Is adding 'nofollow' tags part of SEO?

Discussion in 'Search Engine Optimization' started by faiz.khan, May 21, 2009.

  1. #1
    Hi,

    I have heard that adding a "nofollow tag" is helpful for keep the link juice of website. My question is can we include this into SEO or "Is adding 'nofollow' tags part of SEO" ?

    Thanks
    Faiz
     
    faiz.khan, May 21, 2009 IP
  2. NodeGeek

    NodeGeek Banned

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    #2
    The 'nofollow' attribute, tells indexing bots what to index and what to leave.

    So the answer is yes, its part of SEO.

    Hope that helped!
     
    NodeGeek, May 21, 2009 IP
  3. ractors

    ractors Well-Known Member

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    #3
    yes that is part of SEO

    is that ur answer ?
     
    ractors, May 21, 2009 IP
  4. HomeComputerGames

    HomeComputerGames Peon

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    #4
    I believe putting nofollow in for pages such as "terms", "about us", "contact", and so on is common practice.
    Also for other non relevant links
    This keeps the juice flowing to target pages.
     
    HomeComputerGames, May 21, 2009 IP
  5. aquabot

    aquabot Peon

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    #5
    Yes, it is a part of seo, nofollow tag helps to no flow the pr to the pages.
     
    aquabot, May 21, 2009 IP
  6. Agnel

    Agnel Banned

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    #6
    Hello,

    Nofollow which help us to do good SEO. We can put nofollow for unwanted links to avoid link juice passing.

    Thanks
     
    Agnel, May 21, 2009 IP
  7. faiz.khan

    faiz.khan Active Member

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    #7
    Thank you all for your valuable views :)

    Thanks
    Faiz
     
    faiz.khan, May 22, 2009 IP
  8. seo-neon

    seo-neon Peon

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    #8
    This is right, specially if your page is very valuable, this keeps relevant links intact on the page...
    Heres a few links about nofollow on webpages:
    http://www.seomoz.org/blog/sculpting-with-nofollow-works-pretty-darn-well
    http://www.seomoz.org/blog/questions-answers-with-googles-spam-guru
    http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-dangers-of-nofollow
     
    seo-neon, May 22, 2009 IP
  9. JessieJames27

    JessieJames27 Active Member

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    #9
    Not going towards complexities, YES it is part of SEO :D
     
    JessieJames27, May 22, 2009 IP
  10. Brian1970

    Brian1970 Notable Member

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    #10
    The nofollow attribute was invented in 2005 by Matt Cutts head of Google’s spam team and Jason Shellen from Blogger.com. The purpose was to stop blog spam affecting rankings, Lately its used by webmasters to stop the flow of PageRank in order to have higher PageRank on the important pages. How to use nofollow.

    Thanks Brian
     
    Brian1970, May 22, 2009 IP
  11. udayns

    udayns Peon

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    #11
    Yes it is the part of SEO. you can use this "nofollow" for some page that you don't want to index by crowler.
     
    udayns, May 22, 2009 IP
  12. Brian1970

    Brian1970 Notable Member

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    #12
    Are you confusing no follow with no index?

    Thanks Brian
     
    Brian1970, May 22, 2009 IP
  13. deadlychaos25

    deadlychaos25 Well-Known Member

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    #13
    The purpose for using Nofollow is for spam prevention and not just sculpting your PR. We should use Nofollow to prevent link juice or vote to the sites which are spam or banned. If not your site probably have 'Bad Neighborhood'. If your site constitutes vote to spam sites, search engines can consider you as spam too. So its important to stop giving votes and link juice to spam sites. You may use it to stop passing link juice to the pages on your own website too, but its not completely proven strategy.
    To your question, Yes it can be used for SEO but not for improving your sites ranking but preventing your site for getting known as spam or bad neighborhood site.
     
    deadlychaos25, May 22, 2009 IP
  14. pathiks

    pathiks Peon

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    #14
    Yep it is. Plus, it reduces comment spam by a huge margin.
     
    pathiks, May 22, 2009 IP
  15. andrew-gua

    andrew-gua Peon

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    #15
    it is a good way to sculpture pagerank on the more important pages
     
    andrew-gua, May 22, 2009 IP
  16. Canonical

    Canonical Well-Known Member

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    #16
    There are a couple of uses of "nofollow", but in neither case is it a "tag"... It's always used as the value of some HTML attribute. NOFOLLOW is typically used for one of two reasons:

    1) As others mentioned, the rel="nofollow" attribute on an <a> element was originally created to render blog comment spamming as a means of getting backlinks ineffective. If you have FOLLOW links on your sites to "bad neighborhoods" then your site can be penalized by Google. So if you're not 100% positive that the site you're linking to is obeying Google's Webmaster Guidelines then it is suggested that you NOFOLLOW the link. This is a link level nofollow.
    2) Once webmasters learned about the rel="nofollow" attribute on the <a> element and the fact that it prevented the flow of Page Rank at the link level, they began using it to for Page Rank (PR) Sculpting. PR sculpting basically involves adding rel="nofollow" attributes on links to pages that you don't care about ranking (privacy policy, terms and conditions, etc.) so that more Page Rank is passed to the remaining followed links. Again this is a link level nofollow.

    There is no stigma attached to nofollow. You are free to use it as often as you like for any purpose including PR sculpting without fear of penalty from Google. This video by Matt Cutts on nofollow is pretty good.

    Link Level Nofollow
    As mentioned above, nofollow is typically done on a link-by-link basis using the rel="nofollow" attribute on the anchor (<a>) HTML element. For example...

    If URLA has a link to URLB and you want to prevent Page Rank from being passed to URLB then you can add the rel="nofollow" attribute to your <a> element as follows:

    This tells Google to NOT pass Page Rank from URLA to URLB. It also tells the Google NOT to use this link to discover and index URLB. URLB can still be discovered and indexed if the crawler finds other links to URLB which are followed, but it will not be discovered and indexed as a result of a nofollow link.

    Page Level Nofollow
    Another form of nofollow is at the page level. It's done using the <meta name="robots" content="nofollow"> element. This element effects EVERY outbound link on the page where it appears. So inserting the <meta name="robots" content="nofollow"> within the <head> of URLA's HTML tells Google to not pass PR to ANY outbound link on the page. It creates a PR blackhole or PR sink where PR comes into a page and NONE is sent out. Again, it also tells Google not to discover and index any page linked to from the page with the <meta name="robots" content="nofollow">.

    Disclaimer: The above is all in reference to how Google interprets nofollow. The different search engines are slightly different in how they see and react to nofollow.
     
    Canonical, May 22, 2009 IP
  17. TIG2009

    TIG2009 Peon

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    #17
    Using nofollow would def be useful on a "useful links" section or a link exchange page you have so you don't leak out PR....dunno how ethics would play into this though :-/
     
    TIG2009, May 22, 2009 IP
  18. bethennyengland

    bethennyengland Peon

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    #18
    no follow tags is part of SEO; you don't want to lose your juice on Search Engines rankings and that is why everyone is now modifying theirs sites with no follow links.
     
    bethennyengland, May 22, 2009 IP
  19. lindamood1

    lindamood1 Active Member

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    #19
    if u want search engine to follow that link then do follow is useful otherwise no follow is good.
     
    lindamood1, May 22, 2009 IP