Nofollow and Dofollow links are two basic terms in SEO. But these two factors play an important role in SEO. If you don’t use these properly, then you may get penalized by Google. For example, someone asks you to add an Advertising link to your blog and he offers some cash. You become excited and add a dofollow link . Whenever Google bot finds that your passing page rank for money, Google will penalize your blog.

If you are not aware about dofollow and nofollow links, here is some information for you. Dofollow links are those which we want Google bot to follow and Nofollow links are those which we don’t want Google bot to follow. In this post, I will be talking about how to add Nofollow tag to a link. And when you should.

When You Need to Add Nofollow Tag to a Link

Whenever you are linking to a site with dofollow tag, you are passing the link juice that may help the site to rank better. Now you may think that it’s a good idea to tag every links as nofollow. But it’s not, it’s a misconception. There is nothing wrong with dofollow link as long as it’s a relevant link. Now let’s see when to use Nofollow tag.

• Paid Links – If you don’t want to get penalized by Google, then tag paid links as nofollow. Actually I am a victim of giving dofollow tag to a paid link. One of my blogs got penalized because of that. Even if you are selling banner Ads, make sure to add nofollow tag.
• Affiliate Links – Google bot won’t buy your affiliate product. It doesn’t make any sense to tag them as dofollow. In fact, I would suggest you to cloak affiliate links.
• Spammy Sites – Sometimes you may need to mention spammy site on your blog posts, make sure to add nofollow attribute.
• Widgets/Inforgraphics – Some widgets/infographics contain keyword rich anchor texts. Use nofollow tag on that links.
• Other – You can use it anytime when you don’t want to pass link juice to a site.

How to Add Nofollow Tag to a Link

It’s very easy. Check this.

Normally a link looks like this

<a href=”https://roadtoblogging.com”>Road To Blogging</a>

To make it nofollow,  you have to add rel=”nofollow” to the link. And it will be look like this.

<a href=”https://roadtoblogging.com” rel=”nofollow”>Road To Blogging</a>

If you are using WordPress, then you can edit it from HTML view. Just change to Test view and add rel=”nofollow” to the link.

If you are lazy like me, then you can use a WordPress plugin to do it easily. I use Ultimate Nofollow plugin. This plugin adds a checkbox in the ‘Insert/edit link’ pop up box for including rel=”nofollow” in links. All you need to do is, check the box to make a link nofollow.

P.S: Don’t use nofollow tag for internal links.

Hope you understood when to use  nofollow tag and how to do it. If you any questions, let me know via comment. If you find this post helpful, help me by sharing this post on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.