About us, Contact & Privacy pages

by cbnet
52 replies
  • SEO
  • |
Should one dis-allow the search engines to index Abou us, Contact and Privacy pages by using robot.txt

In fact I don't know how to create robot.txt file. Should I ignore or have one robot.txt file.
#contact #pages #privacy
  • Profile picture of the author DollarGOD
    You can just make them nofollow and allow to index.

    For robots.txt:
    https://support.google.com/webmaster...er/40361?hl=en
    Where to place the robots.txt file in your website - meta tags seo search engines
    "The robots.txt file is placed in your www or public_html directory."

    Just make new notepad document named like that and upload it. You can use it to blog access to some folders if you need to.
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by DollarGOD View Post

      You can just make them nofollow and allow to index.

      I would never make any kind of internal links nofollow. Ever.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    It doesn't matter If an internal link is nofollow, it's not like Google is going to punish a site.

    No point in having a followed internal link pointing at pages you don't want indexed (noindex page). Just depends on your own situation.

    No reason to care about pages like Privacy Policy, Login, Checkout or similar pages when it comes to SEO.
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      It doesn't matter If an internal link is nofollow, it's not like Google is going to punish a site.

      No point in having a followed internal link pointing at pages you don't want indexed (noindex page). Just depends on your own situation.
      It has nothing to do with Google punishing a site. If you nofollow an internal link, you are bleeding out link juice. That page still has a navigation menu with other internal links. You want to keep the link juice flowing throughout the site, not spilling into a black hole.
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

        It has nothing to do with Google punishing a site. If you nofollow an internal link, you are bleeding out link juice. That page still has a navigation menu with other internal links. You want to keep the link juice flowing throughout the site, not spilling into a black hole.
        Sorry, that doesn't make any sense, at least not for any site I own that has multiple pages (100's of pages). There's no bleeding anything.

        It's not a big deal either way but there's no black hole, Googlebot simply goes to the next link on the page If it finds a nofollow link, repeat... If your looking to hoard PR use pages you want indexed.

        Each site doesn't have the same situation, example, it wouldn't make sense to block a Contact page for a local service site but I don't have a problem blocking my Contact pages on my download sites because my traffic doesn't care about that page. I still have the page just in case but I wouldn't have any need to have that page indexed & I have better traffic pages for hoarding PR.

        I think OP is talking about a handful of pages that most traffic would never want to see in the SERPs.
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        • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
          Let's use a contact page as an example.

          Likely a link to that page is going to appear in the navigation, header, or footer of every page. If you nofollow that link, that means every page is bleeding out that link juice. It doesn't get divided up among the remaining links.

          Now your contact page is siphoning off link juice from every page on your site and not redistributing it back throughout the site.

          There is zero reason to nofollow an internal link.
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          • Profile picture of the author yukon
            Banned
            Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

            Let's use a contact page as an example.

            Likely a link to that page is going to appear in the navigation, header, or footer of every page. If you nofollow that link, that means every page is bleeding out that link juice. It doesn't get divided up among the remaining links.

            Now your contact page is siphoning off link juice from every page on your site and not redistributing it back throughout the site.

            There is zero reason to nofollow an internal link.
            I completely disagree.

            There's no bleeding, black holes or whatever you want to call it. I'm talking about nofollowing links pointing at noindex pages, pages that majority of traffic doesn't care about. There's no way a Contact page is siphoning PR from a nofollow link.

            I already pointed out legit reasons to nofollow some internal links, again things like eCommerce Checkout pages, TOS, etc.... Those are page types that junk up things like Google Sitelinks, sure you can remove them from WMT but it's easier to control those pages on your own host. No point in creating problems like that when they can be stopped on the host first.

            Anyways, there's legit reasons, just depends on what the webmaster is trying to accomplish.
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            • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
              If you noindex a page, linkjuice still flows to that page and back out. If you noindex, nofollow a page, the linkjuice is lost.

              Let's pretend all links are equal. They are not, but it will make this discussion easier. So all links are equal.

              If a page has 10 outgoing links on it (makes no difference if they are external or internal), the linkjuice that gets passed by each link is x/10, where x is the total linkjuice the page can pass on.

