SEO

Q.:

How can the same people who stuff the meta description tag with comma-separated keywords and hide links on clients sites call themselves SEOs (in 2009)?

A.:

Because that’s what they get paid for.

(No, this is not a joke).

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After Matt Cutts’ long-awaited post on PageRank sculpting, there’s obviously plenty of (controversial) discussion going on about the subject right now, both in the comments to Matt’s post, and on nearly all major SEO blogs and discussion boards. While a good 90% of it is pure crap, there are a few articles and commentaries that do make for an interesting read. If you’re in a hurry and still behind with your reading schedule, make sure you don’t miss these:

• a good summary by Andy Beal;
• Danny Sullivan’s comments on the news and the way it was disclosed to the SEO community;
• Rand Fishkin’s disappointment about, and analysis of, the change;
• Aaron Wall’s rant;
• the inevitable WebmasterWorld thread (well, not exactly a must-read; just some stuff the old-skool SEOs and BBS fans out there will appreciate).

Me, I decided to skip past all the speculation and borderline-paranoid theories that have always arisen (“always” meaning “in the last 200 years or so”) whenever Google decided to change things around (SEO is a universe in perpetual change: deal with it), and give some practical advice on when and how, in my opinion, you should or should not use the “rel=nofollow” attribute. Nothing really new here; just my own little cheat sheet for the do’s and don’ts of nofollow, covering its most common uses and misuses.

Do not use nofollow

On internal links:

• For sculpting your PageRank (i.e., to “save” PR for your other links): ’nuff said.
• For siloing your theme: “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; if that’s your case, however, you’ll want to go for a well-designed site structure in the first place.
• To link to pages whose contents you don’t want to show up in the SERPs: there’s robots.txt (or the robots <meta> tag) for that, sonny.
• When linking to non-canonical URLs that are only slightly different from the canonical form (e.g., HTTPS vs. HTTP, additional querystring parameters, and so on): rel=canonical + an XML sitemap + Google’s über-intelligent canonicalization algos will do the trick.
• For “crawl prioritization”: I’m sure lots of high-profile folks will disagree on this one, but I believe there are just too many better/faster/stronger ways to do it than using nofollow. To name but a few: XML sitemaps, HTML sitemaps, RSS feeds, server headers, and maybe the single two most important factors: site architecture (a.k.a. “classic” PR sculpting ) and content freshness.

On external links:

• When linking to relevant, on-topic content from authoritative sources: that’s the single case when linking out is only going to do you good (notice the links in this post?), so please, stop being afraid of “losing” your ridiculous PageRank and just fishin’ Do It. You’ll thank me later.
• To make a reciprocal link appear uni-directional, or to “hide” a network from Google: come on, they’re supposed to be a bit smarter than that in Mountain View.
• When linking to Google: ’cause they won’t dig that (just kidding).

Do use nofollow

On internal links:

• On links to login/registration/shopping cart/terms&conditions/privacy policy pages: yes, it’s an Officially Accepted Google-Approved Best Practice™ –even if, to further mess things up, Engineer Matt added that he would try not to nofollow the links to TOS and privacy pages, just to get some filler traffic from long-tail queries. Go figure!
• When linking to non-canonical URLs that are radically different from their canonical form and when rel=canonical is not an option (e.g., different domain name): the best choice would obviously be not to link at all or do a 301, but alas, we all know how nasty some CMSs can be, and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” is our first motto.
• When linking to pages with substantially duplicate content, or no substantial content at all: (see above).

On external links:

• On links in user-generated contents (e.g., blog comments), if you just don’t have the time to pass every single link under the microscope, and whenever preemptive censorship moderation is practically impossible: anti-spam plugins like Akismet only catch the more blatant forms of comment spam, and you never know the sneaky shit some people will try to link to from your blog, so go for the nofollow!
• When you don’t completely trust or appreciate the website you’re linking to: whenever you can’t or don’t want to “vouch for” (and lend link juice to) the external page you’re linking to, maybe because you don’t like its “neighbourhood”, or you don’t want your site to be associated with it.
• When linking to spammy pages: I know, rule #2 of white-hat SEO is that you shall never link to spam, ever (guess what rule #1 is?). But you might just happen to want or need to show off on your blog, for all the white-hat SEO world to see, some very negative example: that’s where nofollow comes in really handy.
• On paid links (if you do sell links from your site, that is): better play it safe than risk having your site’s “voting power” nuked forever. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
• On affiliate links: because nobody wants to see that shit in the SERPs, except the affiliate link spammers that we all despise (especially Google).

On any link:

• Don’t abstain from using nofollow just because you fear that, by doing so, you will end up being profiled as an SEO by Google: too late, pal. If you’re reading this blog, chances are that Google has already “profiled” you (D’OH!), so stop whining and grab your badge.

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After last week’s turmoil following Matt Cutts’ announcement at SMX Advanced of an important change in how Google handles the rel=nofollow attribute as far as the distribution of internal PageRank is concerned (I think that’s the longest anchor I’ve ever written ), things in the SEOsphere have calmed down quiet-before-the-storm-like, as everyone is probably waiting for an official follow-up from Google and/or Matt himself at this point.

Fortunately, it seems that Engineer Cutts won’t keep us waiting too long for what is likely to be regarded as his most anticipated post ever, as he recently confirmed via SEOmoz and Twitter that he’s been working on a “PR sculpting blog post”, expected to appear on his blog within the next few days.

