Comments on: Rel=nofollow cheat sheet: when and how you should (not) use it

By: uberVU - social comments

uberVU - social comments — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 08:06:16 +0000

Social comments and analytics for this post…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by matteocrippa: RT Rel=nofollow cheat sheet: when and how (not) to use it http://bit.ly/rel-nofollow @everfluxx…

By: Everfluxx

Everfluxx — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:57:06 +0000

Hi Cullen, I don’t see why you would want to use nofollow on those links, honestly. I can’t think of any good reason for doing so.

By: Cullen

Cullen — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 02:06:20 +0000

I’ve heard some people say that you should use nofollow on your homepage if it’s a running blog and on the links such as “next” and “previous”. Would you mind sharing your thoughts on this?

Thanks for your article.

By: Everfluxx

Everfluxx — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 10:09:20 +0000

Thanks, Andrew. The best practice according to Matt Cutts is to not use nofollow at all on internal links, and let PageRank flow (and Googlebot crawl) freely within your own site. While I agree on the general concept, I would also add: use a "noindex, follow" meta robots tag on pages with no original content (for example, a blog's archive/category/tag pages).

By: Andrew MacPherson

Andrew MacPherson — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 05:28:31 +0000

Someone above asked if there was any authoritative corroboration.

This post pretty much mirrors what Matt Cutts (of Google) said in an seomoz.org interview at SES posted on August 13, 2009. This also predates that one by almost two months… Nice work.

Hey wait… Why am I posting a link to my site here when it’s just going to get nofollowed. I kid. I kid.

By: Everfluxx

Everfluxx — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:57:12 +0000

Hi Alex, the article I quoted is based on several underlying false assumptions (or plain misconceptions), among which the most important is that analysis of on-site contents and internal link structure is the only way search engines have to tell what theme or topic a particular page or site is about.

When I said that so-called “siloing” (i.e., the adoption of a rigid, theme-based internal linking scheme) “can still prove effective in a few cases” (i.e., can have a positive impact on rankings) I was mainly thinking about content-rich sites aiming to rank for long-tail keyphrases in highly competitive sectors, such as some made-for-AdSense sites, whose design typically follows a top-down pyramidal scheme in which a single macro-theme is broken down into several sub-themes, and so on. In siloing, this classic tree-structured information architecture also reflects itself in the internal link structure, so that PageRank is evenly distributed across pages at each level, and pages belonging to different topics are kept far apart from each other (for fear of “theme dilution” [sic]). Although alternative types of linking schemes (such as tag-based linking) are now often preferred over siloing even for MfA sites, I do recognize that a rigid information architecture can help your site’s pages maintain a tightly-focused theme and rank in some niches.

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:59:32 +0000

You said:

“theme siloing” is so 2005 a technique (and a couple of things have changed on the Web in the last four years, you know), although I agree it can still prove effective in a few cases”

Can you elaborate on this? I know that siloing is an old technique and I agree that nofollow is not the right way™ to implement it, but do you really think that is effective in just a few cases? Why?

By: Doug Heil

Doug Heil — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:00:27 +0000

I haven’t used WordPress so I don’t know. Other forum members might know though. I think some places don’t like it much when common sense is being used as you did in your article.

By: Rel=nofollow cheat sheet: when and how you should (not) use it - Net Builders

Rel=nofollow cheat sheet: when and how you should (not) use it - Net Builders — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 21:47:03 +0000

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By: Everfluxx

Everfluxx — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 21:41:09 +0000

Thank you, Andrea.

Doug, thanks for your comment. I actually hoped that this post would get a few more sphinns. Maybe I should try to submit my stories in off-peak hours, so that they can stay longer on top of the “What’s New” stack and gain some momentum.
And no, sorry, I think I haven’t visited the IHelpYou forums in maybe five years… I’ll go check them out! If you have any good pointers to related discussion, please feel free to drop a link here.
BTW, I’m looking for a good WordPress plugin to remove nofollow from at least my own comments: any advice?