              Now if you nofollow one of those links, it doesn't change the linkjuice passed on by each link to x/9 (that was the old PR sculpting days).

              It is still x/10, however, that linkjuice flowing from that one nofollow link is just lost. It does not get passed on to anywhere. That is the black hole I am talking about.

              So if you nofollow the link to your contact page, the juice getting passed on is just lost. If you leave it as a normal link (even if it is a noindex page), the linkjuice flows into that page and will flow back out through any links that are on that page.
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              • Profile picture of the author yukon
                Banned
                Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

                If you noindex a page, linkjuice still flows to that page and back out. If you noindex, nofollow a page, the linkjuice is lost.
                Nofollow on a link & nofollow on a page are completely different things. I never suggested a meta nofollow on any pages. A page can be noindexed without a meta nofollow.
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                • Profile picture of the author paulgl
                  Let me add another wrinkle. Sometimes I just want the contact page
                  of a site. I do a search for that. Or, in some cases, the SERPs show
                  the subpages of the site, and I click on contact.

                  No reason to not want your contact page indexed. I can't think that
                  google google is stupid enough to show a contact page, unless it's
                  valuable to the searcher. Ditto privacy policy.

                  I'm sure a lot of people searched for target's privacy policy. Sure
                  enough, it's indexed.

                  You want to tell google that your contact page is an untrusted link?

                  Paul
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                • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
                  Originally Posted by yukon View Post

                  Nofollow on a link & nofollow on a page are completely different things. I never suggested a meta nofollow on any pages. A page can be noindexed without a meta nofollow.
                  I meant nofollow as far as the links pointing to the page. I should have been more clear on that.

                  Internal nofollow links bleed PageRank. That has been the case since 2009 when Google changed how they treated nofollow links. It is just a horrible idea to nofollow internal links.

                  As far as noindexing pages, I almost never would. As Paul pointed out, for a real business, people might search for a contact page or even, in rare cases, a privacy policy. When it comes to "junking up the SERPs" as you put it, I'll gladly junk it up if it means I have more pages ranking on page one. The more real estate I have the better.

                  The only situation I can think of where I might noindex something like a contact page is if was outranking a page I was targeting for a significant keyword. It's very rare that something like that happens, but I have seen it.
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              • Profile picture of the author AlphaWarrior
                Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

                If you noindex a page, linkjuice still flows to that page and back out. If you noindex, nofollow a page, the linkjuice is lost.

                Let's pretend all links are equal. They are not, but it will make this discussion easier. So all links are equal.

                If a page has 10 outgoing links on it (makes no difference if they are external or internal), the linkjuice that gets passed by each link is x/10, where x is the total linkjuice the page can pass on.

                Now if you nofollow one of those links, it doesn't change the linkjuice passed on by each link to x/9 (that was the old PR sculpting days).

                It is still x/10, however, that linkjuice flowing from that one nofollow link is just lost. It does not get passed on to anywhere. That is the black hole I am talking about.

                So if you nofollow the link to your contact page, the juice getting passed on is just lost. If you leave it as a normal link (even if it is a noindex page), the linkjuice flows into that page and will flow back out through any links that are on that page.
                You and the others know a lot more than I do, but, if this is true, why do they have/allow nofollow links?
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                • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
                  Originally Posted by AlphaWarrior View Post

                  You and the others know a lot more than I do, but, if this is true, why do they have/allow nofollow links?
                  They were abused by IM'ers who used nofollow to sculpt PR to pages they wanted. Google responded by changing how they treat nofollow links.

                  Now nofollow links should only be used for links to sites that you do not trust or paid ads.
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                  • Profile picture of the author yukon
                    Banned
                    Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

                    They were abused by IM'ers who used nofollow to sculpt PR to pages they wanted. Google responded by changing how they treat nofollow links.

                    Now nofollow links should only be used for links to sites that you do not trust or paid ads.
                    I can't believe your telling people this stuff. C'mon, Google responded?

                    If link sculpting doesn't work why are you still building backlinks? Maybe because it still works, right.

                    [sigh...]
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                    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
                      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

                      I can't believe your telling people this stuff. C'mon, Google responded?

