Dofollow Links
What are dofollow links?
A dofollow link is essentially a normal hyperlink that has no additional attributes associated with it (nofollow, UGC, or, sponsored). The term first appeared in 1998 with the announcement of Google's PageRank[1].
As a rule, such links are followed by search engine bots, as well as they pass link juice to a linked website or page.
From a search engine perspective, a dofollow link also serves as a signal of the authoritativeness of the page it’s referring to.
Dofollow link example
In the source code of a page’s HTML, a dofollow link looks as follows:
<a href="https://www.link-assistant.com/">Download SEO PowerSuite</a>
Where:
- <a> or anchor tag is the tag that defines the hyperlink, including the anchor text and all other attributes.
- href designates the URL where the link leads to (https://www.link-assistant.com/).
- Download SEO PowerSuite is the anchor text visible to users instead of the URL.
Dofollow vs nofollow links
While a dofollow link is followed by a crawler and is capable of passing link juice, a nofollow link works the opposite way. It has a <rel=”nofollow”> attribute included in the <a> tag, which basically instructs search engines not to follow this very link:
<a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.link-assistant.com/">Download SEO PowerSuite</a>
Normally, search engines will not crawl a nofollow link. However, Google doesn’t treat a nofollow attribute as a directive, which means that Googlebot can anyway follow links even if they have a nofollow attribute[6].
The rel attribute of the link may also contain such values as:
- UGC attribute (User Generated Content) is used for links left by users, for instance, on forums or in the comments.
- Sponsored attribute is used for links acquired through paid placement (ads, paid links, etc).
A dofollow link, in turn, doesn’t require the inclusion of a rel attribute, as any normal link without attributes is meant to be crawled by default[2].
Dofollow links & SEO
Dofollow links play a crucial role in SEO and are among the 200+ signals Google uses to determine a website's ranking[4].
In terms of SEO, the quality of dofollow links matters more than their quantity. Additionally, search engines take into account the following characteristics of a website’s backlink profile[3]:
- Unnatural link-building. Links have to be acquired naturally. If Google suspects a website is participating in link-building schemes or purchases large amounts of backlinks, penalties may follow.
- Linking domain authoritativeness. The more authoritative a linking domain is, the more link juice it will pass to a linked website or page. Links coming from low-quality websites will do more harm than good.
- Relevancy. Links should fit the content organically.
- Freshness. Newly acquired links are more valuable than older ones.
- Referring domains. The more domains link to a page or website, the better.
Dofollow links are definitely a ranking factor today. But their future influence on rankings may become less prominent[5]. According to Google’s advocate John Mueller, links will likely have less weight in the ranking algorithm soon. This way, Google tries to address various backlink manipulations such as link-building schemes.
How to find dofollow links to your site?
To find dofollow links that point to your website, use SEO SpyGlass:
- Open the app.
- Go to Backlink Profile > Backlinks.
- Select Dofollow links from the drop-down menu.
- Analyze dofollow links within the app or export them for further analysis.
