I need Wordpress SEO help with nofollow pages & tags

[Seleno]

Hi There,


I have a Wordpress blog with a page rank of 2. I've nofollowed the categories and I need help. If you don't mind I have some questions about Wordpress SEO.


1- Is it better to add nofollow for contact-us and about-me pages?


2- Is it good to block them by robots.txt by disallow? Is this the same as nofollow?


3- I have about 6 tags for every post, is it better to add nofollow for tags?


4- What do you think about comments? If I allow comments or post comments will I get better result in google?


5- If I nofollow links such as contact-us and tags, does this mean Google will not give them Page Rank but Google will index them?


Sorry for asking much and hope to get the right help in your forum.

[claybutler]

Hi There,


I have a Wordpress blog with a page rank of 2. I've nofollowed the categories and I need help. If you don't mind I have some questions about Wordpress SEO.


1- Is it better to add nofollow for contact-us and about-me pages?


2- Is it good to block them by robots.txt by disallow? Is this the same as nofollow?


3- I have about 6 tags for every post, is it better to add nofollow for tags?


4- What do you think about comments? If I allow comments or post comments will I get better result in google?


5- If I nofollow links such as contact-us and tags, does this mean Google will not give them Page Rank but Google will index them?


Sorry for asking much and hope to get the right help in your forum.

I'll save you some time here. Google changed their algorithm a while ago to stop PR sculpting. There is no need to no follow links. Waste of time. All links are added up and the PR divided evenly among them. The ones that have "no follow" are tossed. So if you have 10 links with two no follows, the remaining 8 will still only transfer 1/10th of the pages PR and not 1/8th as intened.

Personally I use every page on a site as a potential conversion point. A contact page can rank well and even convert if done correctly. Don't waste your pages.

[PhilipDunn]

When you no follow a link, Page Rank does not flow to the link from the page that had the no follow link. It could still gather Page Rank from other sources. You might look for a Matt Cutts video where he talks about no follow tags. As far as the page rank sculpting of interior pages, he doesn't recommend it.

[PhilipDunn]

[QUOTE=claybutler;610932]So if you have 10 links with two no follows, the remaining 8 will still only transfer 1/10th of the pages PR and not 1/8th as intened.

QUOTE]

Clay, is that the actual amount of Page Rank that gets transferred? 1/10 of the Page's PR?

[claybutler]

[QUOTE=claybutler;610932]So if you have 10 links with two no follows, the remaining 8 will still only transfer 1/10th of the pages PR and not 1/8th as intened.

QUOTE]

Clay, is that the actual amount of Page Rank that gets transferred? 1/10 of the Page's PR?

No, 1/10th per link (100 percent dived by 10). So by doing "no follow" on two you effective toss that 20%. It used to be that the 20% would be absorbed by the remaining 8 links thus making them each worth 1/8th of the pages PR value. But that's not true anymore. So the remaining 8 are still only worth 1/10th each. So it's a waste of time.

Also "no follow" is a propriety tag that Google invented. It means whatever they say it means. Right now it means almost nothing as far a PR sculpting goes. Personally I want every page to have a high PR value and rank well. I have no wasted pages.

[PhilipDunn]

I understand about the PR lost through no follow. I was just curious as to the percentage of PR that is available to be passed onto other pages/sites. Perhaps Google doesn't actually state what percent of PR that is passed to other pages..

[commodityman]

Hi There,


I have a Wordpress blog with a page rank of 2. I've nofollowed the categories and I need help. If you don't mind I have some questions about Wordpress SEO.


1- Is it better to add nofollow for contact-us and about-me pages?


2- Is it good to block them by robots.txt by disallow? Is this the same as nofollow?


3- I have about 6 tags for every post, is it better to add nofollow for tags?


4- What do you think about comments? If I allow comments or post comments will I get better result in google?


5- If I nofollow links such as contact-us and tags, does this mean Google will not give them Page Rank but Google will index them?


Sorry for asking much and hope to get the right help in your forum.

If you have a small unestablished site I would not be concerned with trying to PR Sculpt your site, that is best done with large sites where they can place NOINDEX | NOFOLLOW, say on a testimonial page. I have used the nofollow only and it will stop the PR flow to that page, but Google will still index it. I wouldn't put nofollow on the contact us page, I would leave it alone, if it was a login or register, then sure, you could do that Googlebot would never try to register on your page. Again, I would not be that concerned about place nofollow or trying to PR sculpt, I would leave as is and build you site up with a lot of great content.

