Do Nofollow Links Help SEO?
The short version is yes, but not in the way most people mean when they ask. The value is real; it just does not arrive through PageRank.
Short answer
The direct answer
If "help SEO" means "pass PageRank and lift my rankings for this keyword," then usually no. That is precisely what rel="nofollow" exists to prevent.
If "help SEO" means "contribute to the outcome you actually want — more qualified organic traffic" — then yes, meaningfully. The mechanism is different, slower, and less measurable, which is why it gets dismissed.
The "hint" caveat
Google changed nofollow from a directive to a hint in 2019, meaning it may use such links for crawling and ranking when its systems judge that useful. Google has never specified when that happens.
The right posture: plan as if nofollow passes nothing, and treat any lift as upside. Anyone selling you nofollow links on the theory that Google secretly counts them is guessing with your money.
Five ways they actually help
- Referral traffic. A nofollow link in a busy subreddit, newsletter or community can outdraw a followed link from an inactive blog by an order of magnitude. Those visitors convert, sign up, and share.
- Discovery. Nofollow links appear on pages crawlers visit constantly. That exposure gets new content found faster than waiting for a sitemap ping.
- Branded search. People who see you in a roundup or a forum answer later search your name. Branded search volume is one of the clearest signals that a brand is real.
- Second-order links. Writers, podcasters and bloggers find sources in the same nofollow places everyone else hangs out. One Reddit comment becomes a citation in a followed article three weeks later.
- AI search visibility. Assistants and AI overviews synthesize from widely referenced pages. Being mentioned in the right places matters regardless of the
relvalue.
Profile naturalness
Every site that grew honestly has a large share of nofollow links, because social profiles, forums, comments and press are mostly nofollow. A profile that is nearly all followed links is one of the easiest patterns to spot in an audit. The benchmarks are in what a good backlink profile looks like.
When they are worth pursuing
- The audience is genuinely yours — a niche community, a relevant newsletter, a subreddit.
- The placement has ongoing visibility, not a comment on page nine of a thread.
- It is a foundational listing everyone in your category has (social profiles, marketplaces, industry bodies).
- It puts you in front of people who publish — journalists, bloggers, podcasters.
Most of the entries in our free backlink directory fall into that last group of foundational listings.
When they are not
- You are being asked to pay. Paying for a link that passes no credit and sends no traffic is pure waste.
- Bulk submissions. Automated blasts into hundreds of dead directories build nothing and can create a footprint you later have to clean up — see the audit guide.
- Comment dropping. Leaving links on unrelated blogs is the tactic nofollow was invented to neutralize. Twenty years later it still does not work.
The higher-leverage move is earning followed editorial links, which is what digital PR and the tactics in how to get backlinks are for.
FAQ
Are nofollow links good for SEO?
Yes, indirectly. They rarely pass ranking credit, but they drive referral traffic, help pages get discovered, build brand and branded search, and keep your link profile looking natural. They are worth having, just not worth paying for.
Do nofollow links help rankings?
Not directly in most cases. Google treats nofollow as a hint, so it may occasionally consider such a link, but you should not plan a campaign around it. Rankings move from the followed editorial links and the branded demand that nofollow placements help create.
Should I disavow nofollow links?
No. Nofollow links are already discounted, so disavowing them achieves nothing. The disavow tool is for unnatural followed links tied to a manual action, and most sites should never touch it.
Put it into practice
Browse the directory to find the next backlink opportunity to act on.