In a simple view, rel=’nofollow’ is the direct opposite of rel=’follow’. This a HTML attribute mostly used in
anchor tags to tell Google crawlers whether they should or shouldn’t follow a link on your web page.
The latest Google webmasters guideline has made it clear that every webmaster should add the rel=’nofollow’ attribute to the links you don’t wish to verge for. The nofollow attribute tells Google crawlers not to follow (crawl) links that they are applied to.
Why would you tell Google crawlers not to follow a link?
There are so many reasons why you don’t want Google crawlers to follow your links. We shall take a look at some of them.
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- Links to an advertiser: Time without numbers, Google has made their stand regarding link selling clear to webmasters and bloggers. Recently, a blogger has stated that “unnatural outbound links” was the reason behind his Google penalty. Prompting us once more of the dangers of not applying a rel=’nofollow’ attribute to external links.
- Linking to a porn site: Well, Google is less than 18yrs of age and find stuffs like this offensive. If for some reasons you must have to link to a casino website or website containing pornographic contents, you might want to use the nofollow attribute.
- Linking to your own website: If you are plugin / widget or theme developer, I understand why you need to add a credit link to your invention. However, Google this days has started to frown at external links that appear site-wide. So, you might consider appending a nofollow attribute to your own links.
- Promoting a coupon: As an internet marketer, you might be promoting one or two products on your website. Same products are being promoted by other internet marketers on the web.This in turn grant undeserved pagerank to the product pages of those products, which really doesn’t help Google user’s experience. To put an end to this crap, Google has made it mandatory for internet marketers to append a nofollow attribute to the product links they are promoting.
For your information, none of this rules apply while linking to a quality website like Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, etc.
How to add a nofollow attribute to a web page
Like in the case of coupon promotion and sponsored advertisement, if there is a page in your website that you do not want Google crawlers to follow, you can simply add
<meta name='robots' content='nofollow' />
to anywhere between <head></head> tags of that page.
Adding nofollow attributes to anchor tags
The anchor tag (<a></a>) is used when linking to a webpage. To add a nofollow attribute to a link, simply add rel='nofollow' to your anchor tag. See example below:
<a href='https://www.ewtnet.com/p/hire.html' rel='nofollow' >Hire a web developer</a>
The above example will output
Hire a web developer – my readers can follow the link but Google crawlers won’t.
How to Add a rel=’nofollow’ attribute to your Blogger Link List
Just a little bit extra to bloggers on the Blogger platform. Most of you generate income by advertising links on your link list. Before now, it was safe but considering the turn of events overtime, such practice may affect your SEO if you don’t add a nofollow attribute to those links.
Simply got o your Blogger Dashboard >> Website >> Template >> Edit HTM and find <a expr:href='data:link.target'><data:link.name/></a> Replace this code with
<a expr:href='data:link.target' rel='nofollow' ><data:link.name/></a>
and save your changes.
You are welcome to ask me any question on the comment section. Also add your own views on why you wouldn’t let Google crawler follow a link you posted.