webdev{docs}

SEO

  • rel="sponsored": Mark links that are advertisements or paid placements (commonly called paid links) as sponsored.
  • rel="ugc": We recommend marking user-generated content (UGC) links, such as comments and forum posts, as ugc.
  • rel="nofollow": Use the nofollow value when other values don't apply, and you'd rather Google not associate your site with, or crawl the linked page from, your site. (For links within your own site, use robots.txt, as described below.)

robots.txt

If you need to prevent Google from following a link to a page on your own site, use the robots.txt disallow rule.

In Gatsby, you create the robots.txt by installing the plugin gatsby-plugin-robots-txt.

netlify

If you would like to disable crawlers for deploy-previews, please follow instructions at netlify.

noindex

If you need to prevent Google from indexing a page and appearing in Google Search, use the noindex robots rule.

Affiliate links do not affect SEO. However, it is recommended to add rel=sponsored to these types of links in order to be nofollowed

target="_blank"

target="_blank" will open the link in a new tab. For external links take this into consideration:

  • rel="noopener" prevents the new page from being able to access the window.opener property and ensures it runs in a separate process. Without this, the target page can potentially redirect your page to a malicious URL.
  • rel="noreferrer" has the same effect, but also prevents the Referer header from being sent to the new page.
💣 Warning
Adding rel="noreferrer" will prevents passing the referrer information to the target website by removing the referral info from the HTTP header.

This means that in Google Analytics, traffic coming from links that have the rel="noreferrer" attribute will show as Direct Traffic instead of Referral. This by itself does not directly impact SEO, however...

... you won't get the attention of the target's webmaster (as he checks his referral links everyday in Google Analytics and yours will appears as Direct, and not referral). The target's webmaster won't check your site and won't link to your site.

Tools

  1. Go to https://ads.google.com/
  2. Skip the wizard by clicking on the bottom Switch to Expert Mode
  3. Click on Create a campaign withour a goal's guidance
  4. Click on Create an account without a campaign
  5. If the information shown is correct, click Submit
  6. Click Explore
  7. Click on Tools and settings -> Keyword Planner