The Difference Between Follow and No-Follow Links
Here are the differences between follow and no-follow links. Knowing this distinction can help you improve SEO. Links are an important aspect to building a website and getting Google to your site. There are two types of links for SEO: follow and no-follow links. There is an important difference between the two, but first, here’s why these two links exist.
Background of Follow and No-Follow Links
Why do these two links exist? First, let’s talk about SEO. In order to get a high ranking on a search engine result page, such as Google, you need good SEO. One way to improve your SEO is with links. The more links you have connecting to your page, the more your website is paid attention to. While you can’t control that, you can control links on your own pages. Links to good sources help establish the credibility of your site. The more reputable the site, the better. So, if Google looks at links, why shouldn’t we just link to random pages and boost our websites? Well, here is why there are follow and no-follow links.
Follow Links
Follow links are links that will get search engines to pay attention to your website. These will help your website’s rankings. The reason for this is that your page is giving credit to another page, and establishing a connection between the two sites.
No-Follow Links
Links that are no-follow cannot be seen by Google and other search engines. No-follow links will not help your website with SEO or search-ability. Also, these links have to be written into the code. Here is what that looks like:
<a href=”http://www.website.com/” rel=”nofollow”>Link Text</a>
So if no-follow links do not help with SEO, why do they exist?
Well, if you just send out a bunch of links to various websites, even if the sites having nothing to do with yours, Google will notice. Google may blacklist your for that, thinking your site is hacked. This can happen with follow links. No-follow links stop this from happening. Although these links do not help with SEO they do help protect your website from spam. Therefore, this is why these links exist and why they are good for the Internet.
