What is Nofollow?
Nofollow is a meta tag or attribute instructing search engines not to follow a link or pass link equity. It can be applied to a webpage or URL.
When applied to a webpage, the nofollow meta tag instructs search engines not to follow or pass link juice to the links found on that page. You can declare a page as nofollow by adding the below meta tag to the head element <head> of that page.
<meta name="robots" content="nofollow"/>
When applied to a URL, the nofollow attribute tells search engines not to follow the link or pass link equity. Links tagged as nofollow will include a rel="nofollow" attribute, as shown below.
<a href="https://example.com/what-is-yoga" rel="nofollow"></a>
Search engines consider backlinks as a form of endorsement. So, if a site has to link to an external site that it cannot vouch for, it can include the nofollow attribute, indicating it may have some reservations about the site, even though it found its content helpful.Â
Google also requires certain links, including paid links and advertisements, to be tagged as nofollow.