In this article, I’ll tell you how to easily add Nofollow, Sponsored and Ugc to your links in WordPress using a plugin and why you should do that.
The WordPress plugin adds the following additional options when you create links in blog posts or pages:
- rel=”nofollow”
- rel=”sponsored”
- rel=”ugc”
If you want to tell Google (or other search engines) your relation for certain links on your website and thus optimize it for SEO purposes, then you are right here.
Add Nofollow, Sponsored and Ugc checkboxes to the “Insert/edit link” popup for posts and pages
The free and easy-to-use WordPress plugin WP Better SEO Links allows you to add Nofollow, Sponsored and Ugc links to your posts and pages by marking the corresponding checkboxes on the “Insert/edit link” popup.
This plugin only works with the classic editor. That means you have to disable Gutenberg first with the help of another plugin like Disable Gutenberg or Classic Editor (both are free to use and only need to be activated after instal).
Then, to add those checkboxes that you can see on the screenshot below, all you have to do is installing and activating the plugin WP better SEO Links.
To add the corresponding attribute value, first select a word or phrase in your post or page that you want to link, and then click the link icon in your classic editor.
Then a little popup will appear as you can see on the screenshot below.
Click on the cog icon and a bigger popup will appear that allows you to add the link and one of the attribute values Nofollow, Sponsored or Ugc to it. See the screenshot below.
Optionally you can checkmark the box “Open link in a new tab” (recommended for outbound links).
Then click on “Update” to create your link with your desired settings. Done!
The meaning of Nofollow, Sponsored and Ugc links
For (Google) SEO puposes I recommend adding the right rel attribute values to your links. On the screenshot below you can find an explanation of these values from Google itself.
I think the explanation from Google is very clearly.
For regular links that you expect Google (or other search engines) to follow, you don’t need to add a rel attribute. These are links that you honestly recommend to others and from which you do not benefit.
To put it even more clearly: All the links you see here in this post are real recommendations from me and I don’t benefit from these (no money, no backlink exchange etc.) – so I did not add any of the rel attributes mentioned here to the links.
Conclusion
To optimize your WordPress website or blog for SEO purposes, I highly recommend using the free plugin WP better SEO Links and add the correct rel attributes to the corresponding links:
- rel=”sponsored” – for affiliate links or other paid links and for exchanged backlinks
- rel=”ugc” – for user-generated content such as comments and forum posts
- rel=”nofollow” – for any websites that you don’t recommend such as scam or fraud sites
Google itself says that it is still an acceptable way to flag sponsored links with Nofollow. From the word still I conclude that it might change soon. Therefore, I recommend doing everything right before our websites may be penalized by a new Google Update.
