Dofollow Link
In one line
A dofollow link is a regular hyperlink without a nofollow attribute — meaning search engines treat it as a normal authority-passing link by default.
Going deeper
'Dofollow' isn't actually a real attribute — it's industry shorthand for any link without rel=nofollow. By default, search engines follow links and pass authority (the historic PageRank flow) along them.
The reason teams care about the dofollow/nofollow split is when valuing inbound backlinks. Two links from the same domain weigh very differently depending on whether nofollow is set, even though they look identical to a casual reader.
Since 2019 Google has treated nofollow as a hint rather than a strict directive, and introduced rel=sponsored and rel=ugc alongside it. So the binary 'dofollow vs nofollow' view is a bit dated — modern analysis reads the full mix of rel attributes together.
Related terms
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO is the umbrella for everything that builds your domain's authority and trust outside your own site — backlinks, press coverage, brand mentions, citations.
SEOExternal Link
An external link is an outbound link from your domain to another — and pointing to credible sources tends to act as a trust signal that supports your own content's authority.
SEOPageRank
PageRank is the foundational algorithm Google was built on — modelling links as votes between pages — and it remains the etymological root of how the SEO industry talks about backlinks.
SEOLink Velocity
Link velocity is the rate at which a domain acquires new backlinks over time — and whether the curve looks organic or suspiciously spiky is itself a signal search engines watch.
SEONegative SEO
Negative SEO refers to outside attacks intended to drag a competitor's rankings down — typically through spammy backlink campaigns or scraped, duplicated content.