July 26th, 2008

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The Difference Between DoFollow and NoFollow links

DoFollow, NoFollow, PageRankWhile adding a link to an anchor text, you have the option of either using a DoFollow link or a NoFollow link. Most webmasters know the different between the DoFollow and NoFollow links but there are still many that don't. To many, the difference is very insignificant while to others it is very important. So how are these two different types of links different? Lets start with some background info about Google PageRank.

Google PageRank
As you all know, Google has its own very famous ranking system called PageRank. This ranking system is used by several webmasters to determine the price of websites when buying or selling. But how is Google PageRank determined? Mainly, if your website has a good number of backlinks then you will have a high PR. Backlinks are links to your website from another site. Google consider each backlink as a vote from other webmasters to you. The more votes you have, the higher the PageRank you will receive.

The Difference
In 2005, Google's head of webspam team Matt Cutts and Jason Shellen came up with the concept of NoFollow.

nofollow is an HTML attribute value used to instruct some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target's ranking in the search engine's index. It is intended to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of search engine spam, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing spamdexing from occurring in the first place.

By Wikipedia
When other webmasters place a link on your site they can do it in two different ways. They can place either a DoFollow link or a NoFollow link. If they choose to place a DoFollow link to your site then you will receive their vote and that will improve your ranking. But if they use the NoFollow link then you will not receive any vote and your ranking will stay the same. Remember, it will not decrease your ranking but the backlink will simply not count.

Sometimes it is easy to manipulate Google PageRank. If you have a big budget then you can easily buy links on high PageRank websites and thus increase the chances of getting a good PageRank for your own website. Google does not like this and has been working hard to punish all those webmasters that sell and buy links by decreasing their websites' PageRank. Google does not have any problem with webmasters selling and buying links but Google asks them to use the NoFollow links when doing so in order to prevent PageRank manipulation.

Does that mean that you are not allowed to post DoFollow links on your websites? You are allowed but one thing that I find confusing is the process through which Google knows if a link is bought or not. How can Google tell if Webmsters are buying links or not?

How to put NoFollow and DoFollow links
By default all natural links are DoFollow so you don't have to do anything different to place a DoFollow link. Just place a link like you usually do and it will be a DoFollow link.

Here is how the code should look for each link:

DoFollow
DoFollow, PageRankNoFollowNoFollow, PageRank
Hopefully, this post has helped you understand the difference between two types of HTML attribute values: DoFollow and NoFollow. If you are buying links then you might want to check if a link is DoFollow or NoFollow before getting into any deal.

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Useful Links:

Ragogmakan (Google) goes to the Amazon - Google Blog
Knol is open to everyone - Google Blog
We knew the web was big... - Google Blog
Easy as 1-2-3 - Adsense Blog
Web Analytics by the Bay - Analytics Blog
If you would like to more articles about SEO and Blogging then please take a look at SEO for Blogging.

Written by «/\/\Ø|ö±ò\/»®© on July 26th, 2008 with comments disabled.
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