What is DoFollow? What is NoFollow? Follow Along and See.
If you’ve been doing any kind of reading about link building, then you’ve probably seen people mentioning “nofollow” and “dofollow” links. These are very important terms to understand when you are trying to build great links back to your site in order to increase your search engine rankings. But, to the person who is new to all of this, it may be kind of confusing. I am going to help break it down for you.
When creating a link on a webpage using HTML, the standard code for that link is:
Search Engine Optimization
It includes the HTML tag, the URL the link will be going to, the text that will be shown on the webpage for that link, and the closing HTML tag.
You are able to add more HTML to the code above, in order to tell the search engine spiders whether or not you want them to follow the link when crawling your website. You may be thinking… “Why wouldn’t I want the search engine spiders to see all of the links on my site?” This is a very valid concern, which I will address further down. First, I am going to show you how to modify the HTML in order to tell the search engine spiders to crawl a link or not.
To tell the spiders to crawl a link, you don’t have to do anything. Simply using the format shown above, the search engine spiders will crawl the link provided.
To tell the spiders to NOT crawl a link, you need to add the following code to the HTML code above:
rel="nofollow"
It would then look like:
Search Engine Optimization
Basically, there is no true “dofollow”, it is just NOT using the “nofollow” tag. Pretty simple, eh? (No, I am not Canadian… well, kind of.)
Why does this matter?
When you are using different methods (hopefully from this site) in order to build links on other websites (to increase your search engine rankings), you need to determine if the websites you are attempting to get your site listed on use the “nofollow” tag or not. If they do, it may still be a good idea to try to get that link there, but it is generally regarded as not the best use of time since the search engines don’t follow that link and you don’t get any increase in search engine rankings from that link.
So, when you are looking for sites and blogs that you could leave your link on (through reciprocal links, commenting on a blog, directory submissions, buying links, etc) figure out if the links in the particular section of the site you are aiming for uses “nofollow” or not. (A good way to do this is to view the source code, or find some good “dofollow” lists such as Courtney Tuttle’s D-list )
Why wouldn’t I want the search engine spiders to see all of the links on my site? (Or, Why would I use “nofollow”?)
There are many reasons you would want to use the “nofollow” tag, such as:
1) Paid Links: This is recommended by Google. Essentially, your sites page rank give a small amount of rank juice to the sites you link to (which helps their search engine ranking, which is the purpose of link building, to get that juice from others). If you have a paid link on your site, it’s essentially buying a higher rank in Google. They don’t like that.
2) Maybe in your blog’s comment section (if using most blog software, this is automatic). It is up to you if you want your commentators to get link juice back to their site. It is personal preference.
3) When linking to major, very popular sites. If you are linking to google.com, yahoo.com, digg.com (the front page), cnn.com, or whoever else, they are already popular, so you might as well use “nofollow” since your link won’t make or break them.
I hope this has been helpful. Feel free to comment or use the contact link in the top right of the page if you have any questions about this, or any link building subject.
UPDATE: Now that you know what dofollow is, you can easily find dofollow blogs with my DoFollow Blogs Search Engine, DoFollow Diver!
Tags: do follow, Link Building, Search Engine Optimization, seo
Thanks,
I am very new to SEO work on my sites. Link building is a high priority for me now.
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Nice article written here. I got to know a few more things about dofollow. The dofollow search engine is really good.. Thanks
Luckily, there are enough blogs and forums out there that dofollow
Good article and Information. It is definately going to help me and lots of others like me who are new to SEO and blogging.
Thanks. I newbie in SEO and this information will be very useful to me
Here is a list of sites offering free do follow links… Feel free to share it and use it on your blog
http://www.freeadsonlineuk.com/advertising/list-of-sites-with-do-follow
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thanks for the gr8 post..i am actively involved in linkbuilding & using your dofollow search tool….
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Your information on “nofollow” and “dofollow” links was very useful. thanks!
Very good information. I tried your dofollow search engine and it is working like a charm. Thanks.
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We love comment love
I wish I saw this article in the beginning! When I was starting out, I spent a lot of time posting on a forum, only to realize much later that it was using the “Nofollow” attribute. Now I select sample posts and view the selection source code.
Very well written. This is the kind of information that is useful to those want to increase their SERP’s. Keep up the good work.
Thank you so much for a well written, easy to understand article on this. I have linked to your article from my post about nofollow/dofollow. It can get really confusing when trying to explain it – but you did a great job. Thank you!
It’s very useful to know difference between DOFOLLOW and NOFOLLOW. This post will help web-programmers. Thanks to author for making it!
