Calling All Wordpress/SEO Experts

[TimScott]

Hey Guys,

I'm currently doing the internal linking on my blog, and I ran into a problem. I need to add the nofollow attribute to ceratin pages, on different pages.

So basically when I'm on my home page, I want to no-follow all the contact me, disclaimer, privacy policy pages, etc...

But, since I'm dividing my site into different themes, I also need to make it so I can no-follow to the other theme pages when I'm on a certain theme.

For ex: Lets say I had a sports blog. Well if I'm on the baskeball theme of my site, I want to make it so the basball, football, soccer, themes are all no-follow.

Sorry if this is confusing, I'm trying to explain it the best I can. Anyways, does anyone know of a plugin for wordpress that I can use to add nofollow, on a page by page basis?

[Headfirst]

Would they sections have different categories, i.e., when baseball is active would all of the active pages be in the baseball category?

If it's category or tag based based I could cobble together a plugin to do that. Let me know and shoot me a PM if you need a quote on a custom plugin.

[dburk]

Hi Tim,

Don't do it!

The only reason to use nofollow on your own pages was for PageRank Sculpting. Google changed how they apply PR to nofollow links more than a year and half ago. These changes have eliminated the ability to use nofollow to sculpt PR on your own website. If you use nofollow on links to your own web pages you are simply bleeding off that PR and producing a negative effect.

See this Blog post by Matt Cutts for a lot more information about why you shouldn't do this:

PageRank sculpting

Matt addresses this specific issue in a reply to one of the comments on that post:

Given the way that Google works since this change, I would let PageRank flow even to your privacy and terms-of-service type pages. Even those sorts of pages can be useful for more searches than you would expect.

[TimScott]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi Tim,

Don't do it!

The only reason to use nofollow on your own pages was for PageRank Sculpting. Google changed how they apply PR to nofollow links more than a year and half ago. These changes have eliminated the ability to use nofollow to sculpt PR on your own website. If you use nofollow on links to your own web pages you are simply bleeding off that PR and producing a negative effect.

See this Blog post by Matt Cutts for a lot more information about why you shouldn't do this:

PageRank sculpting

Matt addresses this specific issue in a reply to one of the comments on that post:

I read that article to, but I've also heard the page rank sculpting does still work, so I guess my question would be. IF I don't use nofollow on my different themes, will Google see that as theme bleeding? And won't theme bleeding hold my site back?

[dburk]

Originally Posted by TimScott

I read that article to, but I've also heard the page rank sculpting does still work, so I guess my question would be. IF I don't use nofollow on my different themes, will Google see that as theme bleeding? And won't theme bleeding hold my site back?

Hi Tim,

A couple of years ago you could use nofollow to prevent bleeding off of your PR. Since Google made this change, using nofollow doesn't prevent the bleeding, only the passing of PR and anchor text. The bleed off occurs equally for all outlinks, regardless of whether you use nofollow or not.

So if you use nofollow on your internal links you are just bleeding away your PR into nothingness.

[Steve Crooks]

To be honest, Matt Cutts just added more fuel to the fire by trying to explain why page rank sculpting is a bad idea.

In essence, although page rank and anchor text is not passed through nofollowed links, the page rank that would be allocated for those links will just evaporate into thin air... The truth is, the page rank algo is far more complex than this and the reality is that the page rank will not evaporate in such massive amounts like this. It does dissolve a little by design but not so that half the page rank on a page just disapears completely via nofollow links.

I believe Matt Cutts was trying to use a bit of smoke and mirrors as usual to add to the mystery around Google's secret sauce recipe. Having said that, I don't think strict page rank sculpting is beneficial anyway. I do think that it should be used internally still for privacy pages and pages that are not woth getting indexed highly.

At the end of the day though, it isn't worth worrying about. The main point for nofollow tags is to stop any link love going to links you dont trust (visitor comment's outbound links etc).

