{"id":102153,"date":"2021-12-05T05:59:39","date_gmt":"2021-12-05T05:59:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.similarweb.com\/corp\/?p=102153"},"modified":"2024-12-31T14:49:37","modified_gmt":"2024-12-31T14:49:37","slug":"optimizing-nofollow-links","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.similarweb.com\/blog\/marketing\/seo\/optimizing-nofollow-links\/","title":{"rendered":"Nofollow Links: A Step-By-Step Guide About What You Need To Know"},"content":{"rendered":"

As an SEO executive at the first and largest independent data-driven<\/a> marketing agency in Turkey, I understand the need to create a strategy that appeals to both searchers and bots. After all, it\u2019s almost 2022 and while artificial intelligence isn\u2019t quite Westworld level, the importance of bots in search cannot be underestimated.<\/p>\n

Many people wonder if optimizing \u201cnofollow” links is a waste of time and effort, but very few SEOs put this logic to the test. It\u2019s an ongoing debate I\u2019ve had with many of my peers, but it\u2019s time to end this debate. In this article, we will analyze the value and ROI of using the “nofollow” attribute and the different ways to utilize it, as well as the impact it can have on a website’s performance. But first, let’s begin with a quick analogy.<\/p>\n

Last week, I was on a drive when suddenly Waze began recalculating by estimated arrival time and updating my route. As most people would agree, that\u2019s what we want Waze to do \u2013 optimize our route to put us on the quickest path to our destination.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s exactly what optimizations are in SEO. SEOs tweak the signals your website gives search engines to give you the quickest route to relevant traffic. Curious how this actually works? Follow along to learn how to optimize your link strategy with the \u201cnofollow\u201d tag.<\/p>\n

There are many different ways to optimize a website and increase its performance in search engines. One of them is to create optimized navigation<\/a> by directing search engine bots to the right pages in the shortest way. All SEO specialists direct search engine bots with internal links<\/a> between pages within the site and out-of-site link outputs.<\/p>\n

Certain optimizations are required in order for the search engine bots to move between pages in the most efficient way. One of the most important of these optimizations are the links that provide transitions between pages. Increasing the efficiency of bots with correct navigation will help the crawling quality of the website by contributing to the crawl budget. The addition of external links and the \u201cnofollow\u201d tag to some internal links will play a very important role in this optimization.<\/p>\n

The basic definitions: nofollow, links, and crawl budget<\/h2>\n

What is the \u201cnofollow\u201d tag?<\/h3>\n

The nofollow attribute is an HTML tag that allows you to direct search engine bots\u2019 crawling. With the nofollow tag, you can decide which of the hyperlinks on the pages will be followed by the bots crawling your website and which ones will not. If you want the link on the page not to be followed and ignored by Google, you can simply apply the rel=”nofollow” tag.<\/p>\n

Definition by Google: rel=”nofollow”: \u201cUse this attribute for cases where you want to link to a page but don’t want to imply any type of endorsement, including passing along ranking credit to another page.\u201d<\/p>\n

How to add nofollow link tags?<\/h4>\n

The \u201cnofollow\u201d tag can be easily implemented to most pages via the CMS. WordPress, Droopal, Wix<\/a> and most other management systems provide easy ways to add and control link tags, both on specific links in specific pages and as site-wide rules. You can also add it very easily to the code of your content or navigation menus just by adding the rel=\u201dnofollow\u201d attribute to your link. Which ever way you choose to implement it, the end result should look something like this:<\/p>\n

\"How<\/p>\n

What are internal and external links?<\/h3>\n

Internal link:<\/strong> This is the link that a website makes within itself. Internal links that provide transitions between pages allow both users and search engine bots to navigate the site more quickly and accurately. Internal links can be made from different areas such as the header menu, filter, footer, and content fields.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

External link:<\/strong> We can define all link outputs given outside the site as external links. Unlike external backlinks, external links given to a different domain from the website can direct search engine bots crawling the site to an external source. In this case, it may cause the bots to go to different domains and negatively affect the crawl budget.<\/p>\n

What is a crawl budget?<\/h3>\n

It wouldn’t be wrong to define it as “the value Google Bots give to a website”. Search engine bots visit the site and perform crawls at a certain time interval for each website. The frequency of this time period, the time it will allocate while crawling the website, and the number of pages it indexes during the crawl make up the crawl budget.<\/p>\n

Even if a website is poorly designed<\/a>, Google algorithms are advanced enough to eventually index almost all of the pages. However, Google’s request is to be able to crawl and index a site as quickly as possible. The longer this process takes, the lower the value of the website in the eyes of Google, and the less frequently the bots come to the website.<\/p>\n

\"List<\/p>\n

Create a nofollow link strategy<\/h2>\n

How do you decide where to implement the “nofollow” tag?<\/h3>\n

Every website hosts different types of pages. In its most general form,
\neCommerce and non-commerce websites host different page types from each other. Internal links that link between pages serve a different function depending on the type of each page. Therefore, internal links found from websites all have a degree of importance. We should start by identifying the pages that are of minimum importance in terms of SEO<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Let’s take a step-by-step look at how we can contribute to the crawl budget by optimizing internal and external links with the nofollow tag.<\/p>\n

First step: Categorize internal links<\/h3>\n

As mentioned, in order to decide which links to add to the nofollow tag, we must first start by categorizing internal links. What types of internal links are important to us? Simply put:<\/p>\n