Nofollow and Follow Links SEO Moz Case Study

A follow link is essentially a vote of confidence: Google sees it and decides to pass some ranking equity to the linked page. A nofollow link is more like a mention without the vote—Google knows the link exists but does not automatically count it toward rankings. Since March 2020, Google has treated nofollow as a hint, meaning it may still use the link for crawling or ranking if it seems natural. This change has blurred the line. For example, a nofollow link from a high-authority news site can still drive thousands of visitors and increase branded search queries. In my experience, top-ranking pages often have 25–40% nofollow links in their [backlink profiles](/backlinks/). That does not mean those links directly boost rankings, but they contribute to a natural-looking profile and can lead to editorial follow links later. Moz's own guidance says to aim for a healthy mix of follow and nofollow, and I have found that chasing only follow links can leave you with an unnatural, risky profile. So my plain-English take is: treat follow links as the foundation, but never turn down a valuable nofollow link. Evaluate it for traffic, relevance, and the chance it may become a follow link over time. Use tools like a [Backlink Checker](/backlink-checker/) to audit your current ratio and see where you stand.

This distinction matters most when you are building your own backlink profile. You want mostly follow links from authoritative, relevant sites, but a few nofollow links from high-traffic sources can still bring visitors and diversify your anchor text. When doing outreach, I prioritise follow links but accept nofollow links from sites with real readership. For outbound links, use nofollow for any link that is paid, untrusted, or policy-sensitive. Google's guidelines require rel="sponsored" for paid links, but nofollow also works. User-generated content should use rel="ugc" or nofollow to prevent spam links from affecting your site. A common counter-argument is that nofollow links are a waste of effort, but that ignores the indirect value: brand visibility, referral traffic, and social signals. I worked on a site where 90% of backlinks were nofollow; after securing more follow links from editorial sources, rankings improved, but the nofollow links still accounted for 30% of referral traffic. The decision rule I use is: for any link opportunity, ask "Is this site relevant and does it have real traffic?" If yes, take the link regardless of attribute. Then check your [Domain Authority](/domain-authority/) of the linking site to weigh the potential value. For outbound, I nofollow only when I would not want to endorse the page. That includes negative SEO attacks; you can disavow those, but nofollowing suspicious links in content is a first defence. Also, be careful with [Guest Posting](/guest-posting/) — many sites now default to nofollow on guest posts, which is fine as long as the site has an engaged audience.

I used to believe nofollow links were completely worthless. I would ignore them in my outreach efforts and even remove them from my own site if I found them in my backlink profile. That was a mistake. The turning point came when a nofollow link from a major newspaper sent over 5,000 visitors in a week and led to three natural [editorial follow links](/editorial-links/) from smaller sites. I also used to apply nofollow to every outbound link without thinking, believing it would protect my site's link equity. That cost me referral traffic and probably missed opportunities to signal relevance to Google. Since the 2020 update, nofollow is a hint, so I now link freely to trusted sources with follow and only use nofollow for paid, untrusted, or user-generated content. I also learned that a natural backlink profile includes nofollow links. Having 100% follow links looks manipulative and can trigger algorithmic penalties. I still get this wrong sometimes: I occasionally chase a follow link from a low-quality site and ignore a high-quality nofollow mention. I have to remind myself that a link from a reputable site, even if nofollow, often leads to more valuable links down the line. Checking the [Anchor Text](/anchor-text/) of nofollow links also taught me that Google may still use that anchor text as a relevance signal, even if it does not pass equity directly. Finally, I underestimated the role of nofollow links in [Negative SEO](/negative-seo/) defence: a spike in spammy nofollow links can still harm your brand perception, so monitor them.