When building links to your website, it is very important to check if your links don't have nofollow attribute.

For Google and other search engines, nofollow means that link won't improve your rankings, it won't transfer any PageRank.

A nofollow attribute looks like this:

<a href="[link]" rel="nofollow">[anchor]</a>

Firefox and Chrome browsers extensions and plugins to check nofollow links

Manual check nofollow links

  1. Visit the page you want to check for nofollow links
  2. View Page Source (usually CTLR+U) or go from browser menu
  3. Search (CTRL+F) for the link you want to see if it has nofollow
  4. Check for rel="nofollow" attribute in the link
In Google Chrome, there is a very simple manual checking method: Right click the link you want -> Inspect Element

Don't forget that a webmaster can add nofollow to your links at a later date. You can get alerted via email if you add the links to be monitored in SEOptimer.