If you’re building backlinks for your Singapore business, you need to understand how dofollow links vs nofollow links actually impact your SEO rankings. Not in theory. In practice. Because the difference between these two link types determines whether a backlink passes ranking power to your site or simply sends visitors your way without any SEO credit.
I’ve audited hundreds of backlink profiles over the years at Best SEO. One pattern I see constantly: business owners chasing link quantity without understanding link mechanics. They’ll celebrate 50 new backlinks in a month, not realising that 48 of them are nofollow links from forum comments that do nothing for their rankings.
Let me break down exactly how each link type works, when to use them, and how to build a backlink profile that Google actually rewards.
How DoFollow Links Work at the Code Level
A dofollow link is the default state of any hyperlink. When you create a standard HTML link, it’s dofollow unless you explicitly tell it otherwise. Here’s what one looks like:
<a href="https://yoursite.com">anchor text</a>
Notice there’s no special attribute. That’s the point. By default, search engine crawlers follow this link, discover the destination page, and pass a portion of the referring page’s authority (what SEOs call “link equity” or “PageRank”) to the linked page.
Think of it like a recommendation letter. When The Straits Times links to your website with a dofollow link, Google interprets that as The Straits Times vouching for your content. The more authoritative the referring site, the more weight that recommendation carries.
The technical mechanism is straightforward. Googlebot crawls a page, finds outbound links, follows them, and distributes a fraction of the page’s authority across those links. If a page with a Domain Rating of 85 links to your site, you receive a meaningful share of that authority. This is the foundation of how Google’s original algorithm worked, and while it’s evolved significantly, link equity transfer remains a core ranking signal.
How NoFollow Links Work (and Why Google Changed the Rules)
A nofollow link includes a specific HTML attribute that tells search engines not to pass link equity:
<a href="https://yoursite.com" rel="nofollow">anchor text</a>
Google introduced the nofollow attribute in 2005 to combat comment spam. Back then, spammers were flooding blog comments with links to manipulate rankings. The nofollow tag gave website owners a way to link without endorsing the destination.
Here’s where it gets interesting. In September 2019, Google announced a major shift. Nofollow became a “hint” rather than a directive. This means Google may choose to follow and even pass some authority through nofollow links if it determines the link is editorially placed and valuable. They also introduced two new attributes:
rel="sponsored" for paid or sponsored links.
rel="ugc" for user-generated content like comments and forum posts.
This change was significant. It means nofollow links are no longer invisible to Google’s ranking algorithm. They’re considered as signals that Google can choose to honour or ignore. In my experience auditing Singapore sites, I’ve seen nofollow links from high-authority domains correlate with ranking improvements, though the effect is far weaker than a dofollow link from the same source.
The Real Differences Between DoFollow and NoFollow Links
Link Equity Transfer
DoFollow links pass link equity directly. If you get a dofollow backlink from a page with strong authority, your page’s ability to rank improves measurably. We tracked one client’s campaign where 12 dofollow links from Singapore business directories with Domain Ratings above 50 pushed their target page from position 14 to position 4 for a competitive keyword within 8 weeks.
NoFollow links don’t guarantee any equity transfer. Google may pass some value, but you can’t count on it. The primary benefit is referral traffic and brand visibility.
Crawl Behaviour
When Googlebot encounters a dofollow link, it follows the link and adds the destination URL to its crawl queue. This helps new pages get discovered and indexed faster. For a new Singapore business website, getting dofollow links from established local directories can shave days off your indexing timeline.
With nofollow links, Google historically wouldn’t follow them at all. Post-2019, Google may crawl the destination anyway, but there’s no guarantee. If you’re relying on nofollow links to get new pages indexed, you’re gambling.
Anchor Text Signals
This is something most guides skip. Dofollow links pass anchor text signals, which help Google understand what the linked page is about. If ten authoritative sites link to your page with the anchor text “best accounting software Singapore,” Google associates your page more strongly with that query.
NoFollow links may still pass anchor text signals since the 2019 update, but the weight is significantly reduced. Don’t build your anchor text strategy around nofollow links.
When DoFollow Links Are Essential: 5 Scenarios
1. Building Authority for Your Core Money Pages
Your service pages and product pages need dofollow links to compete. If you’re a law firm in Singapore trying to rank for “corporate lawyer Singapore,” you need dofollow backlinks pointing to that specific service page from relevant, authoritative sources.
Here’s a practical approach: identify 10 Singapore business publications or industry blogs that accept contributed content. Pitch articles that naturally reference your service page. One dofollow link from a DR 60+ site is worth more than 30 links from low-quality directories.
2. Strategic Internal Linking
Every internal link on your site should be dofollow by default. Your internal linking structure is how you distribute authority across your own pages. If your homepage has the most backlinks (which is typical), dofollow internal links from your homepage to key service pages funnel that authority where it matters.
