Nofollow tags
-
So on the homepage, should all the links like privacy, contact us, etc...be rel="nofollow" ?
I want to get a better handle on passing as much link juice on homepage to important internal pages as I can, and want to get it right.
Thanks in advance.
-
What about 12 outbound links to external client sites not related to your service.
-
unfortunately, if you can't place a NOINDEX meta tag due to limitations of the CMS then you probably won't be able to place a rel=nofollow either... leaving you with a disallow in your robots.txt.
-
what if you can't place noindex into the html head (limitation of the cms) would a exclude in the robots be enough on its own? (or at least better than nofollow links to the page)
-
simply exclude or 'disallow' the file path in the Robots.txt. Then place NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW meta tag on those pages (in the HTML head before the body). If you have important links on those pages then use the meta tag NOINDEX, FOLLOW. I hope this helps... please ask for clarification if you need.
-
Yes - follow the link in my expanded answer above... the ink points to Matt Cutts original article from February 2009 explaining how/when/why the change was made.
-
"They changed this (I think in 2009) to : If you had 10 links on a page and 5 were nofollowed each link would still only pass on 1 PR point. The remaining 5 points essentially disappear into thin air."
R u 100% sure about this? any sources to back this up?
Thanks
-
You are "over my head" lol.
So for sitewide contact, privacy, etc...what is the best thing to do?
Thanks!
-
Haha! For some reason I didn't see the other post... thought I was the only responder.
Be well!
-
Anthony, I never said I disagree with you. I did not see your answer at first, I must have opened the thread before you posted your answer. reading your answer now yes, we are in agreement.
-
I'm confused about what you are disagreeing with me about... there is the meta NOFOLLOW tag that is placed at the page level and the more granular rel=nofollow attribute at the link level. They are not interchangeable but simply give more macro or micro control over links on a page. If you read my answer carefully you will see that we are in complete agreement over link decay using the rel=nofollow attribute on individual links.
-
No you should not.
When the nofollow tag first came out you could "sculpt" page rank by saying which pages you can pass it on to, this is no longer the case. Google made a change a few years back to stop people from doing this. An example would be:
When nofollow first came out: If you page had 10 links on it, each link would pass on 1 point of page rank (PR). If you nofollowed 5 of these links then each link without the nofollow tag would then pass on 2 points.
They changed this (I think in 2009) to : If you had 10 links on a page and 5 were nofollowed each link would still only pass on 1 PR point. The remaining 5 points essentially disappear into thin air.
So by adding nofollow to internal pages you are wasting your PR, rather let it be passed on to your less important pages which will return a certain amount back to the top level if you linking structure is correct. Only use nofollow for external links which you don't want to pass on PR to e.g. If it could be considered a bad neighbourhood etc. This may not be 100% how it works but the basic concept is correct, there are extensive explanations of this on Matt Cutts blog.
-
First there was the NOFOLLOW meta tag for page-level exclusion and then Google adopted the more granular rel=nofollow attribute for individual links on a page. I find that too many SEOs overuse the rel=nofollow attribute when there is a much more elegant solution available. The reason for this is now myth formerly known as the abused tactic called PageRank sculpting. I had a well-known culture/nightlife site in NYC as a client that had placed literally thousands of rel=nofollow attributes on links throughout the site... granted this does not seem to be your problem but I digress...
To illustrate my point, Matt Cutts discusses how rel=nofollow attributes affect how Google passes PageRank to other parts of your site (or more precisely how nofollows decay the amount of link juice passed). In the case of a few pages or even large directories, etc, I would do the following:
- Disallow crawling of less valuable pages via Robots.txt
- Use the meta exclusion NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW tag at the page level - unless these pages pass valuable link juice/anchor text to other parts of the site then use NOINDEX, FOLLOW (page is not indexed but important links are followed)
- Also, leave these pages out of your XML sitemap(s) - although you may want leave them in the HTML sitemap and place a granular rel=nofollow at link-level in the case of a 404 error page for usability purposes or required privacy statement for landing pages.
Saving your Googlebot crawl budget for only high value pages is a great way to get more of those pages in the Google index providing you with more opportunity to promote your products, services, etc. Also, limiting the number of rel=nofollows used and allowing link juice (or Page Rank) to flow more freely throughout your site will prove beneficial.
-
There was a time I would have said yes. Nowadays its hardly worth the trouble.
However, if its easy to implement, why not? You might get some marginal benefit out of it.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
H Tags Query
Hi, A client I'm dealing with has the following H tags on their homepage: H1: Online POP & POS Printing for Businesses & Events H2: Design & Advertising Agencies? Use Your Own Custom Artwork!
