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§ 02About this episodeVol. XV · № 02
Two methods for checking whether the backlinks you've earned are do-follow or the less-desirable no-follow, UGC, or sponsored links — and why one of those methods has a significant flaw.
§ 03Show notesVol. XV · № 03
§ 04Full transcriptVol. XV · № 04
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[00:00] Um so in this episode I'm going to talk about something which uh uh would be a topic meant more for beginners uh someone who is new to backlinking and outreach and analyzing uh backlinks so basically uh we a bit of context first so we are an SEO agency we uh focus pretty much on outreach and earning high quality in this regard we often have uh team members at times who who may be new to SEO and who have a bit of confusion on how to you know find nofollow backlinks or
[00:42] Sometimes you know we you may have some questions from clients as well on you know how to know what a no follow back link is and what to do follow back link is and you know also what are the pros and cons of those backlinks uh do follow and no follow right so in this episode uh I will explain uh two methods I will demonstrate two methods for finding nofollow backlinks uh one of them is easier but it's not too reliable and the other one is a bit more advanced
[01:14] You know um it's it's not that hard to know it and it's it's very very very reliable right so um let's say you have an article uh let's say forbes.com and you want to know let's say that this this you know this link to fox 35 orlando is is is your website so you know you want to know if this link is do follow no follow right so the first method is that you will install this uh chrome plugin that I already have installed it's called strikeout no
[01:50] Follow backlinks and it will basically show you if a link is uh no follow or do follow right it also it also strikes out it will strike out the no follow backlinks but it will also strike out the sponsored backlinks and the ugc backlinks as in user generated content backlinks so as you probably know that Google wanted sites to use the sponsor tag if if an article is you know a sponsored article not the article but actually the link if it's a sponsored in some sense or even if the article is
[02:33] You know actually the article being sponsored is of higher that that would have a higher probability and by that extension the links and that would also have to be uh termed as sponsored right like let's say if a site has paid you to include their backlink uh maybe your their affiliate or something you are doing affiliate marketing on their behalf so you may want to mention that you may want to use the sponsored backlink right for instance um then you have the ugc backlink so let's say if you have written an article
[03:08] For a website uh then they might Google suggest that they use the ugc for for your battling right so but you know to keep it simple basically all of these are links that are less desired for most uh sites in most people so if someone has given you a nofollow backlink or a sponsored backlink or a ugc backlink uh Google would uh give it less of an SEO juice right let's put it like that most of the people say that there would be no link juice at all no
[03:46] SEO benefit of it at all I think that it still has some benefits um you know I think that they make your link profile look more natural you know say Google is looking at your link profile and you have 3000 backlinks and all of them or you know 99 of them do follow backlinks then that would sound a bit unnatural to Google which can create problems for you right uh problems like you know getting some kind of a penalty um and and also seeing your competitors
[04:19] Being given higher back higher rankings as compared to you guys right so this um you will install this plugin and this is what it do what it does that you can see that this link is striked out right so this means that um it's a no follow back link or a sponsored or a ugc backlink right then if you check out this one uh which is to uh the same website by the way uh fox 35 orlando this one is also striked out so that means that this one is also a
[04:51] Nofollow or ugc or sponsored backlink right same is the case with this one and this one and so on right um so how do you how do you know if a link is do follow well let's go to this guardian article and you can see that um the plugin that we have installed it's not striking out this link or this link or this link right so this means that these are do follow backlinks however while this is the fastest fastest method and it's the method that
[05:27] We rely on um in recent times we have asking our team members to actually use a different method the reason being that at least a couple of times I saw that for some odd reason it was it was uh labeling no follow backlinks as do follow backlinks um and or it was labeling no follow backlinks as do follow backlinks right I think that sometimes it there there there can be a bit of a bug in it um I will actually share this video with the I will try to share it with the people
[06:06] Who have created this chrome extension and you know apologies to you guys by the way if you watch this video um I I didn't think about contacting you beforehand maybe you guys have removed this bug I unfortunately do not have a working example of this right now but if we if I an example of it I will I will ensure that I include it in the description of the show in description of the podcast but you know um the better method is let's assume that you don't have the um
[06:39] The plugin installed okay so what you will do is that you will right click on on the page and then you will go to view page source right I presume that one can check it with inspect as well but I don't use inspect um almost ever so I'll go to view page source and I have this open already so let's say if I want to check this one right uh fox 35 reported saturday right so I will this is the source code then I will press
[07:07] Control plus f to look for the word reported okay so now I can see that the word reported is mentioned here like two times and I think this is pretty much it this one okay I will I will try to find out okay it's a bit hard for me right now because it's scrolling very quickly but yeah this is the one okay this is the fox 35 orlando link and you can see that rel is equal to nofollow is what confirms it to me 100 that it is indeed a no follow back link
[07:44] Okay so you know that is quite simple I would say if I want to check another backlink then you know let's say I will check this one okay the the fine one okay and this one this one is from I think fl golf so florida government I presume so I will look for let's say fl gov okay and uh if I come here uh okay for some reason I cannot see it for this one I I'm actually having a bit of trouble with scrolling with this you
[08:27] Know some reason okay I will try this one yeah this is the one okay this is the one uh and it says rel is equal to no follow no option no referral okay so no follow is the is the bit we that we needed and we will just confirm if it it if it has the same anchor text just to be ensured just to confirm that it's the same uh you know um yeah so you see they they they you know the the anchor text that we
[08:56] Were looking for it's here so that means that this one is also indeed a nofollow battling okay now let's do it for the guardian one so let's say we want to check the cancellation of christmas markets one okay so I will go here and then I will cancellation of christmas markets one okay and this is obviously this is not the link so I will check for the second instance of it and uh okay this is also not it and this is also not the one that we
[09:29] Were looking for okay I will actually look for this okay so another way to better a much quicker way sorry to have wasted a few moments of years but this is actually a faster matter okay so I just look for the URL itself if I uh look here then I can see that uh it does not mention the word rel is equal to nofollow anywhere and does not and it also does not mention you know rel is equal to sponsored or rel is equal to uh ugc okay so if a link is do follow
[10:10] Remember that you will not see religious do follow mentioned here all you want to ensure to confirm all you need to do to confirm the link is do follow is just see if it does not mention the words um nofollow or sponsored or ugc in the ahref tag okay so that's pretty much it um I this should help you to better analyze your backlinks obviously I mean if if you have Ahrefs and so on you can check this much more quickly so that would be actually matter number
[10:50] But um if your nature of work is similar to ours then then you will probably not be waiting until the age ref until your backlink appears on Ahrefs right so htf can take some time so this is a more instant method uh of checking if your link is uh do follow or if it is no follow or sponsored or ugc okay thank you so much take care bye