You really do not need to be a technical whiz or code whiz to understand how to test whether or not a link is doingfollow. To see whether or not a link is dofollow, you can just check the link in your browser and look at the HTML. Anytime visitors are able to put a link to your site, in most cases this is in comments or forum posts, then this link should automatically be nofollowed. So, a dofollow tool is not really needed.
Generally speaking, when a site links to another, there are two ways of accomplishing this: through dofollow backlinks, or nofollow. Nofollow backlinks are generally defined as links which do not transfer authority from the source site to the target site. Dofollow and nofollow backlinks are the two ways to recognize the link and let Google know how to connect the site that you are linking from with your site. If you would like to know more about how dofollow backlinks are different than nofollow links, check out this post about Dofollow links vs Nofollow links.
This blog will walk you through a few free tools that will help you keep track of your nofollow links vs. your dofollow links. These are our recommendations of the tools to use to check for backlinks, that can help you understand the nofollow links a little bit better. If you are a marketer and you need to dive deeper into the history of backlinks, take a look at our blog that defines the differences between nofollow and dofollow links here. While you will not receive the full SEO benefits of dofollow links, nofollow links can drive traffic to your site, and also diversify your backlink portfolio.
In addition to highlighting dofollow and nofollow links, BacklinkSEO can simplify your efforts in link building. Backlink Watchs is dedicated to separating between dofollow vs. nofollow links, as well as within vs. outside links to any site/page. You can check the different types of backlinks; dofollow vs nofollow links, redirected links, etc., using Ahrefs backlink analyzer tool filters. When you compare the following backlinks with the above example with a dofollow link, you will see the differences in quick.
The idea is, if you do notfollow some links, then you are going to redirect more page rank back to the pages that you are linking to using the standard follow links. Because of these reasons, nofollow links were considered as low-value backlinks for a long time, since they did not help you get ranked better in Google. Now, Google treats nofollow attributes like a suggest or a hint — and these days, certain links can potentially contribute to your PageRank. If another site links to your site, and does not decide to add the nofollow tag, then the search engines naturally come to your page and boost your overall PageRank.
Ideally, you will want to have a mixture of nofollow and dofollow links on your pages, so that search engines will not see your content just as a means of earning you page rank points. Ideally, each dofollow link points search engines toward content that is relevant, up-to-date, and accurate, which, in turn, provides link juice to both the outside site and your own. The more dofollow links you are able to get, the more credibility and authority search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing will attribute to your website, helping your content rank higher for the targeted keywords.
Today, dofollow links are still a vital component in SEO strategies: getting backlinks from trusted sites can dramatically increase the PageRank value and help brands to stand out. As you have discovered, the basic definition for what is a dofollow backlink is links from other websites which transfer PageRank values back to your website for SEO purposes.
In other words, a nofollow attribute is added so you can link to the site, but it does not let the source page pass the PageRank value back to you. It is quite common practice for unscrupulous webmasters to add a nofollow attribute to previously dofollow links to avoid passing weight away from their site.
Even if a link is placed on the most relevant, trusted asset, it will not carry any weight in backlinks when a nofollow attribute is added. By default, links are followed by search crawlers and transfer the link juice back to the pages that reference them, but this default behavior does not apply when a nofollow attribute value is specified. A nofollow backlink should be used when you do not wish to pass the link juice or credit to the site.
The only way is to use the nofollow attribute on all sponsored links, or better said, with a rel=sponsor tag (rel=nofollow would function similarly, or you could combine the two values as rel=sponsor nofollow). The link is always donefollow, unless a nofollow tag is added manually, either with code or your CMS. Changing those links from nofollow to dofollow is simple, but requires that the target site owner contacts the linked sites administrator and requests a change.
You can use the Quick Filter to only display backlinks with nofollow or dofollow, and there is a label of NF or DF on each of the backlink rows, which indicates what attributes a link has. The most common way of creating dofollow backlinks is by writing a guest post on a site which uses dofollow links within the content. A profile with dofollow-only backlinks would cause search engines suspicion, as all links would appear to have been paid and agreed upon rather than earned from the quality of the content itself.
Sometimes websites are reluctant to credit a source for links, and a value for a nofollow attribute is telling search engines that a linked webpage is not necessarily one that you are going to credit. Nofollowed in-site links can hurt the visibility of your website on the search engines, particularly if they are links to important pages that you want ranking on SERPs. The nofollow attribute was introduced by Google, Yahoo, and MSN back in 2005 in an effort to combat comment spam, giving webmasters an opportunity to devalue specific links. With the evolution of the internet, that changed in 2019, with Google choosing to potentially allow some nofollow links to carry value, depending on if they are relevant in context and are well-placed.
