Finding DoFollow Backlinks

Often it's strong DoFollow backlinks that can push our website forward in Google search. Unfortunately, though, finding such strong DoFollow backlinks isn't exactly easy.

Please don't get me wrong: to move up in Google search, it often takes more than just a few good links. Good content on your own website that your readers are happy to share on social networks can be very important too. In this post, however, I still want to show you which good DoFollow Backlinks you can find.

What Are Do-Follow Backlinks?

Strictly speaking, “Dofollow” doesn't exist as a standalone attribute at all. There are only backlinks with the HTML attribute rel=“nofollow“ and those without this attribute. Links without rel=“nofollow“ are colloquially referred to as “Dofollow links.” Such links give search engines the signal to follow the link and to factor it into the ranking calculation.

Until 2019, with rel=“nofollow“, links carrying this attribute were not followed and were also not used to calculate rankings. Since 2019, Google has changed this practice. Google now treats the value as a hint (“hint”) and no longer as a strict instruction. The search engine thus decides for itself whether it follows the link and takes it into account for ranking. In the past, nofollow was considered a clear directive to ignore the link – that guarantee no longer exists today.

At the same time, Google introduced two more attribute values: rel=“sponsored“ marks paid or sponsored links, such as affiliate or advertising placements. rel=“ugc“ stands for “User Generated Content” and marks links created by users, for example in comments or forums. Google also treats these two values as a hint. The attributes can also be combined, for example rel=“sponsored nofollow“.

In practice, this means: paid links should be marked with sponsored, user-generated links with ugc. nofollow remains the general value for links to which you don't want to give an endorsement.

How Do You Get Good DoFollow Backlinks?

Simply analyze the backlinks of other successful websites that rank at the top of Google search for your target keywords. If they've placed DoFollow backlinks on blogs, news sites, forums, etc., you can likewise try to place a backlink on those pages.

It gets difficult to place the same backlinks when those websites have bought links. In that case, you'll have to spend money yourself to be able to place a backlink here. It gets even harder when the competition has built a private link network. In that case, I wish you good luck building a link network ;-).

On openlinkprofiler.org and on backlink-tool.org, you can examine websites and their backlinks for free. Both of these tools also show you whether the backlinks are nofollow or dofollow.

If you want to rank well for the topic “Making money online,” for example, you first have to enter this search term into Google search. Then, in the search results, examine the top 5 or top 10 for their DoFollow backlinks, e.g. with the website openlinkprofiler.org. If one of these websites has placed some backlinks in forums, blogs, blog directories, etc., it's advisable to place links on those websites too (provided this is possible). Please don't overdo it, though, since not only forum/blog operators hate link spam, but Google now also penalizes websites that engage in massive link spam.

A particularly effective method for gaining DoFollow backlinks is guest posts. You write a high-quality article for another website in your niche and, in return, receive a link back to your own site — usually in the author bio or directly in the text. Before you invest the work, it's worth checking the guest post's link with the inspector (right-click → Inspect Element) to see whether it's actually set to dofollow.

Other Ways You Can Find DoFollow Backlinks

But you can also simply use Google search to look for suitable forums in your subject area. Many forums have now set their links to NoFollow, but there are still some without this attribute. To find topically relevant forums, you can simply enter the following search queries into Google:

• Your keyword + “Forum”
• Your keyword + “Forum register”
• Your keyword + “powered by vbulletin”

Then check in the forums whether the links there are set to NoFollow or DoFollow (How do you do that? Just read through the next subheading).

Another tactic that has proven effective is so-called Broken-Link-Building: you search topically relevant websites for broken links (404 errors) and suggest to the operator that they replace the dead link with a link to your own, fitting content. With tools like Ahrefs or the free Broken Link Checker from Screaming Frog, such broken links can be systematically tracked down.

Further Options:

• How you can get even stronger backlinks, I've summarized for you in the Link Building Guide below.
• Here you'll learn how you can tell good backlinks from bad ones.

Checking Backlinks: DoFollow or NoFollow?

To find out whether the backlink you placed in a forum, for example, is set to DoFollow, you just have to click the link with the right mouse button and click on “Inspect Element.” A window with the link then appears. If it says here <…. rel=“ external nofollow “ href=“http://www.DeineWebseite.de“ …>, the link is NoFollow . If no NoFollow attribute is noted in the link code, the link is definitely DoFollow . This can be very useful for finding out whether the comments on a blog or the links in a forum are set to DoFollow or not.

By the way, it's faster with this browser plugin here. With it, you can see at a glance whether a link is nofollow or not.

A Word of Caution to Close

Always make sure to have a natural backlink profile. A healthy mix of anchor text, a large variety of backlinks from different backlink sources, some Nofollow backlinks, etc. often indicate a naturally grown backlink profile — and that's exactly what we want to achieve. Google is now very good at recognizing manipulated link profiles and quite frequently penalizes them in search.

On Majestic you can have your backlink profile analyzed for free. A natural backlink profile on Majestic can look like this, for example:

The more evenly the points lie on the graph, the more natural the backlink profile is, at least in theory (graphic available on Majestic.com). Further points to keep in mind: “Number of different anchor texts” & “Ratio of DoFollow to NoFollow backlinks.” These points are also available on Majestic.