What decision are you actually making?

Start by identifying who controls the link. Are you publishing a reference on your website, reviewing a customer's comment, or checking a link a publisher has placed to your shop? Write that down before asking someone to change anything.

A link attribute is extra information in the code behind a link. The rel attribute describes your relationship with the destination page. Google uses these values to distinguish ordinary references from qualified links. Its documentation explains that distinction.

You do not need a dofollow switch

For a regular link that you expect Google to fetch and interpret without qualifications, Google says no rel attribute is necessary. You do not need to add rel="dofollow". Use that as your starting point when reviewing ordinary editorial references. See the regular link example.

For your working notes, describe links coming from another website as incoming links or backlinks. Keep those separate from links your own team publishes. Give each list an owner, because the person who can approve a change may be different.

For navigation and links between your own articles, put the review alongside your internal linking plan. Avoid mixing a paid publisher placement with a link from your homepage to your services page.

Which link attribute should you choose?

Choose according to the reason the link exists. Google's categories are paid placements, user contributions, and other links you would prefer it not to associate with your site or follow from your site. The following table applies its published rel guidance.

Understand the labels before changing them

UGC means user-generated content, such as a reader's comment. Sponsored identifies an advertising or paid relationship. Google still accepts nofollow for paid links, although it prefers sponsored. Multiple values are permitted, including rel="ugc nofollow". Google gives examples of these combinations.

Write the reason beside every proposed change. A useful note is: paid product feature, change the qualifying value to sponsored. A less useful note is: fix SEO. The first gives the person doing the work a decision they can verify.

Keep your comment moderation rules alongside the attribute policy. Ask someone to review irrelevant promotions and suspicious submissions. Do not treat assigning a value as a substitute for deciding whether the content belongs on your website.

How should you handle publisher offers and guest posts?

Ask what you are buying before discussing the link label. Request the proposed topic, publication location, intended readers, payment terms and link treatment in writing. Evaluate whether the feature would be useful to your business without a promised ranking gain.

Hypothetical example: a paid gift guide

Imagine a small homeware shop paying a magazine for inclusion in a gift guide. Mark the arrangement as a paid placement in your records and ask the publisher to use sponsored for the link. That choice follows Google's advertising guidance.

Set a business objective for the placement, such as product enquiries. Decide how your team will record those enquiries before publication. Ask for the published page and verify the destination, product availability and agreed link treatment.

Hypothetical example: an unpaid expert contribution

Imagine a freelance bookkeeper contributing an explanation to a trade publication without paying for placement. Ask the editor whether a relevant reference can be included and what the publication's link policy is. Do not make acceptance depend only on receiving a particular label.

For a regular editorial reference, Google's documentation does not require a qualifying rel attribute. That does not mean every unpaid submission must receive an ordinary link. Keep your request aligned with the publisher's editorial decision. The regular link guidance describes the technical default.

Use the guest posting guide to plan your pitch, and the press coverage guide when approaching journalists. Choose the route that fits your actual story.

How can you check a link without becoming technical?

Ask for evidence from the published page. Start with one example from each category rather than approving a blanket change across your website. Keep a simple spreadsheet with the page, visible link wording, destination, current value and intended value.

1. Open the published page. Use the version a visitor would see, not just an editor preview.
2. Identify the exact link. Record its wording so your developer checks the same element.
3. Inspect or request the code. In Chrome, try right-clicking the link and choosing Inspect. If that feels unfamiliar, ask your website manager for the link's HTML.
4. Look for rel. Record whether it contains sponsored, ugc or nofollow. Record the absence of those values too.
5. Compare it with the relationship. Use the decision table, then approve a specific correction.
6. Check the finished page again. Confirm the destination and agreed value after the change is published.

A brief you can send to your website manager

Please review the links in this list. For each one, show the current rel value, the proposed value and the reason. Change one example first, then check the published result before applying the same rule to the remaining matching links.

If your site uses WordPress, begin with your existing editor and SEO plugin settings. Ask the person responsible to verify the resulting code rather than relying only on a checkbox label. Keep the work within your wider website audit checklist.

For link wording, review the anchor text guide separately. In your task list, distinguish a change to the visible wording from a change to the relationship value.

What should you expect from these links?

Avoid turning an attribute into a ranking promise. Google's qualification document explains how to describe link relationships; it does not provide a formula for predicting positions gained from an individual placement. Use the document for implementation, and ask for separate evidence when someone promises results. Review the scope of the guidance.

Nofollow is not a way to hide a page

Google says links with these attributes generally will not be followed. However, the destination may still be discovered through other links or a sitemap, a file listing website pages. Do not use a link attribute as a promise that a page cannot be found. Google explicitly describes these discovery limits.

If your actual requirement concerns a page appearing in search, write that as a separate task. State the page and the intended outcome. Do not ask your team to solve that requirement merely by adding nofollow to a link.

Review business value separately

For each placement, ask whether the readers match your customers and whether the destination answers their likely question. Record relevant enquiries and completed orders when you can identify them. Treat those observations as business measurements, not proof of a particular link's ranking effect.

What should your team finish this week?

Finish a short policy and a checked sample of links. My recommendation is to put the policy where the person publishing content will actually see it, then use the same examples during handover.

• Ask marketing to list paid publisher arrangements.
• Ask the website manager to identify comment areas.
• Choose an ordinary editorial reference for comparison.
• Record the current and intended values for each example.
• Resolve unclear payment or authorship details before editing.
• Assign someone to confirm the published corrections.

Set a clear acceptance condition: each sampled link has a documented reason for its treatment, its destination is correct, and someone has checked the finished page. Save unresolved cases for a decision instead of quietly applying the same setting to everything.