Link Rel Attribute

Link rel attributes, short for “relationship,” are used in HTML to specify the relationship between the current page and the page the link points toward.

These attributes provide search engines and other Web services with additional information about the type of link and how they should treat it. Rel attributes are placed inside an <a> anchor tag or in the <link> tag, as in the following example:

<a href=”https://www.esempio.com” rel=”nofollow”>Example link</a>

Here are some of the most common rel attributes and their functions:

• alternate. Indicates an alternate version of the page, such as an RSS feed or a printable version.
• author. Points to the author page of the current page content.
• noopener. When opening a new navigation context (such as a new tab or window), this attribute prevents the new page from being able to control the one that opened it, improving security.
• noreferrer. Prevents the browser from sending the HTTP referrer header to the new page, increasing privacy.

Then there are three specific attributes that have relevance to backlinks, because they are used to properly label outbound links from a site and notify Google of the nature of that link:

• nofollow. It tells search engines not to follow the link and not to pass authority or “link juice” to the target page. It is often used for advertising or untrusted links to prevent comment spam.
• sponsored. Used to identify links that have been created as part of advertising deals, sponsorships, or other compensation.
• ugc. Stands for “User Generated Content” and is used for links placed within user-generated content, such as comments and forum posts.

It is worth mentioning that the “follow” or “dofollow” attribute does not exist as a rel attribute value in HTML: in fact, “dofollow” is an unofficial term used in the SEO community to describe links that do not have the rel=”nofollow” attribute. By default, all links are considered “dofollow” by search engines, which means that they can follow the link and pass authority (or “link juice”) to the destination page. Therefore, when you create a link without specifying a rel attribute or when you omit the nofollow attribute, you are implicitly creating a “dofollow” link: search engines interpret this link as an endorsement of the landing page and may use this information to help determine the page’s ranking in SERPs.

Proper use of rel attributes helps provide clear guidance to search engines on how they should interpret links, affecting crawling and indexing of content, as well as providing useful information for user security and privacy.