Watch this video from Dan Thies which is quite amusing about this whole subject.
Google's "Operation BENDOVER" Exposed – Nofollow & PageRank Sculpting

[dburk]

Hi Steve,

The problem is a lot of folks think that PageRank has far more influence on SERP ranking than it actually does. You would not see that big of shift positively or negatively when you consider that the pages that people nofollow for the purpose of sculpting PageRank usually are not important pages. Going from "almost no influence" to "no influence" would barely be noticeable.

The truth, as it has been conveyed by Cutts, is that you will see only slight, perhaps unnoticeable, differences. And while it may have had a slightly positive effect in the past, it was changed more than a year ago and it will only result in a slightly negative result today.

Google changed their algorithm long before most folks began actively using PR sculpting. They would have never seen any effect from a change because there has been no change since they began.

It's hard to accept that something you have put so much time and effort in, convinced that it was helping, was actually not helping. The nature of dogma is that it persists. This just seems to be SEO dogma.

[joncrx]

Originally Posted by TimScott

Hey Guys,

I'm currently doing the internal linking on my blog, and I ran into a problem. I need to add the nofollow attribute to ceratin pages, on different pages.

So basically when I'm on my home page, I want to no-follow all the contact me, disclaimer, privacy policy pages, etc...

But, since I'm dividing my site into different themes, I also need to make it so I can no-follow to the other theme pages when I'm on a certain theme.

For ex: Lets say I had a sports blog. Well if I'm on the baskeball theme of my site, I want to make it so the basball, football, soccer, themes are all no-follow.

Sorry if this is confusing, I'm trying to explain it the best I can. Anyways, does anyone know of a plugin for wordpress that I can use to add nofollow, on a page by page basis?

I would love to know about such a plugin as well

[TimScott]

So then the only thing I should really worry about, is just making sure all my external links are nofollow? Cause if that the case, I feel like a huge weight has just been lifted.

[bluelambda]

Depending on your needs a combination of the following plugins will probably work for you:

Meta Robots WordPress plugin - Yoast - Tweaking Websites
Technokinetics Page Lists Plus

[jasonmorgan]

So then the only thing I should really worry about, is just making sure all my external links are nofollow? Cause if that the case, I feel like a huge weight has just been lifted.

You don't even need to do that.

Nofollowing your external links is not going to improve your page rank or help your page in any way.

Ignore all of those old page sculpting articles and whatever else you find floating around on the web. It's old outdated information that does not apply anymore. Google shut this down a long time ago.

By nofollowing your external links all you are doing is screwing over the other guy, you are not helping your page in any way by doing this.

The only thing nofollow is really good for is as a spam deterrent in comments.

Page sculpting and getting cute with nofollow will not improve your page.

[WareTime]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi Tim,

Don't do it!

The only reason to use nofollow on your own pages was for PageRank Sculpting. Google changed how they apply PR to nofollow links more than a year and half ago. These changes have eliminated the ability to use nofollow to sculpt PR on your own website. If you use nofollow on links to your own web pages you are simply bleeding off that PR and producing a negative effect.

See this Blog post by Matt Cutts for a lot more information about why you shouldn't do this:

PageRank sculpting

Matt addresses this specific issue in a reply to one of the comments on that post:

Even back in the day pagerank sculpting was a worthless activity.

[TimScott]

OK cool, This as helped clear up alot for me guys, I really appreciate it.

[Intrepreneur]

I will add here and say that all this nofollow business is pointless. I only nofollow a link if it's not SEO friendly. I.E some affiliate links lead to pages that shouldn't/aren't supposed to get indexed.

Also worth noting is that I work with a couple of people who's theories have lead them to nofollow all internal linking other than on the homepage. Their sites still do well in the SERP's so it's another questionable aspect of the nofollow attribute that says "Why Bother".

[ashsmh]

Hey guys, Thanks for this thread. Really helpful.

ashsmh