The guest post that sold a followed link
A Kochi agency paid ₹8,000 for a guest post on a marketing blog, expecting an SEO boost. The link was followed and the article was clearly paid.
A few months later the blog was hit for selling links and the link’s value disappeared.
The agency now marks paid placements as sponsored and judges them on referral traffic and leads, not link value.
Illustrative example based on a common pattern in Kerala e-commerce accounts. Numbers rounded.
What nofollow is
Normal links can pass ranking signals. Adding rel attributes tells Google about the relationship: nofollow (don’t endorse), sponsored (paid or affiliate), ugc (posted by users).
Google uses these as hints, so it may still use them for discovery. For your own site, mark paid and affiliate links as sponsored to stay within Google’s rules.
<a href="…" rel="sponsored"> · rel="ugc" · rel="nofollow"
Which attribute to use
Link type and attribute
| Link type | Use |
|---|---|
| Paid placement or sponsored post | rel="sponsored" |
| Affiliate links | rel="sponsored" |
| Comments and forum posts | rel="ugc" |
| Links you don’t want to vouch for | rel="nofollow" |
| Normal editorial links to trusted pages | No attribute needed |
How experienced marketers use nofollow, sponsored, dofollow
1. Stay within Google’s rules
Mark paid and affiliate links on your site as sponsored.
2. Judge guest posts
Value guest posts and PR on referral traffic and authority, not only on whether the link is followed.
3. Check a link
Right-click the link → Inspect, and look for rel= in the HTML.
What good looks like
| Business type | Starting rule | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Natural link profiles | Include some nofollow links | A mix looks natural. |
| Paid links on your site | Always sponsored | Required by Google’s policies. |
| Internal links | Don’t nofollow them | It wastes your own link flow. |
When the number lies
- “Nofollow is worthless”
- Nofollow links can bring real visitors, brand searches and later followed links.
- Hints, not rules
- Google may still crawl or use nofollow links.
Mistakes to avoid
Nofollowing your own internal links
Important pages get less internal authority.
Selling followed links
Risk of manual action for link spam.
Paying only for followed links
You ignore placements that bring customers.
Related terms
Questions people ask about nofollow
What is a nofollow link?
A link with rel="nofollow", telling search engines not to treat it as an endorsement.
Do nofollow links help SEO?
They pass little ranking value but can bring traffic, awareness and natural followed links later.
When should I use rel=sponsored?
For any paid, sponsored or affiliate link.
How do I check if a link is nofollow?
Right-click the link, choose Inspect, and look for rel="nofollow", "sponsored" or "ugc" in the HTML.
Put it into practice
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