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When to Mark a Link “No Follow” for SEO

ByNina Clapperton

You may have heard that you should mark links as “no follow”, but people often give vague advice on when to use this tag.

Adding the “rel=no follow” tag to a link isn’t hard to do, but you have to know when to use it.

I first learned about this tag to mark affiliate links. Essentially Google doesn’t want bloggers passing authority over to affiliate link websites through the link, so we mark it as no follow.

But there are many other scenarios when you should mark a link no follow.

Not marking it properly can get you in trouble – both with big G, and with the law.

You can get away with it sometimes, but it’s a bad idea to risk these things. You’re more likely to get in trouble the bigger your business gets, and then it’ll hurt you more.

These are the questions I ask myself before marking an link as no follow:

Cartoon chain link with a tag on it that says "No follow" were the link is broken or unlinked.

1. Did you make money off it?

Verdict: Mark it “no follow”

If you have made money off a link or profited in any way from adding that link to your website, you need to mark it as a no follow link.

Most people think of this for a sponsored post, but they forget about gifted and comped experiences/services.

If the link is related to a gifted item, a press trip, a trade of services you did with someone, or a sponsored post/link, it must be marked as no follow.

Remember that compensation isn’t just monetary. If you benefited in some way or did not purchase the thing yourself, you should declare it.

Now, if it was gifted from your grandma, that’s different. We’re talking about gifts from companies here.

Although legally you don’t need to mark a PR gift – aka. a gifted item with no expectation of promotion – as a paid partnership, I do. I also mark them as no follow, and clarify that I received the item in PR or as a gift.

You don’t need to use a disclaimer with every link, but you should have at least one disclaimer to show that the post is sponsored or includes a gifted item. This must be before the first link – so before the intro or after the intro is usually the best spot for this.

Don’t forget to also mark these links as sponsored!

2. Can you make money off it?

Verdict: Mark it “no follow”

Before you argue that “I’ve never made money from an affiliate link in X post, so I don’t need to mark it as no follow”, NOPE!

Any link with the potential for you to earn income from it should be marked as no follow.

I recommend doing this for your own checkout pages as well (if different from your sales page and if it’s off the current site’s domain).

Mark these links as no follow so Google knows that it is a type of paid promotion. This means Google won’t pass link juice through to the company/business.

Many people forget to do these for small businesses, as well as large affiliate networks. It’s pretty well known that you need to do this for Amazon or Walmart, but you also need to do it if you’re an affiliate for a business like She Knows SEO.

It can help to mark the domain as no follow so all links from it are automatically marked as no follow. I do this with Link Whisper to save me time and help catch any links I may have missed when I was rushing.

3. Is it a competitor ranking in the top 10 for the keyword?

Verdict: Mark it “no follow”

Be careful linking to competitors. But sometimes you have to.

In the travel blog world, we often need to link to a company or tourism board that also ranks for the keyword we’re going for.

I do recommend including these links to help the user – but with a twist to ensure we help ourselves, too.

Let’s say I’m writing a blog post about the best things to do in Ottawa in winter. The Ottawa tourism board probably ranks #1. But they may have key information on the Winterlude festival that I need to include – like a link to book tickets or find that year’s dates.

If I don’t link to the website, I’m hurting my user.

But if I link to them, I’m basically telling Google, “actually they know better than I do, so just go there”.

You can fix this by marking the link as no follow.

Now, I won’t do this if it’s a review of a product/company that also ranks for the keyword.

Let’s say I’m writing a blog post about visiting the CN Tower. I need to link to the CN Tower somewhere in the post, even though the CN Tower’s website probably ranks in the top 10.

In that case, I would include the link as a do follow link. It builds authority with Google and your user for you to add this in.

Obviously, it’s best not to link to your competitors – especially a direct competitor for a keyword – but sometimes it can’t be avoided. User experience supercedes any other SEO rule.

4. Is it a spammy site that looks untrustworthy?

Verdict: Mark it “no follow” … and maybe don’t link to it

It’s bad to link to spammy or insecure sites.

If you send your friend to a sketchy store where they get robbed, they’re going to hold that against you.

The same goes for sending your user to an insecure site. Google gets nervous and may rank you lower for it.

Unfortunately, many businesses have insecure or spammy seeming sites. They may have a high Moz spam score or they may not have an SSL certificate (aka. it’s an http not an https site).

I’ve had to link to tons of sites like this over the years, especially in restaurant round up posts.

There’s a workaround: link to their Google My Business profile or Google Maps listing when possible.

But if they don’t have that, just mark the link as no follow.

This will hide the link from Google, so you don’t get in trouble for sending your users down some weird alley.

That being said: if you know for a fact the website will steal their data, don’t link to it.

Avoid spammy sites whenever possible.

When Not to Use a No Follow Link

We’ve talked about the scenarios when I use a no follow link tag, but what about the times when you shouldn’t use it?

  • Any link that you want Google to see, especially if it’s an external source you’re using to back up a claim
  • Internal links that you want Google to see
  • You haven’t been paid to include the link and you won’t be paid (i.e. affiliate income) to include the link

Conclusion

Now you know when to mark a link as no follow so Google doesn’t get mad at you, and so you are legally in the right.

I’m not a lawyer, but I did used to work in law. It sucked seeing small businesses get in trouble for practices they’d used for years. They got away with it for a while – often due to ignorance, not malice – and then got hit when they were thriving.

Be especially careful with affiliate links, as you can get removed from the best programs for violating terms like these.

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Nina Clapperton is the founder of She Knows SEO.

She started blogging in 2018 and spent years doing everything “right” while earning $0. Then she stopped guessing and learned how search actually works. She rebuilt her travel site around audience intent and structure and grew to 50,000 sessions in 6 months. Within a year, the blog was bringing in $30,000 months and later crossed 243,000 pageviews.

She took the same audience first SEO approach and built her education business into multiple $100,000 months.

Now Nina teaches bloggers and online business owners how to build search powered businesses grounded in strong positioning, clear structure, and monetisation that actually supports their audience. She covers traditional SEO and AI driven search without the tech bro noise, and she’s known for explaining complex strategy with analogies you won’t forget.

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