What Is a Dofollow Link?
Dofollow Links are links with no “nofollow”, “UGC” or “Sponsored” attribute which is the default status of the link created. When you create any hyperlink, its default attribute is Dofollow, dofollow Links called this because search engines follow those links to transfer link equity to the linked page.
Which in return enhances the ranking for the linked website, as it received a dofollow link. Which normally looks like this :
As you can see in the image above there is no actual attribute called “Dofollow”, but SEOs used to call these types of link “Dofollow”, as search engines follow these links.
Which is not the case if there is a site-wide “Nofollow” tag installed on the whole website. In that case, the site-wide nofollow tag will overwrite the dofollow attribute.
Why Are Dofollow Links Important?
Dofollow are important because they are followed by search crawlers, and accordingly helps search engines to discover more of your content.
And also, dofollow links as abovementioned they pass link equity or link juice to the linked page. Meanwhile, nofollow links do not pass link juice, but nofollow links are important for balancing your backlinks profile and also drives referral traffic.
Dofollow Link Examples
Most of the dofollow links usually look like this while inspecting the page source and checking its HTML.
<a href="https://dbrandria.com">Digital Brandria</a>As you can see above in this HTML example for the dofollow link, there is no attribute called Dofollow as we mentioned earlier. Because, this is the default state for any link, unless nofollow, UGC or sponsored attributes were placed.
Dofollow Vs Nofollow Links
The main difference between dofollow and nofollow links comes down to how search engine crawlers treat them.
Dofollow links pass on link equity to the site being linked to. This means they directly influence search rankings by lending the target page some of the authority of the source page.
Nofollow links, on the other hand, tell search bots not to follow the link and ignore it for SEO purposes. While still useful for driving referral traffic, nofollow links don’t impact rankings.
When To Use Dofollow Links?
Here are some recommendations on when dofollow links should be used:
- For links within your own site linking internal pages together
- For backlinks from authoritative, relevant external sites to gain equity
- On guest posts and resource links that cite your site as a quality reference
- Anywhere you want to pass authority and increase search visibility