To nofollow or not to nofollow?
That is the question…
First of all, what is a nofollow tag? I think the best way to wrap your mind around it is by using pictures. Think of all of the link/SEO juice your website has being held in a bucket. Creating links pokes holes in that bucket and passes the juice to sub-pages within your site and to external sites. Nofollow tags essentially plugs those holes. So while search engines can continue to follow those links and index them, they do not pass link juice to them. This visual should help:
(Picture credit: eVisibility)
To nofollow
So, nofollows are a way to control the way link juice flows through your site. In other words, think of those pages which don’t necessarily need to rank well on SERPs. By controlling the flow of link juice, you can concentrate it on the important pages – and hopefully increase PageRank by doing so.
Pages typically nofollowed are those like:
- Privacy Policy
- Contact
- Search
- Shipping information/Shopping Cart pages
- Affiliates
Not to nofollow
Like every positive, there are also negatives for nofollow tags. However, you’ll see this article is somewhat dated and talks mainly about nofollowing blog comment links (a default setting for most blogs these days, in an effort to control blog spam).
Also, SEO experts argue why should you link to someone if you’re just going to nofollow that link? I would say that links are meant to bring added value to the user’s experience, and while the link may be helpful, you don’t want to pass along link juice.
In the end, maybe nofollows are a passing fad, then again maybe not. Although in SEO, experimentation is often the best way to find out what works.