On-Page Optimization | | PeaSoupDigital
H2: Small Businesses & Events? Create Marketing Products Online!
H2: Quicker, Easier & up to 80% Cheaper than Traditional Printing
H2: Customise one of our free themes
H2: Upload your own custom artwork
H2: Commission a bespoke design
H2: Featured Products
H2: Display Printing
H2: Dump Bins
H2: Flyer Display
H2: FSDUs
H2: Hanging Signs
H2: Posters
H2: Shelf Edge
H2: Show Cards
H2: Tent Cards
H2: Window Clings H3: Look How Easy It Is
H3: Look How Easy It Is
H3: Big brand printing for every budget
H3: Newsletter Sign Up
H3: Available payment methods H4: Thank You, You have been added to our mailing list
H4: Follow Us As you can see, there are a lot. I feel the H3 and H4 tags do not really add any value or explain what the site is about, so I'll probably remove these. In relation to the H2s, do you think I should demote some of these to H3 or even H4 tags? Also, terms like 'Posters' is very vague, would this be better as 'Poster Printing'? Thanks, Lewis0 -
H1 tags are ok for my website?
Please review the H1 tags for my website and let me know if they are ok or I need to change them? Website - brandstenmedia.com.au
On-Page Optimization | | Green.landon0 -
Different Title Tag and Page Headline
My editorial team won't budge with their headlines which are excruciatingly vague ... But I have managed to convince them to let me optimize the title tags and the URLs. Is this sub-optimal or are there some benefits to having a title tag that varies from the page headline or what our dev team calls the "reader friendly" title? For example... Their headline: Increase Your Retirement by 20% with This Safe, Simple Strategy My title tag: Compound Returns: How to Increase Your Retirement 20% Thanks for the help, E
On-Page Optimization | | essdee0 -
Tags creating duplicated content issue?
Hello i believe a lot of us use tags in our blogs as a way to categorize content and make it easy searchable but this usually (at lease in my case) cause duplicate content creation. For example, if one article has 2 tags like "SEO" & "Marketing", then this article will be visible and listed in 2 urls inside the blog like this domain.com/blog/seo and domain.com/blog/marketing In case of a blog with 300+ posts and dozens of different tags this is creating a huge issue. My question is 1. Is this really bad? 2. If yes how to fix it without removing tags?
On-Page Optimization | | Lakiscy0 -
Title Tag Over Optimization
Hey, I've read that adding the company name to the title tag was a waste of space since the more words the less weight each one has, with all this over optimization preventive measures, should I rewrite the title tags format with company names? and if so should it be (company name): (naturally organized keywords) (naturally organized keyword) | (Company name). or can I keep it just naturally organized keywords Also I used to do (keyphrase) - (keyphrase) instead of commas, should I fix this? I asked this question on Randy's post http://www.seomoz.org/blog/6-changes-every-seo-should-make-before-the-over-optimization-penalty-hits-whiteboard-friday but didn't really get an answer. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | nrv0 -
Alt tag using photoshop
Simple question i think. Ive started adding alt tags to images using the slice tool in photoshop. This takes up a menu were the last part of is alt tag: This way to add alt tags does work right? I used SEO-browser afterwards and couldnt see the tag. There are maybe other better ways to see if your tags are in there ? Dan L.
On-Page Optimization | | danlae0 -
How? Title in Google differs than actual title tag
Just curious on how sites do this? If you search for a video (perhaps Green Lantern Trailer), you'll see the YouTube results in Google/Bing listed as YouTube - Green Lantern Trailer but when you go to the page, the actual title tag displayed is Green Lantern Trailer - YouTube I've seen other sites do this too. I'm just curious what they are doing (I don't see any other title tags in the html)? I thought your title tag is what is displayed in SERP? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | NicB10 -
Tag clouds: good for internal linking and increase of keyword relevant pages?
As Matt Cutts explained, tag clouds are OK if you're not engaged in keyword stuffing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYPX_ZmhLqg) - i.e. if you're not putting in 500 tags. I'm currently creating tags for an online-bookseller; just like Amazon this e-commerce-site has potentially a couple of million books. Tag clouds will be added to each book detail page in order to enrich each of these pages with relevant keywords both for search engines and users (get a quick overview over the main topics of the book; navigate the site and find other books associated with each tag). Each of these book-specific tag clouds will hold up to 50 tags max, typically rather in the range of up to 10-20. From an SEO perspective, my question is twofold: 1. Does the site benefit from these tag clouds by improving the internal linking structure? 2. Does the site benefit from creating lots of additional tag-specific-pages (up to 200k different tags) or can these pages become a problem, as they don't contain a lot of rich content as such but rather lists of books associated with each tag? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | semantopic0