what is a no-follow link?

The most asked question bar none in the facebook blogging groups is "what is a no-follow link, and why do I need to know?"

No-follow links are important, if you are given product or paid money for writing a blog post. If you don't do any of that yet, it's still worth knowing about (I learned something new just researching this post).

A no-follow link is NOT visible to readers (I've been asked this several times recently.) It's a piece of HTML code that search engines read that says "stop here, I'm not giving my authority to that website"

Google considers you an "expert" because you publish online. When you link to external websites, you tell google "I trust this website, and genuinely like them, and think everyone else should like them too" When you are paid (in product or money), and you recommend a website, if you include a follow link, google likens it to cash-for-comment, and discredits you as the expert. {Here is some info from google}

When should a no-follow link be used?

• when payment or product is received in return for a review post, links to the business should be no-follow
• in sidebar widgets when linking to external sites (for example, in a blog roll), or to your own content (for example, categories)
• SearchEngineLand also says "when embeding... widgets from sites you don't trust", but I would ask, why would you embed a widget if you didn't trust the site?
• in your comments.

In layman's terms, no-follow links are used in the natural course of a blog post. All the links in this post are follow links. I used no-follow links in this review post, as I was given the product, but this review post has follow links, as I purchased the product myself and wanted to tell people how much I love it.

more reading
The Hidden Power of NoFollow Links  |  Moz 
What is the NoFollow Tag; When and How to Use it  |  SearchEngineLand
Make a Blogger BlogRoll Widget NoFollow  |  KelloggsDBA