We continue one more day from telling you all the secrets of link building!
In September 2019, Google announced one of its most important changes in recent times and, why not say it, put many webmasters on alert: the “nofollow” attribute was no longer a guideline to become a suggestion. And not only that; Two new attributes were introduced for links: “sponsored” and “UGC”.
If you have already read and you also know It’s time for you to delve a little deeper into this world. Find out what dofollow and nofollow links are and new information from Google about nofollow, sponsored links, and UGC.
Difference between dofollow and nofollow links
Until March 1, 2020, when the Google change came into force, there were two types of linking:
“dofollow” or “follow” links
The “follow” links are the ones that appear by default every time you link to a page from your website. These links have the particularity of convey web authority, since it indicates the “follow” guideline to Google; that is, you must follow it and trust the linked website.
No-follow links
It was more than 15 years ago when Google created the “nofollow” attribute to prevent excessive spam in blog comments. From then until now, the “nofollow” links do not transmit (or rather, they did not transmit) the web authority to another page, or at least not as much or in the same way. This is why many webmasters took advantage of this guideline when their page had many external links to others or, in internal links, to avoid transferring authority to non-relevant pages.
What has changed in the “nofollow” links?
The “nofollow” attributes will continue to be used to mark those links that do not fall within the sponsored and UGC category, as a way of telling Google that we do not want to give a vote in favor of the linked page.
Until March, Google did not take into account any links marked as “nofollow”. Since March, this has changed: now the “nofollow” attributes, as well as the new “sponsored” and “UGC”, will only be suggestions and it will be Google who decides which links to consider or exclude.
That is, even if we use the rel=”nofollow” attribute in our link, Google could follow these links and transfer authority if it considers it so. Therefore, the “nofollow” is no longer a guarantee that Google will ignore the link and not take it into account.
Google recommends that links from sponsorships, advertising or exchanges use the rel=”sponsored” attribute. With this attribute, we are indicating to Google that it is a payment link.
Until now, paid links were recommended to mark with “nofollow”, so you may come across hundreds of links marked in this way. Should you change them? Not calm. Although Google recommends that the “sponsored” attribute be used for new links, there is no need for you to change the links already created.
Link with UGC (User Generated Content) attribute
The UGC attribute has been created to mark User Generated Content, for example, in the comments section of a blog or a forum.
In this case, it is also not necessary to change the links already generated with the “nofollow” attribute.
Finding out if a link is nofollow, sponsored or UGC is easy. We only have to access the html code and look for the link in question or, even easier, enter our browser and do the following:
- Select the link you want to analyze and click the right button of your mouse.
- Select the last option: “Inspect”.
- A window will be displayed in which you will find the source code of the page at the exact point where the link code is located.
- Look for the link, marked with the code link and note the rel=”nofollow”, rel=”sponsored” or rel=”UGC” markup. Doesn’t it have a rel=”attribute”? So, it’s follow.
As this process can be too tedious, I recommend the extension which will show you in red the links that have a directive other than “follow”.
But also, Whether we are talking about external or internal link building, you have to study what type of links are on your website and to your website.
To measure the profile of incoming links to your website, no tool is as accurate as with which you can have a detailed study of your link profile, as well as know the reference domains that link to you.
At the internal linking level, tools such as provide you with information on the link attribute, the anchor text that the link has, the page where the link is located and where it points to. All detailed so you can locate the link in the blink of an eye.
Don’t worry if your website has more inbound nofollow links than follow, it is normal and therefore what Google considers more natural. Also remember that nofollow links can now pass web authority to the linked page if Google considers it so. Also keep in mind that Google looks more and more at user intentso sometimes a good anchor text that attracts the click to your website is more decisive than a tracking guideline.
These are the fundamental cases in which you had to add nofollow links on your website:
- Comments on blogs. In many websites, the blog comments section allows by default to add a link and in many of these, also by default, the guideline was nofollow. This is because it is advisable to indicate to Google that our website is not responsible for these outgoing links and therefore we do not want to divide our link juice between them. From now on, it is advisable to mark this type of link as “UGC”, although it may be accompanied by “nofollow”.
- Payment links. Google, in its eagerness to try to be perfect for the user, does not like that we deceive them by buying links on post buying and selling websites. But he can’t help it, so what he recommends is that in all these posts that include a payment link, the tracking directive should be nofollow. Currently, these links are recommended to be “sponsored”.
- Internal link. If you write a post on your blog and from it you link to another article on your website or to the services page, don’t even think about it, always put follow links. The conflict comes with all the links to which you are sometimes not aware that you link, how many links does the footer of your website have that is replicated on all the pages? Although “nofollow” is now a suggestion, try to implement the nofollow directive in this type of link, such as the cookie policy or legal notice so that Google knows that you do not want to lose link juice in these links.
- Theme. If for some reason in a post you link to a page whose content is not on the same topic or similar to your website, I advise you to include the “nofollow” attribute to this link, Google will also thank you.
How to put attribute to link
Currently there are several plugins that allow you to easily select that the link is nofollow, exactly in the same way that we can indicate that it opens in a new tab. However, if you want to add this guideline to your links, it is because you are really interested in the SEO of your website, so I recommend that instead of downloading another plugin that can increase the loading time of your page, you edit the html code adding the tag rel=”nofollow. For example:
With this simple guideline we obtain a nofollow link from our website, but is there any point in filling our site with nofollow links?
As you may have had some doubts about the “nofollow”, “sponsored” and “UGC” links, here are some answers from Google, almost verbatim, to the most common questions.
Do I have to change existing nofollow links?
As we have mentioned, it is not necessary. If you are using nofollow to mark sponsored links or to indicate that the page you are linking to does not deserve your vote of trust, you can leave it as it is.
Can more than one of these attributes be used in a link?
Yes. The nofollow, sponsored and UGC attributes are not mutually exclusive. You can combine the attributes in your links; for example, “rel=”nofollow sponsored”. Thus, in addition, you ensure that it is read by search engines that have not yet implemented the new attributes.
If you have sponsored links marked “nofollow”, you do not have to change them. You can still use nofollow to avoid possible penalties. However, Google recommends that rel = “sponsored” be used for new links.
Now you know how and when the “nofollow”, “sponsored” and “UGC” attributes are used, we recommend that you start implementing them in your link building strategy to adapt to Google’s guidelines.
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