Nofollow links in WordPress posts

You may want to create rel nofollow links in your WordPress posts when writing them for your own specific reasons. There are two ways of going about adding links with a nofollow relationships inside your TinyMCE editor.

Manual method

The manual way of doing this is to go into the HTML view of your TinyMCE editor by clicking on the ‘HTML’ tab (next to the ‘Visual’ tab) in the top, right-hand corner of the editor. You will then see all the HTML source code for your post where you can add add the rel attribute with a nofollow value to give it a nofollow relationship to its target. Here is a normal link…

<a href="http://domain.com">My Link</a>

And here is the same link with the nofollow added to it…

<a href="http://domain.com" rel="nofollow">My Link</a>

Automatic method

Even though the manual method above is pretty straightforward, you can achieve the same results with a few simple clicks of your mouse. First, you’ll need to install a plugin called TinyMCE Advanced.  The plugin wasn’t specifically developed for this purpose, it actually gives you a vast range of added functionality to your WordPress TinyMCE editor.

With TinyMCE Advanced installed, you can set the nofollow at the same time that you specify the URL for the selected text in your blog post. So you’ll still select your text to make a link from and click the link icon in your editor toolbar. With the link dialog open, you’ll add your values such as the URL and then click on the ‘Advanced’ tab. You’ll then see a setting named ‘Relationship page to target’. For that setting, select “No Follow” to make the link nofollow.

In the screenshot above…

1. Select the text to make a link with.
2. Click the ‘Insert/Edit link’ button in the TinyMCE editor toolbar.
3. Select the ‘Advanced’ tab.
4. Choose ‘No Follow’ for the ‘Relationship page to target’ setting.