Dofollow Link

A dofollow link is the ordinary hyperlink the web is built from — a link with no nofollow attribute attached, so search engines follow it and pass ranking credit through it to the page it points at. Here is a detail that surprises people: there is no rel="dofollow" attribute to write. "Dofollow" is simply a name the SEO community gives to the default behavior. A link is dofollow because of what it lacks — the nofollow, sponsored, or ugc markers — rather than anything you add. Every plain link in your content is already a dofollow link. When a search engine crawls it, the link acts as a signal that your page trusts and endorses the destination, lending the target some of your page's accumulated authority, the quantity often called link equity or PageRank.

That passing of credit is why dofollow links sit at the heart of how search works. Search engines decided early on to treat links as endorsements: a page linked to by many trusted pages is probably worth trusting too. A dofollow link is one cast vote in that system. The more credible the linking page, the more weight its dofollow link carries — a link from a respected, established site is worth far more than one from an obscure or spammy page. This is also why dofollow links from quality sites are the prize that link building chases, and why they are worth so much more than nofollow mentions, which deliberately withhold the very credit that makes a link valuable for ranking.

The clean way to understand dofollow is by its opposite. A nofollow link carries the rel="nofollow" attribute, which instructs search engines not to pass ranking credit to the destination — a link without a vote. A dofollow link carries no such instruction, so the vote is cast and the credit flows. They are two settings of the same control: add the nofollow marker to withhold credit, or leave it off, which is the default, to pass it. Since 2019 the nofollow family has expanded — rel="sponsored" for paid links and rel="ugc" for user-generated links join plain nofollow — but a link bearing none of these remains dofollow and passes credit normally. The practical question on every link you place is just this: do I want to endorse and credit this page, or not?

The distinction shapes strategy on both ends of a link. When you earn links to your own site, dofollow links from trustworthy sources are the ones that genuinely lift your authority, while nofollow links bring referral traffic and brand exposure but no direct ranking credit — still useful, just for different reasons. When you place links out from your own pages, every dofollow link hands a slice of your page's strength to the destination, so editorial dofollow links are how you deliberately vouch for sources you trust and how you steer authority around your own site through internal links. Reserve nofollow for what you cannot vouch for — paid, untrusted, or user-submitted links — and let your honest recommendations stay dofollow, because that is exactly the signal the system was built to reward.

Use dofollow links as the honest default they are. Internally, link between your own pages with normal dofollow links so authority flows to the pages you most want to rank — internal linking is one of the few ranking levers you fully control, and nofollowing your own internal links needlessly chokes it. Externally, link out with dofollow to sources you genuinely trust and want to credit; outbound links to authoritative references are a mark of good content, not a leak to be feared. When you earn links, pursue dofollow links from credible, relevant sites through work worth citing — strong content, original research, genuine relationships — rather than schemes, since manipulative link building invites penalties that outweigh any gain.

The mistakes mirror those around nofollow. Reflexively nofollowing your own internal links, or every outbound link, withholds credit you meant to pass and can flatten how authority moves through your site. Chasing dofollow links through paid placements or link schemes, without the proper sponsored or nofollow markers, breaks the guidelines and risks a penalty that erases the benefit. And treating a raw count of dofollow links as the goal misses the point: a handful of dofollow links from trusted, relevant sites outweighs a heap from weak or unrelated ones. The discipline is to let dofollow be the default for the links you mean, mark the ones you do not mean as nofollow, sponsored, or ugc, and earn external dofollow links honestly rather than buying them.

Dofollow link — a normal link with no nofollow attribute — passes ranking credit to the destination, the web's default and the kind of editorial endorsement that link building seeks.

Etymology: source.

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