As far as comments if you have a blog, then I personally think you should leave the comments open, of course you can have the comments nofollow to prevent spammers and others draining your blog page, but that is reason for a blog is to share others opinion about your blog topic and if the topic is good enough others will link to it.

If by chance you do want to use the nofollow tag on unimportant pages the top ones are usually these: login-register, testimonials, privacy policy and/or terms of service.

[claybutler]

I understand about the PR lost through no follow. I was just curious as to the percentage of PR that is available to be passed onto other pages/sites. Perhaps Google doesn't actually state what percent of PR that is passed to other pages..

They don't have to state it and the percentages don't really matter is the concept as the same, but logic tells you it's close to a straight division of total PR value divieded by number of links. But that doesn't matter. What matters is PR sculpting is a waste of time.

[SteveGerencser]

I understand about the PR lost through no follow. I was just curious as to the percentage of PR that is available to be passed onto other pages/sites. Perhaps Google doesn't actually state what percent of PR that is passed to other pages..

As Clay says, take those numbers as simple examples only, not hard fact. We do know that location on page can affect the value of a link. An in content link is worth more than a footer link etc etc etc. But the concept is still the same.

[dgswilson]

I use the nofollow to cut down on the possibility of duplicates, 404s and to not follow external links like affiliate etc. I no longer use tags at all. Make sure you use the description (custom fields).

[claybutler]

I use the nofollow to cut down on the possibility of duplicates, 404s and to not follow external links like affiliate etc. I no longer use tags at all. Make sure you use the description (custom fields).

You're mixing up "no follow" with a "no index" robot meta tag. No follow just negates link juice, it doesn't stop a page from being indexed.

Unfortunately Google didn't call it "no juice'" or "no citation" which is what it really is.

[dgswilson]

"robots.txt" maybe /tags /? /trackbacks

page with lots of pdf's "meta nofollow"

links (affiliate, js) "rel=nadapursue"

Is that wrong?

[claybutler]

If you don't want something to be indexed, use no index in the header. If you don't want it to be followed use no follow in the header -or- in the hyperlink itself. The trouble with "no follow" in the header is that is indiscriminate. Nothing will be followed, not just the PDF files. But with "no follow" a page can still be indexed but it is supposed to negate the link juice link juice.

One time I used "no follow" for a link to an old client website thinking it would mean it wouldn't get indexed. Not true. It was indexed immediately.

So I used

<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="noindex,nofollow">

in the header of the the index file and that took care of it.

If you want to stop something from being indexed "no index" is the only way and even then it's still a courtesy. There is nothing to stop it from being indexed. It's just a command and commands can be ignored. If you really can't vouch for a link or you really don't want something indexed, then don't link to it or put it on your server.

As for affiliates and paid links the only reason to use "no follow" is to save yourself from a jealous competitors narcing you out to Google and getting penalized. It's ineffective for PR sculpting.

[Seleno]

Hi There
thanx every one

claybutler i tried to not use nofollow in my affiliate links, i notice that my google late then to crawl my posts
when i use nofollow for my posts affiliate links, google index any post in just 1 minute !!

newoptimizer do you mean that matt cutts doesn't recomment the "nofollow" for tags in posts? so we should keep them with follow ?
i read in diff forum that matt cutts advice ppl to add nofollow for tags !
thanx

[PhilipDunn]

from what I remember, Cutts did say to no follow links if you don't want to support an outbound link. I have not seen him specifically talk about blog posts. You might want to search his videos, but as Clay and others have suggested, Page Sculpting of internal pages is not supposed to be effective..

[dgswilson]

If you want to stop something from being indexed

But I don't - I want to stop something being followed. And, on that one page with all those pdf files I know it will cause no links on that page to be followed - don't care - only care that people can read the files. I use no follow js and ? (maybe) not necessarily for ads and affiliates but for all crawlers that waste time looking at js, txt, css, ?ynamix - validation checks, link checkers - cuts down on things I have to look at. Nothing to be penalized for, don't worry about competitors, do no sculpting. Only make pages so that I can write on them.

[Seleno]

thanx for your reply
i nofollow the categories of my blog, by yoast meta tag plug in
i will keep the follow for the tags of posts

what do you think?
best regards

[SteveGerencser]

But I don't - I want to stop something being followed.

Why? What to you expect to gain from this?