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I’m really glad I read this article. I never knew about the SEO add-on until I read it haha, so that’s one good thing that I got from this article.
Also, I like how you point out how easy it is to find out on your own. I get so many requests with people asking me to tell them if a blog is dofollow or not, that I eventually just started ignoring people.
I’m going to link to this article on my blog =)
Whattadya know, another site to add to my reader! Google blog search has you pretty well indexed! Mark
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you have more info on this than anyone – truly amazing!
Thanks a lot of this post
now I have better understanding of this no follows and do follows 
it helped me a lot 
all search engines don’t work the same…. Google is one of the lone wolves in not following nofollow… Yahoo and MSN follow nofollow links… but, if you have limited link building time, focus on Dofollow, since google has over 50% of all search engine traffic on the internet!
Great info – and your DoFollowDiver looks brilliant – I intend to put it to good use. Thanks.
A very useful article for blogger who wants to promote his blog through link building.Thanx…
Excellent article. Now i understand more the difference between dofollow and nofollow. I will definitely be using dofollow more in future!
Good article on DoFollow and NoFollow and thanks for the dofollow link. By the way, I like the DoFollow diver
Just wanted to leave a quick post and tell you I’ve been reading your blog now for a few weeks and enjoy the content. Keep up the great work and I’ll continue to be a loyal reader as long as you continue to keep posting great stuff!
Great information on dofollow and nofollow.
I love your search engine.
I also added my dofollow blog to it.
Thanks!
Tip top explanation. I am a blogging fresher (freshman) and that has really help clear up one of the many things i don’t understand. Thanks
I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I find your Blog very informative just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to visiting your site more often in the future.
Nice and informative article about no follow and do follow link,I have already install the Mozilla plug in so I use this plug in to find no follow and do follow.
Another great explanation about dofollow / nofollow subject. Thanks for the info and sharing
Thanks for this. Was always wondering what nofollow and dofollow meant
The Mozilla plug in is best for checking do follow and no follow links, your article also provide great know on this topic,congrats on this nice post.
Thanks I am already familiar with no- follow and do- follow. But you have explained it briefly in a simple way. I am also using mozilla addon SEO For Firefox to determine the blog or site to be no- follow or do- follow. I am amazed when visit the post as it is a do- follow blog and having so many outgoing links and even have PR- 3. Well I understand the reason after reading the whole post, content is the king.
I don’t about do follow and no follow before reading your this great article, but now my confusion become clear thanks.
I’m understanding that allowing a link that doesn’t have the nofollow attribute included “drains” some of your page rank from your page. I’m not sure if this is correct but I include some nofollow attributes to the home page of all of my sites because of this theory. Thanks for the explanation of how these different links work.
I am still learning about back linking and how important this stuff all is. I am glad that you took time to explain it.
This is a great introduction to DoFollow basics, and when it is good to use nofollow.
It is good to consider commenting on nofollow sites if they are very relevant, and especially if you can be one of the first comments. This puts your link in the viewing path of everyone getting ready to comment on an article, and will make it more likely to be clicked upon.
~ Kristi
This is great info — I appreciate you sharing it as I did not
know about do-follow, and I now have a better understanding of when
I should be using no-follow. I will definitely be using do-follow. Keep up the good work.
Nice and informative article about no follow and do follow link. There is some good software for tracking dofollow and nofollow blogs like Comment Kahuna
Makes the job a lot easier 
Nice post anyway
Thank you so much for great information. Now I understand difference between “nofollow” and dofollow” Thanks again.
Great article! It really explains quite simply the difference between no and do follow sites.
The best information I have read about this is right here. Keep going Thank you
Excellent information on DoFollow, NoFollow, etc. Thanks for the DoFollow Search tool, very helpful.
I actually wonder whether the whole dofollow trend really makes much difference. Search engines such as Yahoo take into account nofollow backlinks and I’m sure google does the same but perhaps with less weight than dofollow links.
One things for certain though, nice article
A very useful article for blogger .Good article on DoFollow and NoFollow and thanks for the dofollow
Thanks for the link man!
No, all search engines don’t work the same…. Google is one of the lone wolves in not following nofollow… Yahoo and MSN follow nofollow links… but, if you have limited link building time, focus on Dofollow, since google has over 50% of all search engine traffic on the internet!
Check out my DoFollow Blog Search Engine for some easy dofollow links.
Nope…. it’s been around longer than I’ve been interested in link building, and the implications of nofollow and dofollow.
Yes…. the ones in the blogroll are dofollow.
You can turn your comments on…. I doubt it will frustrate you.
No, it’s the second instance… they still follow it, they just dont pass any authority or link juice.