One of the aspects of fundamental importance for the SEO is the management of the links inserted in the articles or pages and the management of the links that refer to other sites. There are therefore three types of links: Interiors, Exteriors and backlinks (links that take you back to the site) for each of these it is possible to indicate to the Google spider not to “follow” (give importance) to a given link, and this is precisely the sense of the NoFollow attribute. But then how to insert a NoFollow link in the various cms and how to do it from code? Let’s find out in the following article.
But first of all: what is a NoFollow link?
Assuming that just because the web is based on links, a web page or an article that does not have external links, it does not respect the good SEO standard. The search engine algorithm, in fact, is partly based on link analysis. From the moment a page does not have links that refer to it, it would not be indexed by the engines and would not be searchable by any user. Well, having said that … we do our job of link insertion and we have our blog with external links in our articles and therefore theoretically our site is Seo-Friendly … and the sore point comes … Not all links are positive .
But the nofollow comes to our rescue … Thanks to this attribute we tell the search engines to “not follow the link”.
Why insert a NoFollow link?
When we insert a link pointing to another website, we must be sure that the site to which we are linking has valuable content. How to understand if a website is authoritative and if linking it benefits us?
Ask us a few questions:
- Will the user who lands on the linked site find useful information in order to complete what I proposed on my site?
- Will his experience and his journey make him return to my site?
- Is the content I’m linking to relevant to what I talked about on my site?
If, after a thorough analysis, you will answer yes to all three questions, you can only expect positive effects on search engines and traffic to your site. In the event that the aforementioned does not have a positive response but we must forcibly insert external links as can be an advertising banner is the case in which to use the attribute rel = “nofollow”.
How to insert a NoFollow link … from code!
The ability to insert NoFollow links has been given precisely to prevent bots from following individual links on a page and performing a targeted check. Instead of indicating, as previously done, not to follow all the links on the entire page, with the use of this attribute you can tell the robots not to scan a particular link.
For example, to insert the NoFollow attribute on a word the word rel = “nofollow” should be added as per the following example for the word “follow”:
<a href=”http://www.mysite.com” rel=”nofollow”> follow </a> </p>
How to do it with WordPress?
To insert the rel = “nofollow” attribute using WordPress, you need to go to text mode view and enter it manually via html code. The alternative is to use plugins that insert the nofollow attribute. Here are some examples: External Links and Wp External Links Using External Links under Settings and External Links, you will find these options:
- – Process all outgoing links, rather than just those within the content and text widgets of the entries
- Add an external link icon to the outgoing links. You can use a class = “no_icon” attribute on the links to overwrite it
- – Add rel = nofollow to links
- – Open outgoing links in new windows
- – Enable the “autolinks” feature
- – Domains / subdomains you wish to exclude from processing
Among the features of Wp External Links you will find these features:
- – Manage external and internal connections
- – Open the links in a new window or tab
- – Add “follow” or “nofollow”
- – Add “noopener” and “noreferrer” (for safety)
- – Add shortcut icons (font icons: awesome fonts, dashicons)
- – Set other attributes like the title and CSS classes
- – Full page scan (or just posts, comments, widgets)
How to insert a NoFollow on Prestashop?
If your site is based on the Prestashop cms you can always enter the rel = nofollow via code or use modules such as SEO noindex, follow .
Below are its features:
- – Canonical URL by category, new product, best sellers, pagination of prices (? P = 1, p = 2 ..) to avoid duplicate SEO content
- – Optimization of search results for all search engines
- – Elimination of mass indexing for unnecessary pages
- – Setting of the FOLLOW / NOFOLLOW option for each page
- – Setting of the INDEX / NOINDEX option for each page.
- – Setting of INDEX & FOLLOW options for Categories, Products, CMS, CMS Categories, Default and Modules.
- – Direct updating of the ROBOTS.TXT file from the module configuration.
The NoFollow links on Magento
If you use Magento to set the nofollow on a single link like prestashop and wordpress you can use the code, then within a page add the attribute at the link or there are some alternatives like CreateSeo , free module with many other features