Can Nofollow Links Help you rank in Google?
Quick answer: Yes
Long answer:
The rel = "nofollow" attribute was introduced by Google in 2005, when seo was still fragile and easy to manipulate with black hat techniques. Their main goal was to stop spam with links in the comments section of blogs.
In 2020, SEO is already mature and algorithms such as Panda, Penguin, RankBrain do not allow any webmaster to cheat and fraudulently reach the top positions in Google with the help of BlackHat techniques.
In 2019, Google redefined the Nofollow tag by introducing 2 more informative tags for the search engine "UGC" - User Generated Content and Sponsored - Purchased links.
But what about nofollow?
According to a recent article posted by Google on June 9, 2020, they mention that nofollow links are used as clues for the search engine.
What does this mean for your link building technique?
It is simply time to stop looking only for websites that accept dofollow links and give the same importance to nofollow links.
The part that's problematic is the links -- if you're providing the content/the links, then those links shouldn't be passing signals & should have the rel-sponsored / rel-nofollow attached. It's fine to see it as a way of reaching a broader audience.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) June 11, 2020
According to John Muller, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, each guest post should have the re-nofollow attribute attached to the link in order to please Google's Guidelines.