NoFollow is the value of an attribute in HTML code. It is used to signal to search engines not to follow one or more links on a site. It was introduced by Google in 2005 as a standard tool model, later it added some guidelines to use the NoFollow attribute with specific links. Despite indicating with NoFollow that the links of a page are not really crawled by Google if it does, but it does not transfer excessive authority.
It is believed that Google does not allow competitors to sell links on its pages but this is not the case, the sale is not penalized. What is certain is that Google sanctions all those who buy links in order to obtain a good positioning. In this way they ensure that people who send spam emails do not get to benefit from the buying and selling of links. The appearance of NoFollow is present in many webs, pages with a lot of traffic and in blogs.
When to use NoFollow
These would be the essential occasions in which it should be used.
- Links to social profiles. It will be useful for us to regulate the distribution of authority through our website.
- Blogs that use the same IP. Web pages that are intertwined with NoFollow links will prevent the search engine from believing that we want to position our website. This tactic can be used but without being abused since the chances of being sanctioned would be greater.
- Links to pages of uncertain quality. If our link is going to redirect to a page of dubious value, either due to mistrust or because it uses spam techniques, we can use NowFollow. Although it is best not to use too much this type of links that we cannot trust 100% because we can be penalized.
- Links to websites of independent themes. NoFollow is very useful when we have to put a link on our page that has nothing to do with the topic we are dealing with.