[AboutWeb]

I stopped using tags long time ago. By using tags, you're indexing way too many pages, that might look like spam search.
I would rather get my posts indexed. There is no need to nofollow categories. I use noindex for archives.
Comments can improve your ranking, if they are ON TOPIC, they add more keywords to your post/page. Just be careful not to approve a comment with a bad link inside. I use akismet for detecting spam, and I do check manually comments in moderation queue.

[claybutler]

But I don't - I want to stop something being followed. And, on that one page with all those pdf files I know it will cause no links on that page to be followed - don't care - only care that people can read the files. I use no follow js and ? (maybe) not necessarily for ads and affiliates but for all crawlers that waste time looking at js, txt, css, ?ynamix - validation checks, link checkers - cuts down on things I have to look at. Nothing to be penalized for, don't worry about competitors, do no sculpting. Only make pages so that I can write on them.

I still don't know why you don't want them followed. They can still be indexed. So you're not stopping that. PDFs can rank very well in search engines so starving them of link juice is no advantage. And as you noted, you're not trying to PR sculpt anyway, so I just don't see why the bother to do the no follow. I really am curious and not just busting your chops.

[Seleno]

I stopped using tags long time ago. By using tags, you're indexing way too many pages, that might look like spam search.
I would rather get my posts indexed. There is no need to nofollow categories. I use noindex for archives.
Comments can improve your ranking, if they are ON TOPIC, they add more keywords to your post/page. Just be careful not to approve a comment with a bad link inside. I use akismet for detecting spam, and I do check manually comments in moderation queue.


Hi there
my blog page rank is only 2, i have about 15 categories, i'm worry to lose the page rank with these 15 categories,
i dont get traffic from categories, its better to get rank for main page and posts
i think this

[claybutler]

I stopped using tags long time ago. By using tags, you're indexing way too many pages, that might look like spam search.
I would rather get my posts indexed. There is no need to nofollow categories. I use noindex for archives.
Comments can improve your ranking, if they are ON TOPIC, they add more keywords to your post/page. Just be careful not to approve a comment with a bad link inside. I use akismet for detecting spam, and I do check manually comments in moderation queue.

I agree with not using tags but not for the reasons you cited. There's no worry that it will look like spam. Tags are built into every blog in the world and everyone understands what will happen if you use them. To penalize their use would be crazy.

The best reasons not to use tags as they don't serve any real purpose. The operate exactly like categories. So you end up with a bunch of categories and also a bunch of tag categories. If you really do have related content then provide links to those articles, install a related posts plugin, or build a better category tree. Liberal use of tags just make for a messy, diluted, unfocused site. Now that WILL affect your rankings.

Comments can definitely help with a pages rank if the comments are on topic. Users will add all sorts of additional content and keywords that turn out to be quite helpful...especially from expert commenters. They sometimes write comments that are better than the original article.

I always give my commenters a dofollow link for their name because I know that some of the best commenters are also SEO savvy and there's no reason I shouldn't reward them with a little link juice. Spammers get trashed immediately, and if someone's comment/keyword name is borderline I generally just strip out their hyperlink.

[claybutler]

Hi there
my blog page rank is only 2, i have about 15 categories, i'm worry to lose the page rank with these 15 categories,
i dont get traffic from categories, its better to get rank for main page and posts
i think this

Just focus on a making a clean site with a good architecture and write great content. Does anyone actually make a blog because they have a passion for something and just want to write about it anymore? Seems like every blog question is an SEO question and the blog in question is some marketing gimmick. I'm continually amazed that people will create blogs just to sell adword or affiliate links. That's not something I want to be remembering on my death bed. I'm hoping to leave a great body of work and make some sort of contribution to society.

"Grandpa, what are you most proud of?"

"Oh I remember one time *cough* I spend three months paying writers in India to generate generic keyword rich puff pieces while simultaneously paying a Russian team to generate thousands of crappy keyword rich hyperlinks. I tell you Bobby, *cough* that site made $500 per month, for eight months, until the Panda update wiped it out. Yeah, that was something."

"Uh, I really don't understand any of that. Anything else grandpa?"

"Oh, and the day *cough* I married your grandma."

[iandoc]

I'll save you some time here. Google changed their algorithm a while ago to stop PR sculpting. There is no need to no follow links. Waste of time. All links are added up and the PR divided evenly among them. The ones that have "no follow" are tossed. So if you have 10 links with two no follows, the remaining 8 will still only transfer 1/10th of the pages PR and not 1/8th as intened.

Personally I use every page on a site as a potential conversion point. A contact page can rank well and even convert if done correctly. Don't waste your pages.

Completely agree.
Concentrate on developing more good content rather than issues such as this.