Rank Math offers a few different options to apply nofollow for links, and you might be unsure if you should apply nofollow to external links.
So in this knowledgebase article, we’ll walk you through whether you should NoFollow External Links or not.
Table of Contents
1 What Are NoFollow Links?
NoFollow links are links that include a special rel="nofollow" attribute, telling search engines not to pass any SEO value or link juice to the linked page. In simple terms, it means search engines can see the link but won’t treat it as a vote of trust.
The most common way to create a NoFollow link is by adding the rel="nofollow" attribute directly to the link’s HTML. It looks like this:
<a href="https://rankmath.com" rel="nofollow">Example</a>
You can also apply NoFollow to all links on a page by adding a robots meta tag with the nofollow value in the header section of your site’s code. This tells search engines not to follow any links on that page at all.
2 How to Add a NoFollow in Rank Math?
In order to add a nofollow attribute to your link, create a new page or post and add the anchor text for your link. Next, select the anchor text and click on the link icon.
Enter the link in the provided URL box and click Enter, as shown below.
Once you’ve entered the link, click the Edit icon.
This will open a box for your link; click on the Advanced option. You’ll see several options that you can select. Select the Set to nofollow link option and click the Save button.
Don’t forget to add the link in the URL field and press Enter. Your nofollow link will then be added to your post.
3 When Should You NoFollow External Links?
When you link to an external website, search engines typically pass a small amount of authority (also known as “link juice”) to that site. However, there are times when you may not want to share this SEO value. In those cases, adding the nofollow attribute to the link ensures that no link juice is passed to the external site.
In other words, the nofollow tag prevents search engines from considering the linked site as an endorsement or trust signal, effectively keeping the ranking credit within your site.
For more details, you can refer to our guide on Nofollow links.
4 How to Add NoFollow to All External Links?
In order to save time, Rank Math also has a global setting that will apply nofollow to all external links. This can be configured under Rank Math SEO → General Settings → Links inside your WordPress admin area.
Scroll down a bit and enable the Nofollow External Links option there. Once you do that, Rank Math will automatically and dynamically apply the nofollow attribute for all external links on the site.
This means that irrespective of whether you’ve configured Set to nofollow or not in the link option, all external links will now include a nofollow in the front-end, and no changes are made to the content stored on the site.
Once you’ve enabled the option, do not forget to click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page to reflect the changes.
Alternatively, you can consider applying nofollow to specific links and domains throughout your website.
And, that’s it! We hope this tutorial has successfully armed you with the knowledge you need to make nofollow links work for you… If you still have any questions, please feel free to contact our support team, who are available 24×7 and will help you out as soon as possible.