With the emergence of SEO, webmasters are very much concerned about every little change and update that is made, it could be regarding a new tactic or more importantly reads/hits the website generates. Now those of you who are well-versed with the SEO business might be aware of No Follow links; whereas many who are new to SEO might be wondering what this NoFollow link is all about. Is it just not following a link? Well, to understand its meaning, you must understand the underlying chemistry of the SEO world. The SEO world thrives on the inbound traffic that the external websites generate when using hyperlinks pointing to your page. Google monitors such inbound traffic and ranks your page higher in the search results if your website generates more inbound traffic thinking that your page is a popular page. Thus these Follow links give a boost to your page ranking in the search results.
Let’s understand – what is a No Follow link. A No Follow link is a link that does not count towards the page popularity. It is like telling the search engine not to count it for the Page Ranking.
Now, one must wonder why anyone would want to use No Follow link and reduce the page ranking. The answer lies in the fact that as with other useful things this also lets the spammers/hackers exploit the inherent characteristic of this feature. Spammers/Hackers used these Follow links to such a large scale that they turned around the Page rankings upsetting the real idea behind using inbound traffic for Page Ranking. Hence many webmasters started using No Follow links to only get relevant ranking and avoid any spamming.
Having said that, it does not mean you should always use No Follow link. Remember to strike a balance when using Follow and No Follow links. When you place a No Follow within your internal links, the Page Ranking won’t flow though and thus will not rank the other page. This might be okay when you use it with the external websites; however if it’s a link connecting two webpages of your own site, you would want Page Ranking to flow through, you would want Google to be able to find that another page.
Understandably, there would be some exceptions to this. These could be pages like authentication page, account login page etc. You would usually put a No Follow link for a link pointing to pages like these. This might be a good idea; however even if you put a Follow link and let Google walk though these pages, it is not going to create any harmful effects.
NoFollow links are extremely useful when linking external websites. While linking the authentic links of your site to the external sites by using No follow, you should have trust on that site where you can share this genuine information.
In conclusion, there is no need to use No follow in your internal links, let Search Engines move though your webpages as this will give boost to your webpages ranking.