For years, SEOs have chased after do-follow links, believing they were the only ones that mattered for ranking higher in search results. Nofollow links, on the other hand, were often dismissed as useless. However, recent studies and expert opinions suggest that nofollow links can be quite valuable for SEO. While they might not directly contribute to a website's PageRank, they can still significantly benefit SEO by driving traffic, building brand awareness, and creating a more natural link profile.
To gather information for this article, we analyzed various articles and studies on the impact of nofollow links, examined case studies, and reviewed expert opinions.
What are Nofollow Links?
Nofollow links include the rel="nofollow" attribute when creating a link. This attribute tells search engines not to crawl the linked page or pass link equity (ranking strength). Essentially, it means saying, "I'm linking to this page, but I don't necessarily endorse it or want to pass on my SEO juice."
There are different types of nofollow links and ways the tags can be implemented. For example, some websites use a page-wide nofollow directive in the robot meta tag, automatically turning all links on a page into nofollow links. This tactic has been helpful for websites with a lot of user-generated content, such as YouTube and Reddit.
