Nofollow links are links to which a rel%3D nofollow HTML tag has been applied. This tag tells search engines to ignore the link, meaning it won't pass on any PageRank or link power. As a result, nofollow links are unlikely to have any direct impact on search engine rankings. However, Google does view them as a sign of trust in the information shared on the website. From the perspective of link building, nofollow links are of no use since they have been stripped of their value and effect.
They don't have any immediate positive effect on a website's ranking, but they also aren't seen as a negative sign. If you have better content than your competition, you could ask the website to change its nofollow link to your site. We've asked SEO experts to explain the difference between dofollow and nofollow links, why they're both important and how you can start creating them. Natalia Wulfe, marketing director at Effective Spend, explains: “When a website with a high ranking links to a site with a lower ranking with a dofollow link, it is transmitting its “link energy”, which increases the value of the website with the lowest ranking for the search engine.”In some cases, there may be a small direct ranking factor in the algorithm that “counts” untracked links. While it makes sense to focus on quality content to get dofollow and nofollow links, consistently generating valuable content is a challenge for many websites.
As such, some bloggers and website administrators resorted to fraudulent backlink practices, which involved adding links to their company's website anywhere they could in order to generate backlinks. If you have an entry on Wikipedia or if your website is referenced on Wikipedia, the backlink is always a nofollow link. Otherwise, it's a matter of working with a developer to manually or automatically add the rel%3D nofollow tag to your external links.
