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The best uses of rel=”nofollow” attribute for SEO purposes
20Oct2008 Filed under: Google, SEO Author: Pawel Szulencki
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In previous article i introduced to you what rel=”nofollow” attribute is and what is it purpose. Now it’s time to outline the best uses of this html attribute in your SEO processes.
How can i use rel=”nofollow” attribute in my SEO processes?
I’m glad you’ve asked. Here are some ideas of using the rel=”nofollow” attribute:
- Do use nofollow on unrelated external links on your website.
If you link to other websites that are unrelated to the main content of your website it is a good idea to nofollow those links. That way you will keep the link juice and PageRank on your website. - Do not use nofollow on valuable, interesting and relevant websites you link to.
If you mention about certain website you believe has value to your readers you should reward that website with a dofollow link. Dont be too greedy, link out too, show your appreciation to other websites. Using all nofollow links on all pages of your website is a really bad idea. - Do use nofollow on some internal pages.
Do you have privacy policy on your site? Or maybe terms & conditions page? Are those pages very important to your visitors? Will they ever read it? Well, i don’t think so.
So here is the tip:
Use rel=”nofollow” on all links to the pages that you believe are not bringing any valuable content to your readers (such as policy guidelines) except for the one in your sitemap. Because you have the sitemap, right? That way search engines will be able to find and index your all pages (even those with nofollow attribute on all other pages of your website) from your sitemap, yet still save some internal link juice on separate web pages. - Use nofollow on sponsored links and advertisements.
You can use the rel=”nofollow” attribute on all advertisements you serve on your website to keep the PageRank on your pages. That way search engines will be satisfied and they will not consider your site to be selling ads. - Do use nofollow on blog comments.
Thats what rel=”nofollow” was invented for. To cut off the number of spam comments on blogs. Nowadays the default settings put nofollow on all new comments on most blogging platforms. And although it is a good thing, I would recommend using a different approach.
Your readers that contribute to the discussion should be rewarded in some way. And giving them a dofollow attribute on their comments in a good solution. But before you jump in to change your blog settings listen to me for a second.
There is a great way to reward your readers and keep spam comments off your site with a nofollow attribute. Lucia’s Linky Love is a great WordPress plugin that lets you reward those users that commented on your blog for some number of times (you can set up this number) and whose comments were approved and keep nofollow on all other comments. - Do not use nofollow on pages you want to be excluded from search engines such as Google.
If you have pages you dont want to appear on search engines dont use the rel=”nofollow” attribute. Nofollow will not exclude a page from being crawled and indexed (at least it shouldnt). To exclude web page from indexes use nofollow meta tag.
What are the other ways of using the rel=”nofollow” attribute? Share your best practices.
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Pawel Szulencki is a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Marketing certified specialist who is interested in organic SEO, paid campaigns (PPC) and Social Media Marketing channels. (Read more)
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Paul (1 comments.)
October 20th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
I never use “nofollow”. If I don’t want to share link juice with someone I simply don’t link to him.
Pawel Szulencki (91 comments.)
October 20th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
@Paul: Thats a very good point. If you dont want to share PageRank, dont link out and if you want to link out, do share the link juice. So simple. Thanks Paul.
Jon (1 comments.)
October 23rd, 2008 at 1:06 am
For me/us many of the links we provide are to chambers and city halls & services in our area.
Visitors expect them to be there so we have them, but I want to control my link juice by only omitting nofollow from my resources page. Is this a good idea? Seemed to be at the time.
Pawel Szulencki (91 comments.)
October 23rd, 2008 at 4:13 pm
@Jon: The use of rel=”nofollow” depend on you, the webmaster.
It is a good point. Sometimes you must have some links on your site, because your visitors expect you to have it. It doesnt necessarily mean you should nofollow those links. I think it absolutely depends on each website separately.
Affordable SEO (1 comments.)
October 23rd, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Why bother managing meta tags when you can use the good old robots.txt file to exclude pages? Your sitemap file is also a good way to attribute importance to your pages and suggest crawling rates.
Pawel Szulencki (91 comments.)
October 24th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
@Affordable SEO: but you can not exclude certain links with use of robots.txt on selected pages. Thats why you need to use meta tags, such as nofollow to better control the flow of link juice on pages of your website.
Crawling rates -yes, but that does not mean any links on given page will be excluded, that only means which pages have more importance to you (BWT, in my opinion all pages should have the same crawling rates except for home page and most important pages of your website).
Zobel (1 comments.)
November 13th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
yeah..but it gives you traffic from other blogs…webmasters want to get PR…and thgey’ll use any possibilities
Zobels last blog post..All in a Days Work!