Learn how to fix internal nofollow links in WordPress, enhancing your site’s SEO and user experience with our guide.
Mastering Internal Nofollow Links in WordPress: A Step-by-Step Guide
Navigating the world of SEO can be daunting, especially when it comes to the nuances of link attributes in WordPress. Internal nofollow links, if used incorrectly, can hinder your site’s SEO performance. This comprehensive guide will walk you through the process of identifying and fixing internal nofollow links in WordPress, ensuring your site’s link structure is optimized for search engines.
Internal nofollow links are hyperlinks within your site that include the `rel=”nofollow”` attribute. This tells search engines not to pass PageRank or anchor text across these links. While nofollow links have their place, overusing them internally can dilute your site’s SEO strength.
Identifying Internal Nofollow Links
To begin fixing internal nofollow links, you must first identify them. Tools like Screaming Frog SEO Spider can crawl your site and flag links with the nofollow attribute. Look for patterns ; often, nofollow links are systematically applied to certain types of content or site areas.
NoFollow in WordPress Comments
Commenting on blogs for backlinks was one of the simplest ways to create backlinks and influence SEO. As a result, the number of spam comments rose.The internal nofollow link was created to make blog comments less useful for SEO manipulation. Because the primary goal for comment spam was to obtain backlinks, the nofollow attribute would demotivate spammers. As a result, WordPress applied rel=nofollow to all links in the comments by default.
Nofollow: Good or Bad?
By adding nofollow to all outbound links in comments, blog owners gained some peace of mind. If a spam remark is unintentionally published, it will now be automatically nofollow. However, the nofollow feature did not completely eliminate comment spam. Spammers just didn’t care and felt that even a nofollow link was valuable.On the other side, it discouraged some bloggers and readers from commenting because they didn’t feel they were getting anything in return for their contributions to the post.
Fixing the Nofollow Links
Once identified, you can fix nofollow links directly in the WordPress editor. For individual posts or pages, switch to the Text view and locate the `rel=”nofollow”` attribute within the link’s HTML code. Remove this attribute to convert the link to “dofollow.”
Fix Nofollow links
The simplest solution to resolve internal “NoFollow” links is to convert them to “DoFollow” links. It is easy to locate the “NoFollow” links on the website.
- Firstly, Navigate to “Website Success” -> “Links” -> “Overview” -> “Nofollow Attribute.” Add a filter to the chart to display just “internal Nofollow” links. A list of all “NoFollow” links will open up.
- The next step is to locate the “NoFollow” in your website’s source code. Open a new browser and navigate to the URL in the column “[Source] Document.” After that search for the URL in the column “[Target] Document” using the search function.
- Please bear in mind that the link may be relative, so if the entire URL is missing, try looking for the URL path without the domain portion.
- Following the discovery of the internal nofollow link, inspect the backend system, retrace the reason for the property, and alter it.
Using Plugins
Several WordPress plugins can assist with managing nofollow links. These tools provide a user-friendly interface for toggling the nofollow attribute on and off without diving into HTML code.
Conclusion
Properly managing internal nofollow links is crucial for maintaining an SEO-friendly site structure. By identifying and fixing unnecessary nofollow attributes, you can ensure that your site’s internal linking is working to support, rather than hinder, your SEO efforts.
FAQs
1. When should I use nofollow on internal links?
Use nofollow sparingly on internal links, typically for user login areas or sections you don’t want to be indexed.
2. Can fixing nofollow links improve my site’s SEO?
Yes, correcting misuse of nofollow can enhance link equity distribution and SEO performance.
3. Do I need to know HTML to fix nofollow links?
Basic HTML knowledge helps, but plugins can simplify the process for non-technical users.
