using the nofollow tag on links throughout your Web site

[TipPro]

I am getting ready for a major site relaunch in two weeks and I am considering an aggressive approach of funneling page rank through the Web site.

A major part of my plan is to apply the link attribute nofollow on the following links...

1. vertical side navigation tree (besides on the home page)
2. global footer (about us, contact us, polices, etc...)
3. breadcrumbs besides for the very last link that appears in the trail
4. any customer specific page links (log in, shopping cart, checkout, account, ect...)

Does anyone have thoughts or concerns with this approach?

[marc77]

Personally I don't use this method (except on websites where people can add own comments in an unmoderated environment to prevent that the concerned site is used a place for black hat SEOs adding their own links).

Have you made positive experiences with this strategy on other sites in the past ?

[TipPro]

Hi Marc, I have not tried this approach yet on any Web sites. I have been reading up on the latest in SEO and came across this article (an interview between the president of a SEO company and the head of the Web spam team for Google)... http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/...tt-cutts.shtml

This SEO company suggested a similar approach as I explained in my earlier post but not as aggressive...

Eric Enge: What we've been doing is working with clients and telling them to take pages like their about us page, and their contact us page, and link to them from the home page normally, without a NoFollow attribute, and then link to them using NoFollow from every other page. It's just a way of lowering the amount of link juice they get. These types of pages are usually the highest PageRank pages on the site, and they are not doing anything for you in terms of search traffic.

The above is a quote from the linked interview. Eric Enge is the president of a major SEO company.

[marc77]

I shortly read over the article, it looks quite interesting, at least seen the theory behind. Anyway, maybe worth a try. So I'm eager to read whether or not you got a noticeable improvement in engine ranking later :-)

[Volusion]

I've read in searchengineland that using nofollow links can help you direct link juice to the pages you want it to go to.

I wouldn't block your about us page or your side nav, as getting internal pages index is key to capturing longtail keyword searches.

[TipPro]

I wouldn't block your about us page or your side nav, as getting internal pages index is key to capturing longtail keyword searches.

I am not going to block any page completely (except for custom pages such as login and checkout). The side navigation would not have the nofollow tag on the home page but it will have the nofollow tag on every page after the home page. This way the same top sections of the Web site are not constantly being linked to from every single page in the Web site.

For example... a basic category page will have incoming links (without the nofollow tag) from only its parent category and from its child categories or child products. Also, if this same category is mentioned in an article or blog entry on the Web site the nofollow tag will not be used.

[Volusion]

I see. I've read that Google doesn't like this, but what Google says and what Google does are two different things. If it works, it works.

[TipPro]

I see. I've read that Google doesn't like this, but what Google says and what Google does are two different things. If it works, it works.

In the article I linked to in my second post in this thread, a Google employee agreed that it was not a bad idea to use nofollow tag throughout the site. Where have you read Google does not like this? I would be very interested in reviewing that information before my site launch.

Thanks,
Paul

[TipPro]

I thought about this a lot and have decided not to implement this strategy. It seems unnatural and I have never tried to manipulate the search engine spiders before and my site has always ranked well (so why start now?).

Anyways, I will keep the nofollow tag on links to customer pages like "sign in" or "check out" because I believe it makes a lot of sense for those pages.

Thanks everyone for your input!

- Paul

[ecommerceguy]

This is a very interesting topic. Many top SEOs suggest using methods such as nofollow to properly situate page rank. Here's an interesting relevant blog posting about linking out and the nofollow:

http://www.unclepeppers.com/2008/lin...follow-or-not/

[sanejim]

TipPro - I am using the same shopping cart as you for our store. When I check out Googles index of our site, it seems that most products are indexed as the checkout with the item in it. Does your suggestion eliminate this problem?

[TipPro]

Yes, it would help. It is good practice to use the nofollow tag on all your links to checkout, basket, and account type pages (basically to any page you would not want to show up in a Google search).

Not all search engines pay attention to the nofollow tag. If there are some pages that you absolutely do not want indexed by search engines you should add them to your robots.txt file.

[sanejim]

How does one attach the 'nofollow' tag to "check-out" and "login" page using this particular shopping cart solution? We have worked very hard on our store, but I found it odd when I checked Googles index of our pages and half of them were checkout pages.

[TipPro]

I just took a look at your site (the domain in your email)... and I do not recognize the cart you are using... it is not one I am familiar with.

What cart is it?

[sanejim]

TipPro - we are using Volusion.