There are dime dozens of blog posts and resources on link building, but little can be found on the Role of nofollow noreferrer noopener, their usage, and effects on search engine optimization.
Therefore, we’d be looking at the three rel tags, their meaning, and where and how to use them for search engine optimization.
As an SEO specialist or Web developer, you must be familiar with the values of the rel attribute of the anchor tag in HTML? Though, the no-follow rel is the most common, which it functions was in our previous post on SEO Analysis and Auditing.
What do those tags nofollow noreferrer noopener do and how can they impact an SEO campaign? Read on to find out!
Role of nofollow noreferrer noopener
So, here we’d be looking into the different functions of nofollow noreferrer noopener and when to use them.
1. What Is A nofollow Rel Tag
A ”nofollow” is a link from one website or pages pointing to another website but have the hyperlink tag as the rel=”nofollow” attribute. From the name, one can deduce that this type of rel-tag tells search engines like Google not to trust or give relevance to the link.
Not giving relevance does not mean it won’t amount to anything, however, the level of link juice from such type of link be of much significance. Hence contribute little or nothing to search rankings.
No users will be able to see such a tag from the front end, but it would be visible to backend operators who care to know.
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So, When Should nofollow Tag Be Used?
- Do not use on your website internal links.
- Use it for generated content.
- Use on the widget area.
- It can be used when linking to competitors, especially if the link is to a page won’t like the competitor ranking for. Or a similar topic.
- Use for sponsored or paid posts.
2. What Is A Noreferrer Rel Tag
It is similar to the noopener tag, but it does not only prevents newly site from manipulating window; also it prevents browser when moving from one webpage to another such that the source of traffic won’t show up to the website linked to.
What this means is that it helps hide the referrer information whenever the link gets clicked on. Let’s take for example the owner of Website A gives a backlink to Website, but instead of website B seeing the source of traffic as a referral. It would only be seen as direct traffic.
When Should no referrer Tag Be Use?
Use the rel=”no-referrer” attribute when you link to other sites that you do not want the owner/administrator to know you are linking to them. The reason you might want to do this is the best knowledge to you.
You should not use the rel=”noreferrer” attribute on your internal links for any reason, or else you want to mess up your Google analytics metrics.
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3. What Is A Noopener Rel Tag
The rel=”noopener” tag in HTML can be referred to as an attribute that when added to a WordPress link ensures that the link opens in a new browser tag. This was introduced to curb different security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious websites.
In a layman term, using a noopener attribute is telling the browser to open a new link instead of opening it on the same page. And it does this in the context that the user gives access to the webpage that opens the link. Doing this prevents the opening page from gaining any form of access to the information on the original page.
However, this practice does not affect search engines ranking in any form, it is SEO-agnostic. Note that it should not be used when you are dealing with a target blank page.
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Conclusion: Role of nofollow noreferrer noopener
The above are the three fundamentals of rel attribute of the anchor tags out there. And below is a summary of what each tag does:
- rel=”noopener” is used on all links meant to open in a new tab using the target_blank. The security implication of this type of rel is that the value can’t be used on links opening in new tabs. It’s usually added automatically added by WordPress on external links meant to be opened in a new tab. This practice is for security purpose and it is recommended to keep it that way.
- rel=”noreferrer” can be said to serve the same function as the rel=”noreferrer”.And both can be used together. However, this can affect the analytics report.
- And rel=”nofollow” tells the search engine not to pass link juice from one website to another. And it is the only rel that can affect SEO campaign.
We hope that our this article will clear the concept of nofollow noreferrer noopener rel tags. These tags play a vital role in SEO and also helps the crawlers in backlink indexing. As an SEO Expert from India i can say that “These tags help Google’s crawlers to decide whether they have to follow the links or change the direction”. However, If you have some query then you can use the comment section to ask. Keep improving your SEO skill with us, stay safe, Keep visiting and have a great day.
