How to No-Follow Links in Wix

Fact Checked by: Dr. Marie Haynes

What is a followed vs. a nofollowed link?

To describe a followed versus a nofollowed link, we first need to understand how links affect Wix SEO in general.

When a page receives an inbound link pointing to it, Google counts this as a reference that tells them, “Hey, there are other people saying that this page is great, so maybe we should give it a higher position in our search results.” If your Wix page receives a link from another site, behind the scenes, the page receives an SEO boost to some degree.

Google’s “Page Rank” is a metric that was created to assign a value to the inbound links a page has received from other sites as well as the authority of the sites providing those links. Many SEOs colloquially refer to this “link juice” or “link equity.” The more authority the linking site has, the bigger the boost.

With links now broadly defined, followed links are links that allow the flow of link equity to pass through them. The linked page may see increased visibility in the search results thanks to a new followed link from another site. Internally, a site would typically follow most -- if not all (with a few exceptions) -- of its links between its own pages (from the navigation menu, the header, the footer, and the body of content). This is essential to ensure the proper crawling and indexing of a site’s pages. All important pages on your Wix site should be internally linked to with followed links from other important pages on the website.

Nofollowed links, on the other hand, do not pass the flow of link equity to the linked page and therefore does not pass on Page Rank. These links are dropped from what Google often calls the “link graph.” A page with only no-followed links pointing into it (either internally or externally) may or may not be indexed by Google depending on whether it is submitted for indexing via a sitemap. A no-followed link from another site would not pass PageRank to the linked page from the linking site.

Best Practices: When to follow and when to no-follow links

Keep the following in mind when it comes to followed and no-followed links:

• When linking out to another site, think about your choice of anchor text. Be sure that your anchor text is relevant to what you’re linking out to; think of users and what might encourage them to actually click on the link as opposed to basing these decisions around SEO alone.

• Whether you link out to another site with a followed or no-followed link is entirely up to you, but we will provide our thoughts on how to approach this decision in the next section.

• All internal links, with some exceptions, should be followed. Internal linking is extremely important for helping users and search engines discover and understand your site’s content via links to other pages on your site. As such, letting search engines follow these links is imperative!

• With internal links, we very much encourage you to keep SEO at the front of your mind when it comes to your anchor text choices! Internally linking to pages on your site with relevant keyword anchors is not only perfectly okay but in fact strongly encouraged by Google as it provides important context for them when making sense of your website and identifying the most important pages on it.

• When it comes to earning backlinks from other sites, at MHC, we believe that the best formula is a simple one: Be awesome. By far the best type of link is one that truly is naturally earned because you’ve created content that people truly want to share and link to. Add value no one else is providing and then market this content to the right audience.

Common Problems with Followed/Nofollowed Links

Avoid buying or selling unnatural links. Unnatural links, as explained in the Google Webmaster Guidelines, are links that are created in order to manipulate a site’s rankings in the search results. Link schemes can include buying and selling followed links in an attempt to manipulate PageRank, i.e. link exchanges and guest-posting campaigns oriented around acquiring links. If you’re not careful, particularly when it comes to purchasing links with manipulative anchor text, you can be hit with a manual action from Google and have your page(s) or your entire site removed from Google’s index. It can then be an arduous process to get a manual action lifted and your site back in Google’s good graces.

Don’t leave important pages existing off on their own. Ensure your most important pages are linked to with followed links from your other important pages, most notably your homepage. Your homepage pools the largest amount of “link value” as it typically has the highest number of backlinks pointing to it (generally speaking). Followed internal links from the main content (i.e. not the header, footer, sidebar and other supplementary content) are particularly important.

As mentioned, don’t no-follow your internal links with a few exceptions. This can, however, be a good idea if you have login or profile pages (on a forum or comments section, for instance) that don’t need to be crawled and indexed. It is also generally best practice to no-follow links from your comment section as well as it can be difficult to ward off spam and excessive amounts of outbound links from user-generated content that you don’t have full control over.

How to No-Follow Links in Wix

All links within Wix, unless otherwise specified, will be followed links by default. However, you can change this easily on a link-by-link basis within Wix page and post editors.

To add a no-follow tag to a link you’re placing inside a piece of content, simply click on the link within the editor and the following menu bar will pop up:

After pressing the link icon on the far right, you will be given the option to add a no-follow designation to the link:

If you’re linking from an image, Wix also has the option of no-following the image link within the image settings.

After clicking on the image within the post or page editor, press the settings icon:

You will then see an option to add a no-follow tag to your image link:

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Andrew Nguyen

He/Him. Andrew Nguyen was born and raised in Ottawa, Ontario. He graduated with an Advanced Diploma in Businesses Administration with a concentration in Marketing and Communications from Algonquin College. Andrew has worked with many small local businesses in the Ottawa area and has a passion for local and community-oriented projects. In his spare time, Andrew enjoys delving into comics, creating music and immersing himself in video and tabletop gaming. Andrew has always had an interest in SEO and the mysteries of Google’s algorithms. He is passionate about helping businesses leverage their content and to help businesses grow.