Links

Dofollow link

followed link · default link

Definition

Dofollow link is industry slang for a normal hyperlink with no rel="nofollow" (or sponsored/ugc) that crawlers may count as an endorsement. HTML has no dofollow attribute. The default is to follow. People say dofollow because nofollow exists.

Editorial links from reported stories are usually this default. Asking a journalist to “add dofollow” sounds like a scheme.

How it works

Inspect the live anchor. Log follow vs nofollow. Celebrate relevance and indexing, not the slang. If a newsroom nofollows all outbound, do not burn the relationship over rel.

Worked example

Nine hrefs, five default, four nofollow. The five default links from on-topic pages are the SEO yield. The four newspaper nofollows still carry the name.

How it differs

Nofollow, sponsored, and ugc are the labeled hints. A backlink is any href. Dofollow is “unlabeled default.”

Common errors

Putting “dofollow” in the pitch subject. Buying default links at scale. Assuming default rel guarantees rankings.

Sources