Using Nofollow Tags What Is Nofollow Link Attribute? The nofollow attribute allows the webmaster or a website owner to instruct the search engine robot not to follow/crawl the “links on a page” or “a specific link on the page”. In other words, links with Nofollow will not influence link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. Therefore, the page at the other end of the link will not get any benefit in terms of enhancing their pagerank. This enables search engines to effectively counter the ménage of spamming. History of Nofollow Link Attribute “Nofollow “tag was originally conceived to help prevent blog spam i.e., bloggers being spammed in their comments section with irrelevant ads. The spammers used to benefit by taking a share of “link juice” that existed within the blog or site, which would enhance their pagerank. Thus every link being placed in the comments section served as a hole through which the link juice pours out of the site. Situations when Nofollow tag is used: 1. Sponsored links or Advertisers: Sponsored ads or advertisements on a site may not be always relevant, so it is ideal to use Nofollow tag against them. 2. Comments Section: This section is usually used by spammers to post links that are irrelevant to the content of the site. Usage of Nofollow Tag here will help the site retain its PR. 3. Page containing numerous links: When a page contains large amount of links, it results in the leakage of “link juice”, thereby, reducing the pagerank and dominance of the page. In such cases, it is ideal to use “Nofollow” to limit the number of outgoing links. The best case scenario would be trying to at least match the number of incoming links with the number of external links. 4. Minimal number of incoming links: This case can be applicable particularly to a new site wherein the efforts are concentrated towards increasing the incoming links to gain higher pagerank. The outbound links can be restricted to the ones that are only relevant to your site and to the ones that you feel are valid. Nofollow can be added to the ones that are irrelevant to your site. 5. Site Linked to objectionable content: There might be instances wherein your site may have references to the websites with objectionable content. Nofollow tag can be used in these cases.
6. Crafting Pagerank: This refers to the technique of using Nofollow to the subpages of your website that are felt less significant in terms of converting, so that the link juice assigned to the home page of the site by the search engines is diverted only towards the sub pages that are more important. In other terms, this technique refers to “controlling the flow of link juice” within your website. Syntax for Nofollow link attribute: <a rel=”nofollow” href=”http://www.inputlink.com”>Link Text</a> Here input link refers to the link to which you want to apply Nofollow attribute. So, effectively, this will instruct the search engines not to follow the given link. Syntax for Nofollow meta tag: <meta content=”nofollow” /> This tag is one level higher to Nofollow link attribute. It is added at the page level and applies to all the links in the given page, thus effectively asking the search engines not to follow any links of that page. Conclusion: Strategic use of nofollow tags will ensure that you remain linked to pages that are relevant and credible. As a result this will help you improve your websites performance in search engines.