The Difference Between Follow and No Follow

Introduction

If you are new to the world of search engine optimisation (SEO) you might be confused when your online reputation management (ORM) company starts talking about follow and no follow links.

If you fall into that category, then stick around and we will tell you what they are and why you should care about them.

Follow Links

In order for you to fully understand what the difference between follow and no follow you are going to need to know how a normal link behaves in the SEO world. When you click on a link that points to another page, that page will get a small SEO boost from the search engine results pages (SERPs). Think of this as people pointing to you. Let’s say it is for something good and not something bad like who cut the cheese.

The more people that point to you as the person that did that amazing achievement, the more you become reliable to whatever it is you did. So, if you did something amazing at work and people are telling the boss that you did that, you will get more recognition from the boss and you will likely be rewarded with a pay raise in the future. Same goes for websites.

The more that other websites point at your website, the more that SERPs recognize you as the authority in the field and gradually increase your rankings. That, in a nutshell, is what a follow link is. To be more specific, a follow link is someone pointing to your website, thereby boosting your page.

No Follow

No follow links are the exact opposite…in a way. The link still exists and it is still pointing to your website, but there is a tag that is put on it to let the SERPs know that they should not count it. Kind of sad isn’t it. That poor link is there doing its job, and someone comes in and tell the SERPs not to count it. Kind of like if you took the time to do a lot of work for your company, but they told you the work you did not count towards your daily work.

The reason that it was introduced was that many people were trying to artificially inflate their rankings by posting on message boards and forums. Consequently, many message boards and forums do not get follow links for their comments. Basically, anything that is not from the organic page will not be counted as a point.

So, there is no longer a need for people to go to these posts and make the spam post that everyone hates. Sure, they will still be seen by the community, but their website will not rank higher as a result. So, while you may hate to see those spam posts, you can rest assured that they are not benefiting off of it unless you click on it. Even at that, it only drives users to the page and generates very little traction as a result.

Conclusion

We hope this gets you one step closer to understanding all the things involved in working on your online reputation management. If you are going to take the time to boost your ranking, you might want to be focused on the right tools.

Therefore, know that if you are posting on no follow sites, it is not helping you to boost your ranking at all.