How to Check if a Backlink Is Dofollow

Various factors affect the quality of backlinks. Many people believe that getting links from authoritative sites related to your niche produces the best backlinks that will increase your search rankings.

While this is true, knowing whether these are dofollow or nofollow links is just as important.

As a quick recap, dofollow links help pass link juice from one site to yours. That means the more trustworthy a domain you get a link from, the greater the chances your site will improve its rankings on search engines for your keywords.

This is what the dofollow link code looks like in HTML:

<a href="https://example.com">This is a dofollow link.</a>

But the transfer of link juice would be impossible with nofollow links. These links come with attributes that prevent websites from passing authority from one site to yours. As a result, even if you secured a link from a high-quality site, the link won’t help you rank higher on search engine rankings.

This is also why agencies offer dofollow backlink packages to effectively help client sites to rank on Google.

Here’s how a nofollow link looks like:

<a href="https://example.com" rel="nofollow">This is a nofollow link.</a>

Aside from the nofollow tag, Google announced the addition of two new link tags to help publishers prevent the passing of link authority to sites that paid for link placement or whose links were created by users.

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Websites that use these link attributes wish to stick to Google’s guidelines to avoid getting penalized and hopefully increase their rankings on search engine results.

That said, you must be able to determine which sites will give you dofollow backlinks to maximize the most out of your link building campaign.

To be fair, there’s nothing wrong with building links with the nofollow attribute, as they make your link profile look natural and organic. At the same time, you don’t want to spend time and resources building links from sites that offer nofollow backlinks as they won’t help you increase your organic traffic.

So, it would help if you struck a balance between acquiring links that make a difference in your search rankings and building a natural-looking link profile to avoid penalization from Google.

This post helps you round out your link building strategy with the different ways of finding out dofollow and nofollow links. This way, you can narrow down your prospects of authoritative sites to those that offer only dofollow links and get the most out of your campaign.

#1 – Check the Source Code

The simplest way to see if the link is dofollow or not is by checking the page’s source code from your browser.

To do this, right-click on your mouse and select “View source code.” You can also press Ctrl + U to open the source code on a different window of your browser faster. Or you can press the F12 key to view the code on the same window below the page, which is what we’re going to do here.

Next, highlight the outbound link on the page and click on it to show you where the link’s code is located in the source code. You should see the HTML code of the backlink and see if it has a link attribute associated with it.

On the downside, this method of checking nofollow and dofollow links on a site is the most inconvenient. You have to cross-reference links from other pages to confirm that the site offers dofollow links for all. That means you must visit as many pages as possible and perform this task manually.

It will take lots of your site doing this for a single site—let alone tens and hundreds of high-quality link prospects.

#2 – Use NoFollow Extension

A much more convenient way of finding out if outbound links from a site are nofollow or dofollow is by using the NoFollow Chrome Extension.

Once downloaded and installed successfully, visit any website or page with links on them. If the page has a nofollow backlink, it will be in a red-dotted box.

This means that the site supports using nofollow tags on all outbound links published on their site. It is a sign that you should stay away from these sites (at least for now) until you’ve built enough dofollow links or are looking to diversify your profile.

# 3 – Use Premium Tools

The best link building tools allow you to kill two birds with one stone: conduct competitor backlink research and determine which among the best ones offer dofollow.

Using SEMrush, click on COMPETITIVE RESEARCH > Backlink Gap, then enter your site on the first root domain. The tool automatically decides who your top competitors are, as you can select which ones to analyze from the drop-down menu.

This feature finds domains that link to your competitors but not yours. The goal is to acquire the same high-quality backlinks are similar sites have to keep up with them on search results.

You will see the list of domains other websites have in high-quality domains on the next page. Click on the number of links pointing to your competitors and see whether it’s a dofollow backlink. If not, you should see the “Nofollow” label similar to the one below:

Conclusion

Knowing whether your backlink or dofollow or nofollow seems like a simple thing, but it makes a world of difference in your SEO campaign.

As much as possible, you want to get as many dofollow backlinks as possible to help grow your rankings on Google and other search engines. And it all starts by knowing which sites to target based on multiple factors, including whether the site is giving away dofollow links.

Suppose you’re busy with other things in your online business and how no time to determine which sites offer dofollow links, you’re not the only one. The link building process is not for the faint of heart, and it’s better if you can delegate this task to someone with knowledge, experience, and a successful track record.

Thankfully, Linkplicity meets all these qualifications. Our dofollow backlink packages allow you to choose the kind of powerful links your website needs to get lots of organic traffic from Google.

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