Why There’s Nothing Wrong With Sculpting Your Pagerank
March 6th, 2008 by Michael Gray in GoogleIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
So I was reading Shari Thurow’s piece on Search Engine Land “You’d Be Wise To “NoFollow” This Dubious SEO Advice” and I have to say c’mon Shari you really can’t believe that now can you …
Let’s go after the big fish first this quote:
Now I see SEO professionals moving back to a familiar strategy: building one thing for software spiders and another for site visitors.
Ok depending on whether you wear a sombero negro or blanco that’s IP delivery or cloaking NOT sculpting your page rank.
Sculpting your page rank with no follow is really not any different than sculpting it with robots.txt and no-index meta tags. Personally I suggest that everyone use them in conjunction with one another.
I have yet to come across any site where the privacy policy or terms of service needs to be in the index and search able. Blank them out with robots and take the extra step to make sure no pagerank leaks in. Contact pages are iffy, maybe you want your address or phone in the index and searchable, but there’s no need to funnel the page rank from a site wide footer link into a contact us page. Really go and look at the contact us pages for sites like General Motors (PR 5) or CNN (PR8) it’s just wasteful. If search engines were smart enough to deal with things like that CNN and Apple wouldn’t rank for [contact us].
When you’re bootstrapping a new or new-ish site you really do need to think about which glasses you pour your link juice into. Are you really going to argue that a PR4 contact us page is OK when you have a PR 2 product page? Are you really going to argue I shouldn’t fix that by sculpting my page rank?
Now if you want to pick on people who use pagerank sculpting to compensate for bad site architecture … I’m right behind you girlfriend and I’ll help you open a can of whoop-ass on somebody. But really there’s nothing wrong with sculpting your pagerank, just don’t obsess about it on a micro level.
If you want to get a better grip on information architecture I recommend this O’Reilly Information Architecture. It’s not the easiest read in the world, but it’s not awful and IMHO worth the effort
Disclaimer: the author firmly believes that toolbar pagerank is broken and really nothing more than green pixie dust put out there for the amusement and entertainment of the web community at large. However the author firmly believes that concept of pagerank lives on internally (possibly under an alias) and is a part of the ranking algorithm. The author also has seen efforts to manipulate toolbar pagerank by Google to deter the practice of paid/sponsored links.
Sphere It
March 6th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
In spanish it is not said “sombero de negro”, as that would be like hat of a black; it is just “sombrero negro”
Nice post BTW
March 6th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Thanks Esteban I fixed it
March 6th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Hear hear! (And please let’s not pretend PR sculpting is new… We’ve been doing that with JS links for years before nofollow came around)
March 6th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
nofollow to a link within the same domain is quite meaningless, if you look at the original intention of the nofollow tag.
It is very easy for a search engine to disregard all nofollows on links to the same domain.
I´d rather fix architecture or use robots.txt, sculpting with nofollow mifgt be wothless tomorrow!
Ludvik
March 6th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
I completely agree. I feel that the use of internal no follow tag is just like using a meta description or h1 tags or alt img attribute. Its not mandatory but it will help your overall seo efforts.
March 6th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
Great post, thanks for putting this out. I was super upset by Shari’s post today and even more surprised that it was allowed on SEL! Especially how she lumps all SEOs into a bad pool. I mean really, Cutts said it himself at SMX West, that it was OK. The other thing that I have an issue with is the very Utopian idea that all clients can afford to do usability testing and major redevelopment. That is simply not the case, maybe for some people that make their living as a small boutique firm or independent consultant with large Fortune 1000 clients with huge budgets. But there are thousands of small to medium sized businesses that want and need better placement but that do not have the resources necessary to dedicate to all of that site usability stuff from the get go. I am all for usability and site architecture and will do as much of it as possible within each budget. What do you suggest for those clients that cannot afford restructuring of their architecture and usability? And advice would be welcomed.
March 6th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
@ludvik I’m with you on not being the original purpose of nofollow, but of course you can use it within your own domain, again not saying it should be the only thing you use but used with other tools you have.
March 6th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Can anyone show me proof that this and this alone actual works when it is done. Is this another example of a SEO change that is not really necessary to rank?
March 6th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Nice follow-up, Michael…particularly glad that you addressed the question of compensating for bad architecture, which I *think* she intended to be the backbone of her argument. At least, that’s where she started out.
And @Joost, your point about JS links is hilariously spot-on.
March 6th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Who wants to listen to some cranky old woman who tells people not to 301 redirect either. Give it a rest Shari…
March 6th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
“if you look at the original intention of the nofollow tag.”
I keep hearing this BS…I mean, Jesus Christ, if Matt Cutts gives you lemons, make lemonade. If you don’t like lemonade, well, that’s not my problem.
March 6th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Glad you addressed this Michael. I find myself often disagreeing with some of Shari’s practices but to each his/her own.
I also LOVE that IA book. A definite Must-Read for any search marketer and/or developer.
March 7th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
“And please let’s not pretend PR sculpting is new… We’ve been doing that with JS links for years before nofollow came around”
@joost - Agreed. The problem now is that a lot more people know the concept of pagerank funneling. Matt just let out part of the SEO community’s ’secret sauce’.
Michael - - well put, and I agree that pagerank sculpting isn’t a substitute for usability.
Brent D. Payne
SEO Manager
Tribune
March 8th, 2008 at 9:25 am
Michael … It is obvious here that we have a case of an SEO speaking out on (A rather old topic for informed SEO’s) the use of the rel=”nofollow” attribute. I use it extensively to sculpt and shape page rank and have done so very carefully, but with no negative consequence thus far.
One of the best reasons that I have found it to be so useful is to direct the PageRank where and how I want it applied.
Following example five in Ian Rogers Paper … Google Page Rank and How it Works There is a clear correlation between improving PageRank through creating web sites based on a hierarchical structure …
If there are too many pages that are linking out to other domains or pages, then the use of rel=”nofollow” is a highly useful attribute to support the aforementioned hierarchical structure.
Edward
March 10th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Michael,
Your page rank is the same as mine. I need to stop posting here…I’m actually working on SUCCESSFUL link buildings strategies and need a site with a higher PR!
March 10th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Another thread on the topic:
http://www.webproworld.com/search-engine-optimization-forum/67474-does-page-ranking-sculpting-work.html
March 13th, 2008 at 8:30 am
I think that sculpting PR with nofollow is a bad thing for the Web and breaks standards - but I use it to some extent now. Google sends the most traffic so it can’t be ignored.
Robots.txt was designed to control robots. Google complicates things by ignoring webmasters’ wishes and passing PageRank to pages blocked by robots.txt. That is one of the core problems.
Search engines may not treat nofollow the same across the board now or in the future. I think it’s best to be somewhat cautious with it. Also take into consideration how your site might be affected if Google changes its mind about the issue and doesn’t tell you. Google (or other engines) might eventually decide that “a site always votes for its own internal links” and start disregarding internal nofollow. Google cares about its SERPs, not about whether the algorithm works exactly the way they say it does.