When To Use Nofollow Tags

Updated June 7, 2024

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Follow the Leader

If you’ve ever looked into SEO or, more specifically, links and link building, you might have heard of nofollow links. But do you really know what they are, or when to use them? Take a look at this post where we explain what a no follow link is and exactly when they should, and shouldn’t, be used.

Nofollow 101

A nofollow simply tells search engines not to follow that link. It is basically saying “ignore this link when it comes to calculating the SEO value of my website”. By putting a nofollow tag on a link you are making it clear to Google (and any other search engine) that you do not want any “credit” for that link, you just want to send users to that page if they click on it. But why would you want to do that?

3 Reasons Why

Paid Links – The first, and the most important reason is to avoid any punishment from Google for setting up a paid link. There are many reasons for having paid links on your site, like advertising, or referral selling, but if you do not flag them up to Google as such, you are running the risk of a Google penalty.

Comments – If you allow people to comment on articles or other content on your website, then setting up any links they place in the comments section as nofollow is good practice. Unless you have the time to spend vetting every link posted in your comments section. The same also goes for user-generated content, like forums or a message board. Better to keep it set up as nofollow, just in case something is linked that you don’t want contributing to your SEO profile.

Embedded Content – For example videos or images that might be hosted on other websites that you might not want to totally endorse, or make Google think you are taking credit for.

When You Can Follow

One commonly misunderstanding with nofollow tags is that they should be placed on pages of your own website that you don’t want coming up in the SERP, like your terms and conditions page. However, Google has recently reconfirmed that you do not need to set nofollow links to pages like your Terms of Service. Google’s bots are now sophisticated enough to be able to read pages like this and decide to not list them as they would a product page. If you want to set links going to pages like that as nofollow, it won’t harm your site’s SEO. But, you don’t need to do it.

I Don’t Follow

Hopefully, that’s helped you get to grips with nofollow links. Do you have any other SEO questions we can answer?