I’ve seen Singapore e-commerce sites accidentally nofollow their own category pages through misconfigured CMS plugins. One client had 340 internal links set to nofollow because of a WordPress plugin conflict. Fixing that single issue improved their category page rankings by an average of 6 positions within a month.
3. Guest Posting on Relevant Industry Sites
Guest posting remains one of the most reliable ways to earn dofollow links. The key is relevance. A dofollow link from a Singapore fintech blog to your payment processing page carries far more weight than a link from a random lifestyle blog.
When negotiating guest post opportunities, confirm that your contextual link (the link within the article body) will be dofollow. Many publications default to nofollow for all contributor links. If they only offer nofollow, it’s still worth doing for the referral traffic, but manage your expectations about SEO impact.
4. Resource Page Link Building
Many Singapore government sites, educational institutions, and industry associations maintain resource pages that link to useful tools and content. These links are almost always dofollow and carry substantial authority.
Actionable step: Search for site:.edu.sg "useful resources" + your industry or site:.gov.sg "links" + your topic. Identify pages where your content would be a natural fit. Reach out with a concise email explaining why your resource adds value to their page. We’ve secured links from NUS and NTU resource pages for clients using this exact method.
5. Strengthening Domain Authority Over Time
Domain authority isn’t built overnight. It’s the cumulative result of consistently earning dofollow links from diverse, relevant sources. For Singapore SMEs competing against larger brands, a focused dofollow link building campaign over 6 to 12 months can close the authority gap significantly.
One F&B client we worked with started with a Domain Rating of 8. After 9 months of targeted dofollow link acquisition from food blogs, local news sites, and Singapore lifestyle publications, their DR reached 34. Their organic traffic increased by 215% over that period.
When NoFollow Links Are the Right Choice: 5 Scenarios
1. Sponsored Content and Paid Partnerships
If you’re paying for a link, it must be nofollow (or use the rel="sponsored" attribute). Google’s guidelines are clear on this. Paid dofollow links violate their Webmaster Guidelines and can trigger a manual penalty.
In Singapore, this is especially relevant for influencer marketing. If a local influencer reviews your product and links to your site, that link should carry a nofollow or sponsored tag. I’ve seen Singapore businesses receive manual actions from Google because their influencer campaigns used dofollow links without proper disclosure. The recovery process took 4 months and cost them roughly 60% of their organic traffic during that period.
2. User-Generated Content
Blog comments, forum posts, and community submissions should always use nofollow (or rel="ugc"). If you run a community forum or allow comments on your Singapore business blog, any links users post should be automatically nofollowed.
Most CMS platforms handle this by default. WordPress, for example, adds nofollow to all comment links automatically. But if you’re running a custom-built site, verify this with your developer. One client running a property discussion forum in Singapore discovered their comment links were dofollow, which had attracted thousands of spam links. Cleaning up the resulting mess took weeks.
3. Linking to Sources You Can’t Fully Verify
Sometimes you need to reference data or cite a source that you’re not 100% confident about. Using nofollow lets you link for your readers’ benefit without passing your site’s authority to a potentially unreliable source.
This is common in Singapore’s financial services sector, where MAS regulations require careful handling of claims and references. If you’re linking to third-party financial data or projections, nofollow protects your site’s authority while still providing useful references for your audience.
4. Controlling PageRank Flow on Your Own Site
Not every page on your site deserves ranking power. Your privacy policy, terms of service, login pages, and other utility pages don’t need to rank in Google. Using nofollow on internal links to these pages helps concentrate your site’s authority on the pages that actually drive revenue.
A practical example: if your Singapore e-commerce site has 200 product pages and 50 utility pages, nofollowing links to those utility pages means more of your internal link equity flows to your product pages. This is sometimes called “PageRank sculpting,” and while Google says it’s less effective than it used to be, I’ve consistently seen positive results when implementing it for clients with large sites.
5. Social Media and Profile Links
Links from Facebook, LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and other social platforms are nofollow by default. You can’t change this, and you shouldn’t try to work around it.
These links still matter for your overall marketing. A viral LinkedIn post can drive thousands of visitors to your site. That traffic sends positive engagement signals to Google (time on site, pages per session, low bounce rate) which can indirectly support your rankings. Just don’t count social links as part of your dofollow link building strategy.
What a Healthy Backlink Profile Looks Like
Here’s something that surprises many business owners: a natural backlink profile contains more nofollow links than dofollow links. In our analysis of top-ranking Singapore websites across 15 industries, the average dofollow-to-nofollow ratio was roughly 60:40. Some sites ranked well with ratios as low as 50:50.
If your backlink profile is 95% dofollow, that’s a red flag. It suggests link manipulation. Google’s algorithms are sophisticated enough to detect unnatural link patterns, and an overwhelmingly dofollow profile is one of the clearest signals.