                      If link sculpting doesn't work why are you still building backlinks? Maybe because it still works, right.

                      [sigh...]
                      PageRank sculpting and building backlinks are two entirely different things. I'm not even sure why you would bring up link building in this discussion.
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                      • Profile picture of the author yukon
                        Banned
                        Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

                        PageRank sculpting and building backlinks are two entirely different things. I'm not even sure why you would bring up link building in this discussion.
                        I thought we was talking nofollow links. Internal/external links are both link sculpting otherwise nobody would be buying followed PR links.
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  • Profile picture of the author PBScott
    Don't NoFollow it.

    People link to the about us page quite a bit, and you would be wasting all the PR juice. Not to mention when people try and search for your company info, they would probably end up getting results from elsewhere.
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  • Profile picture of the author Electrical
    Originally Posted by cbnet View Post

    Should one dis-allow the search engines to index Abou us, Contact and Privacy pages by using robot.txt

    In fact I don't know how to create robot.txt file. Should I ignore or have one robot.txt file.
    Why would someone not want a search engine to index their About Us, Contact, or Privacy Policy pages?

    I thought having those pages was a good thing and if anything they may add a bit of authority and help with SEO?
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Electrical View Post

      Why would someone not want a search engine to index their About Us, Contact, or Privacy Policy pages?
      ...because the majority of traffic doesn't use those pages.

      How many TOS/About/Contact pages have you read today? See my point?
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      • Profile picture of the author Electrical
        Originally Posted by yukon View Post

        ...because the majority of traffic doesn't use those pages.

        How many TOS/About/Contact pages have you read today? See my point?
        Then those pages shouldn't come up high in the search rankings.

        No one wants to read them, they have little to no external links, so Google won't put them high in the rankings. That's what they keep talking about, good content and backlinks are all that really matters.

        It still seems like having those pages indexed is important since they could help with SEO.
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        • Profile picture of the author yukon
          Banned
          Originally Posted by Electrical View Post

          Then those pages shouldn't come up high in the search rankings.

          No one wants to read them, they have little to no external links, so Google won't put them high in the rankings. That's what they keep talking about, good content and backlinks are all that really matters.

          It still seems like having those pages indexed is important since they could help with SEO.
          That's not how internal pages work.

          Site structure can easily pass PR to pages that traffic doesn't care about.

          Example this URL structure below is going to pass strong PR to the Contact page (assumes the Home page has PR to pass (usually one of the strongest pages on the domain)):
          • hxxp://domain.com/contact.html



          This URL structure below is going to pass very little If any PR (assumes /company/ doesn't have any PR):
          • hxxp://domain.com/en/company/contact.html


          Most Contact pages are nested one level deep from the Home page, so they're passing PR (If the link is followed), they'll rank in Google SERPs. If traffic doesn't mostly care about the Contact page (example) there's no reason to junk up the SERPs (ex: Sitelinks).

          It doesn't make sense to waste PR on a page that nobody cares about when that same PR can be used for a money page. Money pages can rank other internal money pages.

          [edit]
          Man this forum is slow, worse than dialup... it takes forever to post.
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      • Profile picture of the author deezn
        Originally Posted by yukon View Post

        ...because the majority of traffic doesn't use those pages.

        How many TOS/About/Contact pages have you read today? See my point?
        TOS, no. But about and contact, a lot!
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  • Profile picture of the author SEODollz
    Just my 2 cents... nothing to be gained by no following an internal link. The other links on the page don't get any extra juice by no-following certain links. Plus it looks like you are trying to control the PR flow which while that doesn't work any more will look fishy in case of a manual review. I don't want anyone looking at my page to think "ah an SEO built this."

    "Civilian" webmasters wouldn't bother and there is nothing to be gained as far as "saving PR" so why would I no follow? Seems like extra work and a big flag waving that I do SEO. If I don't think something should be in the SERPs I noindex instead. still can't save PR that way but keeps the serps tidier if that is a concern.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by SEODollz View Post

      Just my 2 cents... nothing to be gained by no following an internal link. The other links on the page don't get any extra juice by no-following certain links. Plus it looks like you are trying to control the PR flow which while that doesn't work any more will look fishy in case of a manual review. I don't want anyone looking at my page to think "ah an SEO built this."
      So nofollow all your external backlinks then come back in a month & let us know how that's working out. No big deal right. External is no different than internal links when it comes to a nofollow tag.

