The complete nofollow guide: what they are, why Google created them, how they differ from dofollow, the 6 SEO benefits, when to use the tag, and how to earn dofollow links instead.
Website links play a crucial role in SEO. They drive traffic and help build brand awareness. The nofollow tag tends to attract a lot of debate, so this guide breaks down what nofollow links are, why they exist, and whether they're useful for SEO.
Your page gets an SEO boost whenever you earn an inbound link - a link from another website pointing back to your page. The more inbound links you earn, the better your odds of climbing the search engine results pages (SERPs). Backlinks divide into two flavors: dofollow and nofollow.
A nofollow link tells search engines they shouldn't follow the tagged outbound link. It signals you're not vouching for the destination. You'd use it on inorganic links and similar cases where you'd rather not pass authority. Nofollow links generally don't help your rankings or domain authority directly.
Google created the rel="nofollow" attribute in 2005 to stop comment spam. At the time, spammers were stuffing their links into blog comments, forums, and message boards - a tactic that worked alarmingly well and was letting low-quality sites push past legitimate ones in the rankings. Yahoo and Bing followed Google's lead. The nofollow tag filtered the bad links out and made the SERPs a fairer place.
On March 1, 2020, Google changed its policy: nofollow is now treated as a hint, not a strict directive. Google also introduced two new attributes - rel="ugc" and rel="sponsored" - so it can tell where nofollow links come from. Use sponsored for all paid, sponsored, advertising, or promotional links. Use ugc for forum posts, comments, and other user-generated content.
In Chrome, right-click the page and choose Inspect. In Firefox, right-click and choose View Page Source. Then search for nofollow and any instances will be highlighted.
Google rewards natural, organic links and penalizes the alternatives. A natural link is one another site adds without your prompting because they found your content relevant and useful. An unnatural link is one created to deceive search engines and manipulate rankings, in violation of Google's guidelines. Common examples of unnatural links:
Dofollow links tell crawlers and users that you have trustworthy, relevant content worth recommending. They boost credibility, drive traffic, and help your page rankings climb with enough of them.
Nofollow links don't pass that credibility and don't directly affect SEO. But when a well-known site links to yours - even with nofollow - it can still drive serious referral traffic. YouTube, Wikipedia, Reddit, Twitch, Quora, and Medium are among the major platforms that nofollow their outbound links by default.
Common inbound link types that are typically nofollow: press releases, certain news and blog links, user-generated content (forum posts), blog comments, YouTube descriptions, Facebook posts, paid links.
Most of the SEO benefits of nofollow links are indirect, but they add up. A nofollow link from a trusted site can still register as an authority hint, and the traffic it drives compounds in its own right.
Nofollow links from high-DR publications like Healthline, WebMD, or Forbes won't boost your SEO directly, but they send meaningful targeted traffic to your site. Helpful comments on high-traffic posts can do the same. So can second-tier links (links to a site that links to you).
When other quality sites link to yours, more people see your name. A nofollow backlink from a HuffPost-tier publication with overlapping audience can drive exposure that compounds into searches for your brand name later.
One site might nofollow your link, but their readers may link back to you with a dofollow because they trust your brand. A nofollow mention from a popular site routinely generates downstream dofollow links from people who discover you through the post.
Google gets suspicious if your inbound link profile is 100% dofollow - it reads as manipulated. A healthy mix of dofollow and nofollow looks organic and reduces your risk of a manual penalty.
Every link from a social platform is nofollow, but Google still uses social activity to gauge how alive and widespread your site is. Active social presence drives more backlinks back to your blog and helps trust signals build.
Influencer campaigns typically generate nofollow links - but they also unlock access to a new audience. Some of those followers go on to link to you organically, building dofollow links you'd never have earned through cold outreach.
Nofollow isn't just defensive. There are five common situations where you - as the site owner - should be applying the tag yourself.
Anyone can leave a comment, which means anyone can drop unlimited dofollow links. Nofollow protects you from being seen as endorsing spammy sites. WordPress nofollows comment links by default.
If you cite a source from a totally different niche - a home-remodeling blog citing an automotive article - nofollow keeps the niche relevance of your linking profile clean.
If you need to link to a site to warn readers (a scam, scandal, etc.), nofollow stops Google from passing it ranking credit and stops the implication that you endorse the destination.
Links that appear in your sidebar or footer on every page create a backlink with every new post. Over time Google may flag this pattern. Nofollow keeps you safe.
Any paid, sponsored, affiliate, or promotional link must be nofollow (use rel="sponsored" specifically). This applies to product pages, vendor sites, anything paid for.
No. There's no magic ratio. Focus on publishing relevant, useful content, satisfying your readers, and building real relationships with your audience. Don't try to game the system - your competitors might be doing it now, but Google catches up and the penalty isn't worth the temporary lift.
Generally no - as long as you're not trying to deceive or manipulate search engines. One exception: if you leave a flood of comments on as many blogs as possible, even nofollow ones, you can still get penalized for the pattern of spammy behavior.
Nofollow links don't pass link juice (also called link equity - the authority transferred from one page to another). So they don't directly affect rankings. The tag is a hint to Google, but the final decision is Google's. Nofollow isn't useless though - a nofollow mention in Forbes or Entrepreneur still drives traffic, builds your brand, and shapes how Google sees you.
No. Only nofollow outbound links to sites you don't want to endorse as authorities. Google has actually recommended adding dofollow links to trusted external content - it builds credibility for your own page. Why would you reference a source on your site you don't trust? Reserve nofollow for references you have to cite but wouldn't recommend, plus paid or sponsored links and links you don't want to track.
Most sites don't - it would tell search engines you don't trust your own content. A few exceptions: duplicate-content pages (nofollow everything but the original), privacy and terms pages, and account login pages.
But here's the catch: since 2020, Google treats nofollow as a hint, not a directive. Even with the tag, Google may still index and rank the destination. If you genuinely need to keep a page out of the index, use a canonical tag (to point search engines to the original) or a noindex directive (meta tag or response header) instead.
Earning dofollow links naturally takes effort, but it's the only sustainable play. Five strategies that work.
Content is the foundation. Publish original, relevant, genuinely useful pieces that readers naturally want to share and reference. Without that, no amount of outreach earns durable links.
Guest posting still works when it's done right. Find sites in your niche, write authentic, original pieces for them (not spun content), and earn dofollow links back to your site in the author bio or contextually.
Help a Reporter Out and similar platforms connect journalists with expert sources. Contribute insights that get cited, and you earn dofollow media coverage in return. There are several other free outreach and PR tools that work the same way.
Infographics, charts, and video clips are some of the easiest assets to earn natural dofollow links with. Other sites reuse the visual and credit you with a link by default.
Original studies and proprietary data are catnip for journalists and bloggers in your space. Publish a piece of research, and you'll see citations and links from people who reference it in their own work.
One more thing: avoid Google's "unnatural outbound links" penalty by cleaning out low-quality, inorganic external links. Apply nofollow to user-generated content, audit links in every guest post, don't link to low-quality sites, and steer clear of spam patterns.
Dofollow and nofollow links are both useful when you know how to apply them. Dofollow links have the direct impact on SEO, but a diverse, natural link profile - the kind Google likes - includes nofollow links too.
Nofollow won't move your Google rankings directly, but it drives traffic, builds trust, and supports your brand. Used right, both link types reinforce each other: dofollows lift you in the SERPs, and nofollows fill out the profile that makes those rankings look earned rather than manipulated.
We run white-hat linkbuilding campaigns that earn the dofollow links that move rankings - and the nofollow links that build the brand. Performance-based, so you pay for what you get.