Think of it like a hawker stall. If every single online review is 5 stars with identical phrasing, you’d suspect the reviews are fake. Google thinks the same way about backlinks. A mix of dofollow and nofollow, from diverse sources, with varied anchor text, looks natural because it is natural.
Benchmarks to Aim For
DoFollow links: 55% to 70% of your total backlink profile. NoFollow links: 30% to 45%. Anchor text distribution: no more than 5% to 10% exact match anchors. The rest should be branded, URL-based, or generic (“click here,” “read more”).
If your current profile is heavily skewed, don’t panic. Focus on acquiring whichever type you’re missing. If you have too many dofollow links, earning natural nofollow links through social media activity, press mentions, and community participation will balance things out.
How to Audit Your DoFollow and NoFollow Links
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Here’s a step-by-step process for auditing your backlink profile:
Step 1: Export your backlink data. Use Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Google Search Console. Ahrefs provides the most comprehensive data, but Google Search Console is free and gives you a solid starting point. Export all backlinks to a spreadsheet.
Step 2: Categorise each link. Mark each backlink as dofollow, nofollow, sponsored, or UGC. Ahrefs and SEMrush do this automatically. If you’re using Search Console, you’ll need to check manually or use a bulk link checker tool.
Step 3: Assess quality. For each dofollow link, check the referring domain’s authority (DR in Ahrefs, DA in Moz). A dofollow link from a DR 10 site is barely worth noting. A dofollow link from a DR 70 site is gold.
Step 4: Check for toxic links. Look for dofollow links from spammy, irrelevant, or suspicious sites. These can actively harm your rankings. If you find them, use Google’s Disavow Tool to tell Google to ignore them.
Step 5: Track changes monthly. Set up a monthly backlink audit. Monitor new links acquired, lost links, and shifts in your dofollow-to-nofollow ratio. This gives you early warning if something goes wrong, like a negative SEO attack or a sudden influx of spam links.
Common Mistakes Singapore Businesses Make with Link Attributes
After years of working with Singapore SMEs, I see the same mistakes repeatedly.
Buying dofollow links from link farms. This is the fastest way to get a Google penalty. I’ve had clients come to us after purchasing “100 dofollow links for $200” from Fiverr sellers. Every single time, these links came from Private Blog Networks (PBNs) or link farms that Google eventually deindexes. The short-term ranking boost evaporates, and the penalty that follows can take months to recover from.
Ignoring nofollow links entirely. Some business owners dismiss nofollow links as worthless. They’re not. A nofollow link from a high-traffic Singapore news site can drive hundreds of qualified visitors to your site. Those visitors may convert, share your content, or link to you from their own sites with dofollow links.
Using the same anchor text repeatedly. Whether dofollow or nofollow, using identical anchor text across multiple backlinks looks manipulative. Vary your anchors naturally. If your target keyword is “office renovation Singapore,” your anchor text distribution should include variations like “office renovation services,” “renovating your Singapore office,” your brand name, and plain URLs.
Nofollowing links that should be dofollow. I’ve audited Singapore sites where the developer accidentally added nofollow to all outbound links, including editorial links to authoritative sources. Linking out to high-quality, relevant sources with dofollow actually helps your SEO. It signals to Google that you’re part of a legitimate web ecosystem.
Practical Tools for Checking Link Attributes
You don’t need expensive tools to check whether a link is dofollow or nofollow. Here are options at every budget level:
Free: Right-click any link in your browser, select “Inspect,” and look for rel="nofollow" in the HTML. If there’s no rel attribute, it’s dofollow. Chrome extensions like “NoFollow” highlight nofollow links on any page with a red border.
Mid-range: Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (free for site owners) lets you see all backlinks to your site with their dofollow/nofollow status. Ubersuggest offers similar functionality at a lower price point than full Ahrefs.
Professional: Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Majestic provide the most detailed backlink analysis. They show referring domain authority, anchor text distribution, link attribute breakdowns, and historical trends. For serious link building campaigns, these tools pay for themselves.
Let’s Sort Out Your Backlink Profile
Understanding the difference between dofollow and nofollow links is foundational. But knowing the theory and executing a link building strategy that actually moves rankings are two very different things.
If you’ve read this far, you probably have a good sense of where your backlink profile stands. Maybe you’ve been ignoring nofollow links. Maybe your dofollow links are coming from low-quality sources. Maybe you’re not sure what your profile looks like at all.
At Best SEO, we start every engagement with a full backlink audit. We’ll show you exactly what your link profile looks like, identify the gaps, and build a strategy to fix them. We guarantee page 1 rankings on Google within 90 days, or you don’t pay. That’s not a tagline. It’s how we operate.
If you want us to take a look at your backlink profile and tell you what we’d do differently, reach out for a free consultation. No obligations, just honest analysis from people who do this every day.