      ...or feel free to rank useless pages in the SERPs (Checkout, TOS, etc...).







      Originally Posted by SEODollz View Post

      "Civilian" webmasters wouldn't bother and there is nothing to be gained as far as "saving PR" so why would I no follow? Seems like extra work and a big flag waving that I do SEO. If I don't think something should be in the SERPs I noindex instead. still can't save PR that way but keeps the serps tidier if that is a concern.
      Trust me average webmasters don't have a problem butchering their sites SEO. I've found countless silly things people PM to me like pages they've unwittingly noindexed while at the same time they're busy trying to rank the same page. I would expect you to know that since you sell SEO services.

      Good grief OP is talking about 3 internal pages here, not 83% of a 5,000 page site.

      Unbelievable people selling SEO are so paranoid over something as trivial as 3 (or however many) nofollowed internal links.
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      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Originally Posted by yukon View Post

        Unbelievable people selling SEO are so paranoid over something as trivial as 3 (or however many) nofollowed internal links.
        We are not talking about 3 trivial links. For something like a contact page, you are usually talking about a link on every single page of the site. That is not something you want to F up by adding a useless nofollow tag to.
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        • Profile picture of the author yukon
          Banned
          Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

          We are not talking about 3 trivial links. For something like a contact page, you are usually talking about a link on every single page of the site. That is not something you want to F up by adding a useless nofollow tag to.
          I guess I should have said links to 3 pages, so what it's still trivial (internal nofollow).
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  • Profile picture of the author cbnet
    Are there any cons if the About, Privacy Policy and Contact pages are indexed?
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  • Profile picture of the author Kevin Maguire
    Someone report Yukons accounts been hacked by someone born after 2009.

    It doesn't matter whether you no-follow, no-index or send those links to another planet. If there's links on a page, they're each getting an equal split of the PR.

    Google PR sculpting was killed in 2009.

    So what happens when you have a page with “ten PageRank points” and ten outgoing links, and five of those links are nofollowed? Let’s leave aside the decay factor to focus on the core part of the question.

    Originally, the five links without nofollow would have flowed two points of PageRank each (in essence, the nofollowed links didn’t count toward the denominator when dividing PageRank by the outdegree of the page).

    More than a year ago, Google changed how the PageRank flows so that the five links without nofollow would flow one point of PageRank each.
    Source
    PageRank sculpting

    Apart from what Google says, in my personal preference, I do like to bury such pages as low as possible on-page. Normally in the footer and giving the about us page priority in sub-folders.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Kevin Maguire View Post

      Google PR sculpting was killed in 2009.
      Lol, don't believe everything you read.

      Sculpting is alive & well.
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  • Profile picture of the author SEODollz
    I don't really no follow external links either for that matter. I figure if I need to no follow the link to feel good about having it on my site it probably shouldn't be on my site.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by SEODollz View Post

      I don't really no follow external links either for that matter. I figure if I need to no follow the link to feel good about having it on my site it probably shouldn't be on my site.
      Why not nofollow, you acted like it didn't matter either way in your earlier post?

      Carry on ranking pages traffic doesn't care about... What are you going to do with that PR4 TOS page?
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      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Originally Posted by yukon View Post

        Why not nofollow, you acted like it didn't matter in your earlier post?

        Carry on ranking pages traffic doesn't care about... What are you going to do with that PR4 TOS page?
        That is just a bit moronic. I'll gladly take multiple ranked pages in a SERP. It's like real estate. I want as much page one real estate as I can get.

        As long as my main page is ranking too, I'd be thrilled if my contact page, TOS, page, or any other damn page is ranking with it.

        I'm sorry, but you are feeding people some really bad information in this thread. Adding nofollow to internal links is weakening a site. Period.

        Take your snide comment about a PR 4 TOS page for example. So what happens if you change all the internal links pointing to that page to nofollow? You don't strengthen the other links on the site. Now you have a PR 0 TOS page and the linkjuice that would be making it a PR 4 is just lost. The linkjuice does not get redistributed elsewhere. It is now lost.

