefox this is for checking nofollow and dofollow links.  When you add the extension, if you right click and select the nodofollow it hghlights nofollows in red and dofollows in blue.  I use it all the time.

                https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/nodofollow/

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • TomRayner
                  TomRayner last edited by Mar 12, 2013, 9:33 AM Mar 12, 2013, 8:21 AM

                  A dofollow link will pass the SEO strength, or "PageRank" of the page to the site that it links to. A nofollow link, in theory, will not do this.  That's the main difference between the two.

                  By that logic, you may assume that a nofollow link will not help you rank for a keyword, but I don't think this is completely the case.  Having a link to your site in any capacity may improve the "authoritativeness" of your site.  SEOMoz uses Page Authority and Domain Authority to measure this and, while not an official Google metric, it stands to say that if you have 2 identical sites, one has 5 nofollow links from newspapers and the other has none, Google may well think that the site with the links has more authority or trust and may treat it more favourably.  We all know how much Google loves to promote real brands.

                  As for seeing if a link is dofollow or nofollow, you can either inspect the element in the source code, or a convenient and hassle-free way to test is with the SEOMoz toolbar. That toolbar contains an option to highlight the links on the page - green links are dofollow and pink links are nofollow.  If you check previous posts on any website, you should be able to see a pattern of whether they allow for dofollow or nofollow links - but in the end, this is at the discretion of the webmaster.

                  Hope this helps!

                  greenfoxone 1 Reply Last reply Mar 12, 2013, 9:36 AM Reply Quote 3
                  • RuiZhiDong
                    RuiZhiDong last edited by Mar 12, 2013, 8:13 AM Mar 12, 2013, 8:13 AM

                    http://www.businessbolts.com/what-is-dofollow-what-is-nofollow.html

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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