Introduction
Link building is one of the top factors that comes in Search Engine Optimisation.
Doing only content optimisation and work on technical parameters without link building is useless.
Link building is the essential part of SEO including two other important aspects – Content and On-Page Optimisation.
In the above image, you can understand the authority of each section. I have given link building 5 stars because it is the only way to move up your rankings on search engine result pages aka SERPs. Backlinks alone are also responsible to increase your domain authority or domain rating on search engine result pages aka SERPs.
Other than improving rankings and authority, backlinks also help in increasing organic traffic and search impressions.
Let’s imagine you built a new website, published the content and did the on-page optimisation. Now to quickly move up your rankings, you need to get high authority backlinks to your website.
This is pretty much clear now!
Acquiring backlinks from other websites is also known as Link Building.
Now the backlinks are two types.
- Do-follow Backlinks
- No-follow Backlinks
Question: What is a do-follow backlink?
Do follow backlinks are the most useful links for building domain authority and improve rankings. SEO experts always check the link types to ensure the link is a do-follow.
When the link is do-follow that means “Search engine bots can read or crawl on your link that is placed on another website, eventually, that generates an authority”
No matter what, only do-follow backlinks pass the link juice to your website
Here is a quick tip: Always try to get a link from a website that has a good domain rating score. You can check the FREE domain rating score from various SEO tools.
Domain rating has many other names in the SEO field.
Don’t get confused!
SEO tools like Ahrefs named it Domain Rating, Other tools like Moz, Semrush and Ubersuggest named it Domain Authority, Authority Score and Domain Score. All of them are rating the domain strength and popularity of your domain from their different algorithms.
You can not see the same score from the above tools because they always differ.
As I mentioned, all of them use different algorithms to measure your domain score.
If you are confused with SEO tools, Check out my recently published article on Ahrefs Vs Moz.
Question: How to check a dofollow link?
It is as simple as opening a google chrome from your laptop.
Now you know the importance of a do-follow link, It’s important to check on that, right?
You don’t need to have coding knowledge to understand whether a link is dofollow or not. I will share the two ways to check.
- Basic HTML code:
< a href=”https://marketinglad.in” rel=”dofollow”>Example1
OR
< a href=”https://marketinglad.in” >Example2
OR
< a href=”https://marketinglad.in” rel=”external” >Example3
You can simply inspect the webpage and check. All of the above links are do-follow links because the “rel attribute” defines the link type and if there is no rel (check example 2) the link will remain a do-follow link.
- Check with a Moz chrome extension:
Moz chrome extension can also help in understanding the link attribute. Simply enable the chrome extension and check the link attribute without even having the knowledge of HTML.
Here are the steps to follow:
Click on the Moz extension.
You see a pencil-shaped icon, right.
Click on the pencil and you will get options like – Followed, Nofollowed, External and Internal.
Just click on the following, you see all dofollow links in the green color and if you click on Nofollowed, you will see all nofollow links in the pink color. Again no coding required.
Question: What is a nofollow backlink?
Nofollow backlinks have the rel”nofollow” attribute that tells search engines “do not crawl this link” and most likely nofollow links doesn’t make any impact on rankings and building domain rating.
Here is how the code looks like:
< a href=”https://marketinglad.in” rel=”nofollow”
The links you post on social media channels like – Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and so on are always nofollow links. Those links don’t pass any link juice and crawlers ignore them.
Normally, when users click on the link, they don’t know the difference between nofollow dofollow. When it comes to search engines it has a huge difference.
That’s why always start link building with dofollow links.
At Marketing Lad, we have link builder experts who can audit your brand and give you the best advice on link building.
Follow Further Guides on Link Building:
Why Link Building is Important
Ethical Link Building Strategies
Free Link Building Tools
Best Link Building Agencies
Shahid Shahmiri is a digital marketer by profession. He helps online businesses to grow with smart marketing tactics to achieve better sales and leads. He is passionately focused and driven to grow businesses online and can manage the marketing and lead generation process with proven tactics and experiments. Shahid is accountable for analyzing marketing, SEO, growth and dealing with all promotional and media channels.