        At least in the case of a PR 4 TOS page you have the linkjuice flowing back through internal pages through links that show up on that page.
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        • Profile picture of the author yukon
          Banned
          Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

          That is just a bit moronic. I'll gladly take multiple ranked pages in a SERP. It's like real estate. I want as much page one real estate as I can get.
          Agreed, ranking useless pages is moronic.

          I never said to not rank multiple pages, I pointed out ranking useless pages. Keep ranking TOS, etc..., or any other useless pages while forcing traffic to jump through more links to find a sales page. I'll stick with ranking sales pages.

          Matter of fact I've preached ranking multiple pages per keyword many times on this forum.
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  • Profile picture of the author godoveryou
    Document PR/Links* = X
    X(Buffer Value**) = Y
    Y= Pagerank Passed Per Link

    *Nofollowed links are dropped out of the link graph during this calculation.
    **Buffer Value is always greater than 1

    Yukon has been right. Mike, I appreciate your fight. I can see where you are coming from but you've mostly been incorrect. A nofollow link makes every other link on that specific document stronger.

    The target document of that link is weaker as a result, and the external links on that specific document are weakened as a result.

    Since most TOS/Contact pages don't contain many links, the domain strength is increased. The effect on primary navigation links from the TOS/Contact page is not greatly affected do to the number of other documents on the domain that share the same primary navigation.
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    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      Originally Posted by godoveryou View Post

      Document PR/Links* = X
      X(Buffer Value**) = Y
      Y= Pagerank Passed Per Link

      *Nofollowed links are dropped out of the link graph during this calculation.
      **Buffer Value is always greater than 1
      Not sure what you are getting at. But anyway, the bottom line is that google
      now divides PR with the number of links on a page, nofollow or not. This seems
      to get muddled here. Example, you have 10 links, 5 regular, 5 nofollow. The
      PR to the regular links, in theory, now is split 10 ways. It used to be only
      5 ways. This was indeed done to stop the nonsense of nofollow.

      Nofollow has morphed as google has had to deal with people who just did
      not get what nofollow was to be used for.

      It has become a rather useless tag, and google knows it. But they can at least
      penalize people, if you will, by splitting PR by the number of total links on a page,
      regardless of nofollow. Notice it does not say they pass PR to nofollow links.

      But nofollow links are now part of the equation (subtracting, actually) of
      PR given to regular links.

      If you are into such things, having nofollow links waters down the PR passed
      to regular links.

      Paul
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  • Profile picture of the author SEODollz
    I only care about other webmasters no-following the links to my site on their site. And if they are doing that it's for one of two reasons pretty much:

    #1 - It's a big user generated content site that are no following links that users contribute. Not the kind of place I want a link from most times though I'll make an exception if there is a good chance I can generate traffic with that link.

    #2 - It's a webmaster that doesn't understand how no-follow isn't helping him horde link juice.

    There are very few reasons I could think of to no follow a link on a site period these days. It might make sense for huge user generated content sites where you don't want to let people just dropping tons of spam links etc but for most websites doesn't make sense.

    Especially it doesn't make sense if it's not a thirdparty adding a link to my site (ie links in comments etc) but actually the site owner putting a link purposely on the site. I don't save any PR by no following it and if I'm doing it as a way to tell G "I don't endorse this site" then maybe I need to think twice about why I am putting that link on my site in the first place.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      I am more in line with Dollz - "nothing gained". I neither hold it hurts you or helps in fact. to me its just pointless and inconsequential

      GOY sorry you can't say everything MikeF has said is wrong

      Heres a good link to see where we are at

      Google's Matt Cutts: NoFollow Attributes On Internal Links Don't Hurt But Generally Don't Do It

      So its ambiguous at best and Mike is right about sculpting. webmasters did not give it up because google told them too. they stopped because it either doesn't work or as SD indicated it serves no useful function.

      Now if you are into some weak ahem ...xrumer stuff where you have to preserve .000003 pagerank juice you got in your wheel from your 3,013rd tier when then maybe....(LOl....I am just joking around with you Goy)

      Those who would say we can't trust google on this - sorry theres really no good way of testing this with any specificity. Adding to the uncertainty seems to be the fact that positions for the links on a page matter. Not knowing the algo we don't know where a link is placed by itself does not affect the juice it conveys so any test run may be flawed . Header links though definitely convey more link juice than footer links. I won't even entertain an argument on that because I have built too many networks where that is the case.

      I'll put it in my beloved MA bluntness that you all have come to know and love - If you have to worry about some footer contact and about us links you need to go out and learn or buy some better link building techniques because the time would be faaaaar better spent link building than worrying about nofollowing them. Its practically inconsequential
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  • Profile picture of the author godoveryou
    Maybe, yes... perhaps...

    No.

    Water.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      Originally Posted by godoveryou View Post

      Okay, that's fine.

      I just kicked some girls out
      I know man sisters can be a drag.

      My only comment will be this. On a 300,000+ document domain, nofollowing 300,000 links does make a difference. Maybe if we are talking about some chicken shit 300 page domain it might not matter as much. That's fine...
      I'm impressed. where did you find that much PLR?

      On the serious side when did page count matter a flying leap as to whether a site is good. I never worked on a chicken manure site, Didn't even know that was a thing since -

      Cows have more output.

      If that were my thing I'd go with volume although with chickens laying so many eggs I can see the scalabilty angle (but no milk so.....meh...two business ventures beat one).
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      • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
        and then he changes his post while I was waiting for the rim shot

        Can't have no fun round this place No more. might as well go to where the big spenders are

        like DP

        .......or that SEOs unite place
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    BTW, Warrior Forum has millions of nofollow internal links. Every single profile name/link above each users avatar in forum threads (including this thread) is a nofollow internal link. No link sculpting Google slaps going on here.
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      BTW, Warrior Forum has millions of nofollow internal links. Every single profile name/link above each users avatar in forum threads (including this thread) is a nofollow internal link. No link sculpting Google slaps going on here.
      You know that is a horrible example. WF has nofollow links because of spammers. It's not because of some SEO value.

      Nobody said there are Google slaps for PR sculpting. I said it doesn't work. Big difference.

      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      Agreed, ranking useless pages is moronic.

      I never said to not rank multiple pages, I pointed out ranking useless pages. Keep ranking TOS, etc..., or any other useless pages while forcing traffic to jump through more links to find a sales page. I'll stick with ranking sales pages.

      Matter of fact I've preached ranking multiple pages per keyword many times on this forum.
      If you don't want to rank a page, you do that by noindexing the page, not by changing all the links to it to nofollow. Not to mention, the chance of any of those type of pages for ranking for anything other than your brand name is slim to none.

      Take a look at real world examples...

      TechCrunch. They are not using nofollow on internal links.
      Amazon. Nope not there either.
      Mashable? None there either.
      Target? Nope.

      What about Wikipedia... one of the Gold Standards to many in SEO... surely they must be nofollowing contact pages and stuff like that, right? Nope, not there either. The only thing they are nofollowing are external links.

      The only type of PR sculpting that can work is if you include links in a script that Google does not see. Even that is hard to do these days as Google has gotten pretty good at parsing scripts.
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      • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
        Yuke let me get you off Mike's back and refocus your attention.

        Moz RULES and Fishkin is the best SEO EV......VEEERRR

        yep....that should do it
        Signature

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        • Profile picture of the author yukon
          Banned
          Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

          Moz RULES and Fishkin is the best SEO EV......VEEER
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

        You know that is a horrible example. WF has nofollow links because of spammers. It's not because of some SEO value.

        Nobody said there are Google slaps for PR sculpting. I said it doesn't work. Big difference.



        If you don't want to rank a page, you do that by noindexing the page, not by changing all the links to it to nofollow. Not to mention, the chance of any of those type of pages for ranking for anything other than your brand name is slim to none.

        Take a look at real world examples...

        TechCrunch. They are not using nofollow on internal links.
        Amazon. Nope not there either.
        Mashable? None there either.
        Target? Nope.

        What about Wikipedia... one of the Gold Standards to many in SEO... surely they must be nofollowing contact pages and stuff like that, right? Nope, not there either. The only thing they are nofollowing are external links.

        The only type of PR sculpting that can work is if you include links in a script that Google does not see. Even that is hard to do these days as Google has gotten pretty good at parsing scripts.
        Thanks, I know how to remove a page from the SERPs.

        No reason to point PR links at a noindexed page.

        I guess Warrior Forum wasn't a good enough real world example. Oh well..., funny how folks are arguing a case on a site that proves their theory wrong.
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        • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
          Originally Posted by yukon View Post

          No reason to point PR links at a noindexed page.
          Nofollow bleeds the link juice out, so yes there is plenty of reason to do so. Nofollow does not perserve the linkjuice in the other links on the page.

          Originally Posted by yukon View Post

          I guess Warrior Forum wasn't a good enough real world example. Oh well..., funny how folks are arguing a case on a site that proves their theory wrong.
          The Warrior Forum example proves nothing.

          Warrior Forum ranks 48th for "internet marketing". Yes, the biggest internet marketing forum on the planet barely ranks in the top 50 for its primary keyword and is nowhere in the top 100 for "affiliate marketing".

          By all means, follow their example.

          (By the way, there are not using nofollow on their terms of use, privacy, or DMCA notice links.)

          And I guess that Wikipedia was not a good enough example that good SEOs would never do such a thing. :rolleyes:
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        • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
          Hold on

          Was WF always no followed links? I don't think so since i recall getting a PR2 on page with nothing else but WF pointing at it (at least so I thought).
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          • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
            Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

            Hold on

            Was WF always no followed links? I don't think so since i recall getting a PR2 on page with nothing else but WF pointing at it (at least so I thought).
            It was a change made last year. I believe to cut down on the signature spammers.
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            • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
              Exactly so Yuke's point is dead. I saw no difference in rankings when WF made the switch.
              Signature

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  • Profile picture of the author PBScott
    If you want to PR sculpt you can still do it using obfuscated javascript links. they are completely unreadable by the search engines,. However Google might think of it as cloaking, I did some sculpting with them for a couple of years ago to not waste any PR juice on my about us pages and a few others, but do not anymore, for fear of being accidentally penalized though I did not have any penalties for those couple of years.

    Take this:
    Code:
    
    <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript"> 
    document.write('<a href="http://www.mysite.com">My site</a>') 
    </script>  
    
    Put it into this:
    http://www.daftlogic.com/projects-on...obfuscator.htm
    Get
    Code:
     
    eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d){e=function(c){return c.toString(36)};if(!''.replace(/^/,String)){while(c--){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return d[e]}];e=function(){return'w+'};c=1};while(c--){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new RegExp('b'+e(c)+'b','g'),k[c]) } }return p}('<0 5="6"4="3/1">2.7(\'<a c="8://f.e.d">9 b</a>\')</0>',16,16,'script|javascript|document|text|type|language|JavaScript|write|http|My||site|href|com|mysite|www'.split('|'),0,{}))
    
    
    Dont forget to nest the output:

    Code:
    <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
     
    eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d){e=function(c){return  c.toString(36)};if(!''.replace(/^/,String)){while(c--){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return   d[e]}];e=function(){return'w+'};c=1};while(c--){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new  RegExp('b'+e(c)+'b','g'),k[c]) } }return p}('<0  5="6"4="3/1">2.7(\'<a c="8://f.e.d">9  b</a>\')</0>',16,16,'script|javascript|document|text|type|language|JavaScript|write|http|My||site|href|com|mysite|www'.split('|'),0,{}))
    </script>
    People using the website will see a normal dofollow link, but search engines will not see anything.

    However again, I would not block the about us page. If you really need to do it, make the page itself noindex, follow. then the PR can at least go somewhere. A nofollow link will do nothing to help you.
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    If you don't look at this => Really Funny Shirts <= you missed something in life

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  • Profile picture of the author hostdare
    If you don't want to include about us ,privacy and contact us page then use robot.txt file where you can disallow pages so that Google will not crawl those pages
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  • Why would you want to block the About us, Contact and Privacy pages from getting crawled and indexed? These pages can also bring in targeted traffic to your site.
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