Many of our readers are confused about nofollow links. They often ask us how to add them in WordPress, and how these links affect their site’s SEO.
Nofollow links are an important part of good website management. They tell search engines which links on your site should not influence search rankings. This might sound complicated, but it is quite simple once you understand it.
At WPBeginner, we use best practices for link management across our websites. We nofollow many external links to improve our site’s SEO strategy and comply with search engine guidelines
A nofollow link is a type of link that tells search engines not to pass any link authority from your web page to the other website that you are linking to. You can turn any link into a nofollow link by adding the link attribute .
Links or backlinks are an important search engine ranking factor.
When you link to an external website, search engines consider that as a ranking signal, and they will pass a small portion of your authority (link juice) to the other website.
Some SEO experts believe that making external links nofollow can help your own WordPress website rank higher. However, this has not proven to be the case.
A few years ago, Google announced that their search algorithm now uses nofollow as a hint rather than a directive for crawling and indexing purposes.
All nofollow links contain the HTML attribute.
Here is the HTML code for an example of a nofollow link:
In the Inspect panel, you will be able to see the HTML source code of the link along with the nofollow attribute.
It’s completely acceptable and actually recommended to link to authority websites like Wikipedia, WPBeginner, and the New York Times without the nofollow attribute. Linking to authority sites helps add credibility to your own website.
However, we recommend you use nofollow links to less credible websites.
Here are some cases when you should always add nofollow attributes to the links:
1. Affiliate and Sponsored Links
Many bloggers make money online using affiliate marketing.
Affiliate links are tracking links for products and services that you recommend. You get a referral commission if someone purchases after going through your link.
You should always add the nofollow attribute to affiliate links. This applies whether you are using a direct affiliate link or cloaking it using Pretty Links.
Another popular way bloggers make money is by adding sponsored links. You should always nofollow sponsored links. Otherwise, search engines may consider your WordPress site to be selling links or spamming. This can get you penalized in search engine results.
2. External Links
Sometimes, you may link to external sources as references. Since you don’t control the content on those websites, you should consider adding nofollow to them.
In simple words, you are telling the search engines that you are linking to a source, but it is not something you can vouch for.
Note: You don’t need to use nofollow links to authority websites.
3. Sidebar Links
Some bloggers add a list of external or affiliate links to the sidebar of their WordPress blog. These external links may be from authority sites or websites that they trust.
The problem is every time a new page is created on your site, you also create a new backlink for those websites from your sidebar on that page.
It is important to make these links nofollow. That way, you are not passing the SEO juice from every page to certain links.
The easiest way to add nofollow links to your site is to use the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin for WordPress. This lets you add the nofollow attribute without needing to edit any HTML code. You can use the free or premium version of the AIOSEO plugin.
First, install and activate the All in One SEO Premium or AIOSEO free plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Using All in One SEO to Add a Nofollow Link in the Classic Editor
Although we recommend using the block editor, some users still prefer to use the Classic Editor for writing posts and creating pages.
AIOSEO lets you easily add nofollow links in the classic editor, too. Simply open up the post or page you want to edit.
If you don’t want to use the AIOSEO plugin, then you will have to manually add nofollow links in the WordPress block editor.
Let’s take a look at the step-by-step process of how to add nofollow links in WordPress posts or pages with the block editor.
First, go to Posts » Add New to create a new page.
As before, select the anchor text for your link and click on the link icon. Go ahead and enter your link.
Even though AIOSEO is the easiest way to add nofollow links, you can also add links manually if you are using the classic editor.
Once done, you need to click the ‘Visual Editor’ option to switch back.
Adding a nofollow attribute to your WordPress menu links is extremely simple, but the option isn’t very visible. This is why many WordPress users don’t even realize it’s there.
Let’s take a look at how to add nofollow links in WordPress navigation menus.
First, you need to go to the Appearance » Menus page in your WordPress admin.
Most solutions that offer this are done with the help of JavaScript. This is not helpful for Google or for your site’s SEO. Instead, you should manually nofollow the links using the above methods.
Some bloggers worry about comment links. The good news is that WordPress adds the nofollow attribute to all comment links by default.
If you are still looking for a solution to automatically nofollow all external links, then you can use the WP External Links plugin. It adds the nofollow attribute to all external links in your posts, pages, navigation menus, and the sidebar.
First, you need to install and activate the WP External Links plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
We hope this guide helped you to learn how to add nofollow links in WordPress. You may also want to see some other WordPress tutorials related to using links: