Hello, I've recently heard about the <rel "nofollow"> rule. First did I type it right. Second how relevant is it to SEO? Do the big search engines follow this rule? Should I just use it on affiliate links from my site? I'm assuming I wouldn't want to use it for internal links and any links that help my one way links building. Some general advice on SEO in regards to out going links from your own site is what I'm after here. Thanks!
It was google who pretty much introduced this. Yahoo follows it too. Use nofollow on outbound links that are paid adverts, or from user generated content like blog comments etc.
The exact HTML code is <rel="nofollow> Example: <a href="http://www.site.com/page.html" rel="nofollow">Visit My Page</a> You might want to use nofollow attribute when you don't want to add value to the linked sites. Nofollow links doesn't improve PR or SERP position of a linked site. Dofollow (well, links without nofollow rule) outgoing links, which point to 'authority' sites may increase your SERPs value. 'Authority' is an unofficial term for well known, good ranking site in Google, which has additional links shown under the main link in Google. Having a lot of links on one page will descrease 'PR giving power' of each link. There are forum signature links and blog comment links which are usually nofollow. You can check, if links are follow or not with right-click on a page and then 'view source'.