Historically, it’s been widely accepted that nofollow links do not pass link juice as they instruct search engines not to follow the link for ranking purposes.
However, I highlighted an interesting shift in perspective based on a test we conducted, said Kyle Roof.
We set up a single variable test to specifically determine if nofollow links could pass link juice.
The test involved sending a nofollow link from a page that was actively receiving traffic—about a thousand organic visitors a month—to another page to see if it would affect its ranking.
The results were quite revealing.
Shortly after the page receiving the nofollow link was crawled by Google, there was a significant improvement in its ranking, moving it from the middle of the search results to the number one spot almost instantaneously.
This outcome suggests that nofollow links from high-traffic, quality pages might indeed pass some level of link juice, contrary to the traditional understanding.
It seems that the context and the source of the nofollow link play a crucial role in its potential impact on SEO.
This finding is particularly relevant for those using platforms like HARO, where high-authority sites often use nofollow tags on outbound links.