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Earlier today, during the Q&A session of a live webmaster chat event hosted by Google Italy, a Search Quality Team member explicitly confirmed what Matt Cutts was heard saying at SMX Advanced day 2 about the “rel=nofollow” attribute and PageRank sculpting: nofollowing links won’t affect the amount of PR that flows to the remaining links.

Here’s a relevant excerpt from the chat transcript, followed by its English translation:

Mr. Everfluxx - 18:37
Q: Ho un sito di 3 pagine: la home page (A) linka due pagine, B e C. Se inserisco un attributo rel=nofollow sul link da A a B, il PageRank della pagina C ne beneficerà, oppure no?
Roberto Lattanzio - 19:00
A: Ciao Everfluxx, pagina C beneficiera' di PR a prescindere dal nofollow sul link verso B
Roberto Lattanzio - 19:02
A: beneficera', chiedo scusa
_________________________________________________________________
Mr. Everfluxx - 19:08
Q: Ciao Roberto, grazie. Riformulo meglio la domanda: il PageRank della pagina C (linkata da A senza rel=nofollow) aumenterà in conseguenza dell'inserimento dell'attributo rel=nofollow sul link A->B?
Roberto Lattanzio - 19:12
A: Ciao, non c'e' conseguenza su C per l'inserimento del nofollow sul link da A verso B, spero si capisca ora

Mr. Everfluxx - 19:12
Q: Sì, ora è chiaro. Grazie.

English translation:

Mr. Everfluxx - 6:37pm
Q: [Let's suppose] I have a three-page site: the home page (A) links to two pages, B and C. If I add a rel=nofollow attribute to the link from A to B, will the PageRank of page C benefit from it?
Roberto Lattanzio - 7:00pm
A: Hi Everfluxx, page C will benefit from PR regardless of the nofollow on the link to B
Roberto Lattanzio - 7:02pm
A: [Corrects a spelling error]
_________________________________________________________________
Mr. Everfluxx - 7:08pm
Q: Hi Roberto, thank you. I'll rephrase my question: will the PageRank of page C (linked from page A without rel=nofollow) increase as a consequence of adding the rel=nofollow to the link from A->B?
Roberto Lattanzio - 7:12pm
A: Hi, there is no consequence for C due to adding a nofollow to the link from A to B, hope that is clearer now

Mr. Everfluxx - 7:12pm
Q: Yes, it's clearer now. Thanks.

So, there you have it: an unofficial yet explicit confirmation coming from a trusted source. Hopefully further and more official confirmations will follow soon about a change which has been raising so many doubts in the SEO community. Stay tuned.

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As Danny Sullivan reported, earlier today at SMX Advanced Matt Cutts dropped a couple of  bombs on the audience. I’ll focus on this one: selectively adding the “rel=nofollow” attribute to a page’s outgoing links (a technique known as PageRank sculpting) is not going to benefit that page’s remaining links as it used to, since Google will not let all the PageRank flow through them, contrary to what Matt himself had suggested in the past, and to what has been long claimed and recognized by some of the best-known SEO consultants –which are now understandably baffled and confused.

I’m pretty sure Matt Cutts will post soon to clarify what that has been causing quite a stir in the SEOsphere since it was first tweeted. I’m also looking forward to reading Michael Gray’s updates and thoughts on this specific subject. As Danny put it,

You can expect Matt will do a blog post to cover this topic more. You can expect lots of people to be analyzing the change, and what it might or might not mean.

Meanwhile, I’d like to share a couple of thoughts.

First of all, the smartest SEOs around have always been quite skeptical about the effectiveness of using the nofollow attribute to manipulate the internal distribution of PageRank, and the overall sustainability of PR sculpting as an optimization technique. Let me quote just two.

Back in March, 2008, Shari Thurow wrote an excellent article (as Danny Sullivan reminds) about nofollow, which sounds ironically premonitory now:

I predict that the nofollow attribute will be abused and the attribute will shortly be devalued. I’m not going to use it to sculpt PageRank. I have never had to because, unlike most SEOs, I try to build sites that have a good information architecture, site navigation, and cross-linking structure from the onset.

On this side of the Atlantic, SEO guru Enrico Altavilla (a.k.a. LowLevel) already knew it all: in fact, exactly three years ago he noted that, since according to its original stochastic definition as a probability distribution on web pages, a page’s PageRank represents the probability that a “random surfer” visits that page by link-following, it would make very little sense to think that Google would not let any amount of PageRank flow through completely ignore the existence of^[1] a visibile, clickable link just because its author deliberately chose to devalue it through nofollow.

Finally, and most importantly, if you have been relying heavily on PageRank sculpting, my advice is to reconsider your strategy and focus your future on-site efforts on what you (hopefully) have full control over: content, site architecture, and link structure. Use nofollow sparingly if you don’t want your PR to evaporate (that’s Matt Cutts, as quoted by Richard Baxter), but also think carefully about what pages to link to from high-PR, high-traffic pages, and how to shape your site’s contents: good design and usability analysis are bulletproof “techniques” guaranteed not to fade away after the next SMX conference. 

Note

Edited in order to reflect more precisely (IMHO) what Enrico wrote in the post I quoted: he actually did not imply that a certain amount of PR could flow even through a nofollowed link (however plausible that assumption may be), but just that the remaining links might not have their random surfer probability score inflated because of the nofollowed link(s) –which is exactly the point in PR sculpting. Sorry for overinterpreting.

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