The debate is raging on the use of rel="nofollow" within your HTML anchor tags.
The NoFollow link attribute (rel=”nofollow”) was originally created to block search engines from following links in blog comments, due to the amount of blog comment spamming.
The theory is that if spammers are spamming in blog comments to get better SEO and anchored links for their sites, NoFollow would render such spam useless. Problem is, spammers still spam.
Now, NoFollow has been adopted beyond blog comments. Wikipedia is now using NoFollow for external links and Google recommends that paid links use a NoFollow attribute.
THE PROS CAMP:
According to StomperNet faculty Leslie Rohde, from his article "Precision Guided PageRank" explains the Rules for Making More Money with PageRank:.
Rule #1: Make More Pages.
As Leslie explains in his original article, links do NOT create PageRank (no matter WHAT you may have heard otherwise). The only thing that creates and holds PageRank is a web page.
See, there's only a finite amount of PageRank available to share among all the pages in Google's search index. Think of Google's index as a tasty pie. (I like apple, but you can think of your own flavor…)
Every single new page that gets added to the index is like cutting the pie into one more slice. Now with billions of webpages, we're talking about some really tiny pieces of pie - but all the slices of the pie still only equal one pie when you add them up.
This is important, because more pages in the index means a bigger chunk of that PageRank Pie is yours to control and profit from.
Here's another way to look at it. Even if you don't know how many total lottery tickets have been sold for a particular drawing, you still know that every lottery ticket you buy improves your chance of winning.
Web pages are the same way. The more you have, the more PageRank you possess. But that doesn't do you any good unless you have ENOUGH PageRank to matter.
But how much is enough? How much PageRank do you need? How many pages do you need to make?
Rule #2: Your competition dictates how much PageRank you need.
That was easy. :) Research your competition - see how many pages they have in the search indexes by using "site:" searches for their domains on both Google and Yahoo.
Going to Yahoo may seem strange since we're trying to rank better on Google, but Google's page-count numbers are known to show as much lower than what the true number of pages Google has indexed.
Yahoo shows a much higher (and more accurate) estimation for the number of pages it has indexed from a particular site. You can use that to "guesstimate" how many Google has, because chances are, if Yahoo has indexed a page, Google has as well.
Once you know how many pages your competition has, you have a target to aim for. It's time to get to work, and the goal is: MORE. Generally speaking, you want to try for more pages than any of your competitors.
But only as many more as you need to beat them - there's no special prize for winning by a mile. 1st place is the best you can do, so aim just above whoever is there now so you don't overwork yourself for no return.
ADVICE: Put some effort into these pages - there's no point in putting trash pages into the index just to have "more" - you want the content on these pages to be WORTH linking to, and WORTH finding in the search engines.
Every page you have is a potential entry point for a possible future customer. Keep that in mind, and you should do fine.
Rule #3: Improve links between your pages.
WARNING: This is NOT about getting external one-way links to your pages. That's great and all, and WILL improve your PageRank, but we want to focus on pages you actually control: your own.
So we know that every page in Google has a little bit of PageRank assigned to it just by existing. But the real MAGIC of Google is that any page's PageRank score can be manipulated using links.
To use that "pie" example again, incoming links will make a page's "slice" of the pie bigger, but any outgoing links will make the "slice" smaller.
(Ok, the way it really works is a bit more complicated than slices of pie, but the metaphor will make you money, even if it won't get you a PhD.)
The bigger a slice is, the better it will rank in the index, and the more links coming into any given page, the bigger that page's slice of the PageRank pie will become.
That's why we wanted to make so many pages in Rule #1.
Once we have all these slices in the big pie, we can actually manipulate the size of each slice by controlling how we link between them.
Here's the right way to do it:
Internally, we make sure that all our least important pages ALWAYS link to our most important, money-making pages. But ALSO make sure that your most important pages NEVER link to your least important pages.
In this way we "sacrifice" the PageRank on unimportant pages only to boost the PageRank where it matters. Once we "fatten up" a page with all that sacrificed PageRank, we want to keep it there.
By now, some of you may be thinking that building a website with all these crazy link structures and limitations might be hard. After all, how is a customer supposed to find your stuff if you link to some stuff and not others?
For example, SOME non-money pages should obviously still be LINKED to, but really shouldn't get any of your precious PageRank. Pages like "Privacy Policy" and "Terms of Service" come to mind.
Obviously, you want every single page on your site to link to those for customer usability. But how can you do that without also "leaking" precious PageRank juice?
Fortunately, this is really easy. You simply use the rel="nofollow" method in the "a" tag on any link that you don't want passing PageRank.
Ex. http://dnnprofessor.com" rel="nofollow">Click Here
That HTML would allow both human visitors and search spiders to follow it to StomperNet.com, however none of the PageRank from the linking page would be passed on to the linked page.
