What is Do-Follow?


What You Need to Know about Do-Follow

Default Link Behavior

Do-follow is the standard HTML link attribute. Links pass authority by default unless explicitly marked with rel=”nofollow” or other restrictive attributes.

PageRank Distribution

These links distribute PageRank throughout your site architecture. Strategic internal linking with do-follow links helps important pages rank better by concentrating authority where it matters most.

External Link Strategy

Linking to authoritative external sources with do-follow links signals quality content. Google doesn’t penalize sites for natural outbound do-follow links to reputable sources.

Earned vs. Paid Links

Do-follow links from editorial content carry more weight than paid placements. Search engines can detect unnatural link patterns and devalue manipulative linking schemes.

Technical Implementation

Do-follow links require no special HTML attributes. The absence of rel=”nofollow” or rel=”sponsored” means the link automatically passes authority to the destination page.

Link Equity Management

Balancing do-follow and nofollow links helps control how authority flows through your site. However, Google largely ignores attempts to manipulate PageRank through excessive nofollow usage.


Frequently Asked Questions about Do-Follow

1. Should I nofollow all external links to keep authority on my site?

No. Google expects natural linking patterns. Do-follow links to quality sources signal editorial judgment and don’t harm your site’s authority.

2. How do do-follow links affect my site’s crawl budget?

Search engines follow do-follow links to discover and index pages. Strategic internal do-follow linking ensures important pages get crawled and indexed efficiently.

3. Can too many do-follow links hurt my site?

Excessive do-follow links to low-quality or unrelated sites can signal manipulation. Natural, relevant linking patterns work best for both users and search engines.

4. Do I need to add a do-follow attribute to links?

No. Links are do-follow by default in HTML. You only need to add attributes like rel=”nofollow” when you specifically want to restrict authority flow.


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Related Terms

Rendering

Rendering is how search engines process JavaScript to access and index dynamic web content for search results.

Rendering

DOM

The DOM is the browser’s tree-like structure of a web page. Search engines parse it to understand and index content, affecting crawlability and speed.

DOM

Caching

Stores website files to reduce load times and improve performance by serving cached resources instead of origin server requests

Caching

JSON-LD

JSON-LD helps search engines understand content through structured data encoded in JavaScript notation.

JSON-LD


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