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.
How does your brand show up in AI answers?
Villion measures how your brand appears across ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews, then automates the work that lifts citation rate and share of voice.
Get a free audit