I’m sure you read the title of this post and immediately thought “what on earth are no follow links and why exactly do I need to use them”, right? I’m here to tell you the importance of no follow links as a blogger or business owner…especially if you use affiliate links or do sponsored posts from time to time. Most people are unaware of their importance or what they are in general so it’s time to shed a little light on the matter. While I acknowledge that this isn’t the most interesting topic, it’s very important to have at least a little knowledge on.
Why You Need to Be Using No Follow Links
What are No Follow Links?
According to Shout Me Loud a no follow link is an HTML attribute value used to instruct search engine bots that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index.
When are they necessary?
No follow links are necessary when you are being provided with any form of compensation. That means you should be using them whether it’s product, monetary compensation, or both. They are also required with affiliate links – whether you’re compensated on a pay per click basis or only if the user actually purchases the product, it doesn’t matter. You must add a no follow link when using any type of affiliate link regardless.
No follow links help ensure that you’re complying with Google’s rules. You could potentially get blacklisted by Google and not showing up in search engines if you don’t add no follow links to relevant links in your posts.
How to Use Them
Anytime you use an affiliate link or a link to a website in a sponsored post, you MUST add the no follow code in the HTML section of your editor.
Here’s the Code: <a href=”insert URL here” rel=”nofollow”>Insert anchor text here</a>
Isn’t that simple? You can save yourself from any potential problems with Google down the line just by using the above HTML code on your compensated links. If you’re on WordPress, there’s a plugin called Ultimate No Follow which makes inserting no follow links into your posts seamless and it’s a lot easier than having to insert the above code in your HTML each time.
I know this is time consuming if you have a lot of content, but I suggest going through all of your posts and adding no follow links when necessary. Over the past few months I have heard horror stories about people getting emails from Google flagging their account because they didn’t use no follow links so I don’t want this to happen to you.
Your Turn:
Do you use no follow links when appropriate? Why or why not? If not, do you plan to go back and fix them after reading this post? Please let me know if you have any questions regarding no follow links down in the comments.
