How to Add Nofollow Links in WordPress (3 Ways)

Adding a nofollow link in WordPress sounds like it should be a one-click job — and on most other platforms it is. In WordPress, the block editor still doesn’t give you a checkbox for it, so a lot of people either skip nofollow entirely or reach for a plugin they don’t really need. Neither is ideal. This guide walks through what nofollow actually does in 2026, when you should use it (and its newer siblings sponsored and ugc), and three practical ways to add it — from a 20-second manual edit to fully automatic rules for links you add over and over.

What “nofollow” really means in 2026

A normal link passes ranking signals (often called “link equity”) from your page to the page you’re linking to. The rel="nofollow" attribute tells search engines you’d rather not vouch for that destination — historically it stopped equity from flowing. The key thing to understand today: since 2019, Google treats nofollow as a hint, not a strict directive. It may still use nofollowed links for crawling and indexing signals; it just won’t necessarily pass full ranking weight. So nofollow is about editorial intent, not an ironclad wall.

Google also introduced two more specific values you should know, because using the right one is clearer than blanketing everything with nofollow:

• rel="sponsored" — for paid or affiliate links (ads, sponsorships, affiliate URLs). If money changed hands for the link, this is the correct value.
• rel="ugc" — for user-generated content, like links inside comments and forum posts.
• rel="nofollow" — the general-purpose “I don’t want to endorse this” value for everything else (untrusted sources, pages you’re citing critically, login/registration links).

You can combine them — for example rel="sponsored nofollow" — and Google is fine with that. When in doubt for an affiliate link, sponsored is the modern, precise choice.

When you should not use nofollow

Don’t nofollow your own internal links — you want equity flowing between your own pages, and nofollowing them just throws away one of the easiest on-page SEO wins you have. Nofollow is for outbound links you don’t want to endorse, not for shaping your internal structure (that old “PageRank sculpting” tactic stopped working many years ago).

Method 1 — Manually in the block editor (no plugin)

This is the honest reality a lot of tutorials gloss over: the Gutenberg link popup has no nofollow toggle. You add the attribute in the block’s HTML. Here’s the reliable way:

1. Add your link the normal way — select the text, click the link button, paste the URL.
2. Select the block, open the block options menu (the three-dot “kebab” icon in the block toolbar), and choose Edit as HTML.
3. Find your anchor tag and add the rel attribute by hand, e.g. <a href="https://example.com" rel="nofollow">anchor text</a> — or rel="sponsored" for an affiliate link.
4. Switch the block back with Edit visually. The link looks identical; the attribute is now saved in your content.

For a one-off outbound link, this takes about twenty seconds and adds zero plugin overhead. It’s the right tool when nofollow links are the exception, not the rule, on your site.

The Classic Editor note

If you’re still on the Classic Editor, switch from Visual to Text mode and add the rel attribute to the anchor the same way. Same idea, different tab.

Method 2 — With a plugin that adds a nofollow checkbox

If you add nofollow links often — say you review products or link out to a lot of sources — editing HTML every time gets old. Several SEO and link-management plugins add a proper “nofollow” (and “open in new tab” / “sponsored”) checkbox right in the link UI, so it becomes a genuine one-click action. Popular general SEO suites include link-attribute controls, and there are lightweight single-purpose plugins dedicated to it.

The trade-off is the usual one: another plugin to keep updated. If link attributes are the only reason you’d install it, weigh that against the 20-second manual method above. But if you’re already running an SEO suite that offers the checkbox, just use it — there’s no reason not to.

Method 3 — Automatically, for links you add repeatedly

Here’s the case the first two methods handle badly: you link to the same outbound domains again and again — an affiliate network, a partner site, a documentation host — and you want every one of those links to carry the right rel value without you remembering each time. Doing that by hand is exactly the kind of repetitive task that quietly gets skipped.

This is where rule-based auto-linking helps. If you set up a keyword-or-domain rule once, every matching link can be given nofollow (or sponsored) automatically, across old and new posts alike. Full disclosure: our own free plugin, JnK Linkweave, supports a per-rule nofollow toggle for auto-inserted links, so this is one option — but the principle applies to any auto-linking tool that exposes link attributes. The point is that repeated links are better handled by a rule than by memory.

How to check your nofollow links are actually working

• Inspect the element: right-click the link on the published page, choose Inspect, and confirm the rel attribute is present on the <a> tag.
• View source: load the page, view source, and search for the destination URL to see its full anchor tag.
• Browser extensions: a “nofollow” highlighter extension will visually outline every nofollowed link on a page — handy for auditing a whole post at once.

A quick check matters because a caching or optimization plugin can occasionally rewrite links, and you want to be sure your intended attribute survived to the final HTML.

Frequently asked questions

Does WordPress have a built-in nofollow option?

Not in the block editor’s link popup — there’s no native nofollow toggle. You add rel="nofollow" by selecting the block, choosing “Edit as HTML,” and editing the anchor tag directly, or you install an SEO/link plugin that adds a nofollow checkbox to the link UI.

Should I use nofollow, sponsored, or ugc?

Use rel="sponsored" for paid and affiliate links, rel="ugc" for user-generated content like comments, and rel="nofollow" as the general “I don’t endorse this” value for everything else. They’re hints to Google rather than strict directives, and you can combine them, such as rel="sponsored nofollow".

Do nofollow links hurt my SEO?

No — used correctly they protect it. Nofollow is for outbound links you don’t want to vouch for, such as affiliate or untrusted URLs. Just don’t nofollow your own internal links: you want ranking signals flowing between your own pages, so keep those as normal follow links.