If you do NOTHING ELSE from this report, DO THIS:
Go through every page on your site and "nofollow" any link that doesn't point to a page that can make you money.
Check your menus, your footers, your headers, and you can even nofollow all external links that would make a visitor leave your site.
THE CONS CAMP:
According to Leslie Baker in his article, "13 Reasons Why Nofollow Tags Suck":
The NoFollow link attribute (rel=”nofollow”) was originally created to block search engines from following links in blog comments, due to the amount of blog comment spamming.
The theory is that if spammers are spamming in blog comments to get better SEO and anchored links for their sites, NoFollow would render such spam useless. Problem is, spammers still spam.
Now, NoFollow has been adopted beyond blog comments. Wikipedia is now using NoFollow for external links and Google recommends that paid links use a NoFollow attribute.
Here are his 13 reasons why NoFollow is a failure.
1. NoFollow = NoWorky. Using NoFollow in blog comments, the original intent of the tag, does nothing to discourage comment spammers. Using other anti-spamming tools such as question, math and plugins such as Akismet and SpamKarma for Wordpress is much more effective.
2. If a blogger moderates comments, there is no need for a NoFollow attribute. “Everyone who passes a human inspection should get the link love.”
3. Since the use of NoFollow in comments on Wordpress blogs is default, many bloggers do not even realize they are using NoFollow.
4. NoFollow=NoValue. Why use NoFollow on sites, text ads, and blogs if there is no value in terms of search engine indexing? What if they made the Yahoo! directory nofollow? Would anyone continue to purchase listings? Obviously the value of that directory would be zero of nofollow tags were applied to the listings.
5. Linking to someone with a NoFollow attribute is a sign of not trusting them. It’s like reaching to shake someone’s hand, but stopping to put on a pair of latex gloves.
6. No Follow sucks because the search engines (particularly Google) can’t make up their mind about when and how it should be used, thus causing confusion among inexperienced webmasters who do STUPID things like No Follow ALL outgoing links from their website to “protect the site from page rank leakage” and other silly ideas.
7. No-follow is a poor search engine’s solution to conceal its own failure to rank websites appropriately. What’s next, No-linking?
Search engines should be able to develop a method of identifying and devaluing links to spam sites which were placed in blog comments. Why should everyone who posts in blog comments suffer from the actions of a greedy few spammers.
8. Commenting on a blog post is the same as adding more relevant to that blog post. A thought provoking one sentence post can lead to pages of comments. If someone takes the time to help build your site’s content via posting comments, it is professional courtesy to give them some link love.
9. Putting NoFollow on Wikipedia is like putting Grey Poupon on a Spam sandwich.(Or like putting perfume on a pig.)
Taking Wikipedia to task over nofollow is fun but ultimately you need to take them to task for why they implemented nofollow in the first place - that is, to prevent spam. Which in turn means that the way Wikipedia was setup was flawed because it opened itself up to easy spamming.
Therefore, instead of just letting Wikipedia take the easy way out (because ultimately it’s an important resource for many people and replacing it would be tough), they should look at ways into changing their systems so they are not as open to spamming any more.
10. Text link advertisements which use a NoFollow make no sense. If you want to spread your Google juice, why use a link-condom?
11. Even Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg says NoFollow was a failure; “In theory this should work perfectly, but in practice although all major blogging tools did this two years ago and comment and trackback spam is still 100 times worse now. In hindsight, I don’t think nofollow had much of an effect, though I’m still glad we tried it.”
12. Search Engines follow NoFollow. Yahoo has been known to count NoFollow links as backlinks in SiteExplorer. So, if you’re goal in comment spamming to to build backlinks, which builds your site’s value in terms of selling advertising (TLA, ReviewMe, SEOmoz’s PageStrength and other metrics programs use Yahoo Backlinks as valued criteria), NoFollow is useless.
13. NoFollow Sucks. Check It!
Buck's Opinion:
It is my opinion that a compromise can be reached when using rel="nofollow". It makes sense that you want your money making pages to have all the page rank that you can gather. With DotNetNuke, I have been manually creating my Terms of Use and Privacy Statement pages. I then add a rel="nofollow" attribute to the anchor tags of these pages in my skins.
I have also scoured my site HTML code and added rel="nofollow" to many of my hard-coded links that I deemed as "non money making" pages.
Yet, there are many areas of DotNetNuke that you cannot make this change to without manipulating the core code. The login, register, and menu come to mind.
Many of you have requested that the DNN Professor Business Directory application embrace the rel="noFollow" attribute and I have accommodated you in the latest version. I did so because this template code can be easily edited for those who do not want to use the attribute.
But, it does bring up the issue of linking to someone with a NoFollow attribute is a sign of not trusting them.
What is your opinion?
Buck