How to Fix Internal Nofollow Links in WordPress

What "internal nofollow" means

Internal nofollow links are links within your own site that have a rel="nofollow" attribute. The nofollow tag tells search engines not to follow the link or pass page authority through it. On internal links, this is almost always a mistake — usually added accidentally by a plugin or theme.

Why it's worth fixing

Removing accidental internal nofollows:

• Improves crawlability — search engines follow more of your site
• Distributes page authority through your internal link graph
• Helps thin pages get discovered and indexed

Fix with Linkilo (fastest)

1. WordPress → Linkilo → Link Analysis
2. Look at the Rel attribute column
3. Filter to show only nofollow internal links
4. Use the inline edit to uncheck nofollow
5. Click Save changes

Linkilo updates the link in the actual post content — no manual HTML editing.

Fix without Linkilo (manual)

Step 1 — Find the affected pages

1. Run Screaming Frog SEO Spider (free for up to 500 URLs)
2. Crawl your site
3. Export the Internal links report
4. Filter for rel="nofollow" on internal URLs

Step 2 — Edit each post

1. Open the post in WordPress
2. Switch to the Code editor (top-right menu in Gutenberg) or HTML view in Classic
3. Find the link, which looks like: “` <a href="https://yoursite.com/page" rel="nofollow">Link text</a> “`
4. Remove rel="nofollow": “` <a href="https://yoursite.com/page">Link text</a> “`
5. Update the post

Step 3 — Verify

View the page on the front-end and inspect the link in your browser's dev tools to confirm rel="nofollow" is gone.

Tips

• Audit regularly — quarterly scans catch new nofollows added by plugins or imports
• Check plugins that auto-add nofollow — some SEO plugins do this by default. Look in their link-attribute settings.
• Don't remove intentional nofollows — login, logout, admin, and some affiliate links can legitimately stay nofollow