Nofollow on Internal Links

What This Means

This page contains internal links (links to other pages on the same site) that have rel="nofollow" on the <a> element. The links will still be crawled but will not pass link equity to the target pages.

Why It Matters for SEO

Nofollow on internal links is almost never the correct choice. It prevents internal equity flow without preventing crawling — Googlebot still follows nofollow links to discover pages, but does not pass equity. The original purpose of nofollow (marking paid or unendorsed links) does not apply to internal links.

If the goal is to prevent a page from being crawled: use robots.txt. If the goal is to prevent indexation: use noindex. Nofollow on internal links achieves neither goal effectively and reduces equity flow as a side effect.

What the Platform Checks

The platform inspects all internal link rel attributes. Fires when any internal link carries nofollow.

How to Fix It

• Remove nofollow from internal links — all internal links should pass equity freely.
• If the linked page should not be indexed: use a noindex tag on the target page instead.
• If the linked page should not be crawled: use robots.txt disallow instead.
• Review CMS link components and plugins that may be adding nofollow globally.