Dofollow or Nothing: Should We Care?

When I started my website, I was crazy about my Google rank. I wanted to be among the top when people searched what was related to my field. I was disappointed in the results. I was on page four. Can you imagine this? After all the struggle. Later I came to discover that I was focusing on the wrong thing thus doing a series of inappropriate activities. Links can help your website rise or fall. And with the right links, you can find yourself on Google’s top 10 ranks. Since Google’s system has evolved in recent years, it only rewards those sites that are relevant, have the authority and are natural.

Do you ever think of how your website can get the advantages of backlinks? What should be the nofollow versus dofollow ratio?

There is a huge relation between links and how Google ranks you. So if you come across a web page that is positioned as the first in Google, it has probably used most of the right links. Research conducted by Moz found out that 90 percent of the top fifty results had at least one or two external links guiding or pointing to the site.

Links put the dots of your website together. They sort of solve the puzzle to make your website much more interesting. Although links can help you, from the search engine’s point of view, not all links are equally created.

In the previous years, Google has created a metric known as PageRank which normally calculates the points that your links have. The link points originally come from dofollow links. So, how can we define dofollow links? Dofollow links are links that the search spider recognizes, follows, files, and rewards. The links accumulate points which pass an SEO value to the web page thus improving the rank when searching, the authority of domain and page and search performance in overall. This article will discuss this topic and answer questions concerning your backlink profile. Keep reading.

Link Fact

Today, everyone is obsessed with SEO and so was I when I started my website. I wanted to know what is the best ratio of dofollow versus nofollow links. I later found out that there is no ratio that is the "best." What works for you perfectly might not work for me. And that goes for websites too.

I used to think that boosting the organic traffic of my site and searching for opportunities for link building is difficult. And it is not. You can make the process easier for you by discovering where your competitors get backlinks and how they place them so that you can replicate. As the saying goes, success leaves tracks and so does failure.

Nofollow Links

A nofollow link is a backlink that has the rel=”nofollow” section added to the URL. In other words, nofollow links help you get referral traffic to your site but has no real value from the perspective of Google. Therefore, you cannot use them alone on your website. You need to spice it up with do follow links.

Examples of nofollow links include Facebook posts, comments, URL shares, and tweets. So, how do you recognize a nofollow link? On a line of code, you can easily recognize it due to the rel=”nofollow” section. You can easily download an extension of chrome known as NoFollow Chrome Extension. Every time there is a nofollow link, it will be indicated with a red square.

Dofollow Links

A dofollow link is just the opposite of a nofollow link. It is also difficult to get one. A dofollow link comes from articles, directories, and landing pages. In most instances, they are placed by a webmaster and not you. And that is one of the reasons why it is much more difficult to find one.

Do you remember that nofollow links have the rel=”nofollow” symbol? Now, dofollow links do not have the rel section. And that shows us that Google’s spider can follow and authorize it from one site to another. How do you recognize a dofollow link? A dofollow link is similar to a nofollow link but now without the "rel" section.

For your website to get recognized, you need to use both dofollow and nofollow links. And you cannot enjoy the organic traffic from Google if any of these types of link lack. They are essential for the popularity and success of your site.

You should care

The most important aspect I learned when it comes to backlinks is that you need to balance the links you get and use every single time. So, if all of your links are dofollow links, Google will recognize this as manipulative and probably tag them as spams, even if in your eyes it does not look fishy.

For your link profile, you need to consider getting your links from high-quality sites because using links from low-quality sites and using exact match anchor text too much puts you in the danger zone of being penalized.

There is a huge difference between dofollow and nofollow links, thus Google views these campaigns as irritating or unfriendly to users and its algorithm. If most of your links are nofollow, your site will not be penalized by Google but you will find yourself struggling to rank high in the results page of Google simply because nofollow links never improve the rankings of your search.

Matt Cutts says that they generally never follow nofollow links. When fresh pages and links are loaded, Google stores them in its index. An index is a data bank which contains billions of web pages that users are served when any search is made.

Links and pages that are not in the index will not appear in the search results when a keyword is typed and searched on Google. Even if there is no right or wrong answer to the ratio of dofollow versus nofollow, you can get to know how other organizations, webmasters and SEOs balance their links to make Google reward them.

Importance of Backlinks

Google is only concerned with how relevant your backlinks are. In a case where links do give any value to your SEO, they can be valuable to your consumers. A link originating from a reference site which is not related to you or your industry or topic of discussion can be useful to the people who will visit it.

Therefore, it does not matter if the link is a dofollow or nofollow. It might lead to a higher bouncing rate if you manage to generate enough clicks from the optimization engine.

Google has one goal. And that is to rank you higher and offer great value to its consumers. Once you understand this fact, you will take your time to study your content and craft a piece of work that consumers will link to naturally.

Your high-value content, approach, and links are all important if you want to improve the profile of your link. Just as the profile of users on Facebook has their full name, phone numbers, academic information, hobbies and much more, the profile of your link serves as the highway for the search engine to make smart decisions with regards to where your web page ranks in the organic listing page.

Most professional SEO experts will encourage you to place the right links if you want to improve your rankings. And that is true. What they are not telling you is what makes a good link good and a bad link bad. And what makes a link manipulative or natural.

Creating a Natural Link

A natural link comprises of the links that point back to your website. Some sources include directories, news articles, blogs, social and press releases. It also has link velocity which mainly deals with how you acquired the links either slowly, all at once or steadily and distribution of anchor text which shows how you distributed the links in your text. In fact, this is an important aspect of what makes the profile of your link.

So what makes a link natural? The word natural is familiar to most of us. It basically means formed or existing by nature or anything not made by man. Therefore, Google wants to save links that are natural. They appear like you did not request or do anything to get them.

The profile of your link is much more important than you can imagine. The Google algorithm has been updating in recent years and has leveled the competition levels for both newbie website owners and professionals.

The penalties of Google are mainly based on the link profile of your site. Therefore, if you want your content and site to perform well in general, you need to take some time and work on your link profile. Writers using assignment writing services uk have written great contents for their sites. And so can you.

Due to the improvement of SEO, where you obtained your link is much more important compared to the link itself. Better said, the quality of your link has more power than the number of links you generate. Therefore, each link is made to create awareness of something on a different page. While you are creating awareness, links can be of value to you. They can help consumers easily get the information they are looking for.

Conclusion

Do not be focused on your rankings like I did because you might end up tying your shoelaces together and falling on the ground. Google does not like it and neither should you. Taking your time to study the complexity of a link is important because it gives you an edge over your competitors whose main agenda is improving the rankings they have through the number of links they have. A profile with good links contains a high value, relevant and authoritative backlinks. There are no spam links too. Having great content in place will also add more points for you.