Nofollow internal links

I think you already know I respect your opinion when it comes to SEO but I don't think it's even remotely possible to measure loss of PR or authority when it comes to nofollow on internal links.

I have some nofollow internal links, still ranking pages.

There's absolutely no reason to index/follow some internal pages.

Examples:

• Checkout pages
• Login pages
• Member profiles
• Privacy policy
• DMCA notice page
• etc...

Googles own nofollow example includes an internal page (signin.php).

There's no reason to tell Google to follow an internal link pointing to a noindexed page.

There's some Google double talk in the qoute below but the first part makes sense, the last part contradicts itself.

[source]
I mean seriously, how do you tell Google not to follow a link (bullet list of reasons above) without telling Google not to follow a link?

This is a good point and not one that is immediately obvious. Nofollowed links still consume page rank, introduced by Google to reduce PR sculpting which was popular for a while, which means page rank is lost. I rarely use nofollow for that reason.

I know from my own sites that nofollow on internal links will not drop a page in the SERPs.

Following links to noindex pages doesn't make any sense to me, it doesn't serve any purpose. When I want links crawled I do that from relevant indexed pages/links, sitemap, etc...

For me, If the page isn't in the SERPs, it's telling Google the page isn't any of Googles business, move along, nothing to see here (link to noindex page...).

I wouldn't be surprised If a followed link on a noindex page is even ignored as far as helping to rank other pages on the same domain. That would make for a good SEO test, use a noindex page as a buffer page to see If an orphaned money page ranks.

Nice to see at least one regular here understands the damage nofollow does. Quite funny seeing Yukon tip toe around you Mike when he'd call me SEO noob or something for posting the same info, very funny :-)

Although not ideal SEO wise, if you don't want a page indexed you use noindex not nofollow, but this still costs the link benefit. Basically if you add a nofollow or a dofollow link to a page it costs link benefit, the only question is how the link benefit is used.

With nofollow it's deleted, the PR flow stops (that's really bad SEO wise).
With dofollow it flows normally.
With noindex, follow robots meta tag the link benefit isn't used on the page linked to, but the normal PR flow to other linked pages continue normally.

If you add a robots meta tag that's noindex,follow. This prevents the page from being indexed, but doesn't stop the PR flow through the site. This doesn't stop the link benefit being 'spent' via the link, so ask why do you want a contact page not indexed?

You still waste some SEO link benefit because the noindexed page can't rank for anything, but the links from the noindex page still pass link benefit because they are dofollow. Not SEO ideal, but much better than using nofollow.

Best solution is avoid linking to pages you don't want to waste link benefit on. Do you need a sitewide privacy link for example, would a single home page link to your privacy page be enough?

Or if you have contact, privacy, T&Cs... could you link to one sitewide and the rest from that page: sitewide to contact which links to the rest. This minimizes link benefit flowing through unimportant pages. If you had 5 pages like these, rather than spending 5 sitewide links, you spend one sitewide link. Can you reduce it to only one link from say home (no sitewide links)?

Can you reference the page another way like from within an iFrame? I use iFrames for pages I don't want to waste links on.

Can you add the link as a form button instead? You can style buttons to look like links (I use this for author comment links and WordPress login links) or keep them looking like buttons, does it matter as long as your users can get to a contact page?

David