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PageRank sculpting: does it still help you
to get higher Google rankings?
Google has changed the way it processes the nofollow attribute.
These changes have an impact on how you can use the nofollow
attribute for PageRank sculpting on your website.
What is PageRank sculpting?
PageRank sculpting is the attempt to control the link power
of one website page to another page of the same website. For
example, when Google finds a website with three links then
the link power is evenly passed to all three links:
Some webmasters thought that if a web page has a high PageRank
of 8 then it shouldn't pass that PageRank power to "Terms
of Service" or "Privacy Policy" pages.
For that reason, some webmasters started to use the rel=nofollow
attribute for these links: <a href="example.htm"
rel="nofollow">Example</a>
Links that are marked with the nofollow attribute shouldn't
be followed by Google. That meant that the other links on
the web page benefited more from the high PageRank of the
page. It worked like that:
In this example, link 1 passes no link power while link 2
and 3 each pass half of the available link power to the target
page. The result is that the linked pages have a higher chance
of getting listed in the search results.
What has changed?
Google's Matt Cutts recently made a statement about the way
Google now treats nofollow links:
Link 1 still doesn't pass any link power but the link power
of that link is simply discarded.
What does this mean for your website?
The change means that PageRank sculpting with the nofollow
attribute does not work anymore and that it now makes sense
to remove any nofollow links that go to your own website.
You're just wasting link power by using the attribute for
links to your own pages.
Do not waste your time by trying to manipulate the links
on your web pages. Better concentrate on a good user experience
with good web page content and an easy to understand website
navigation. Websites with a good user experience usually get
more links from other websites.
If you want to find out if your website has all the elements
that are necessary to get a listing on Google's first result
page for your keyword, check your website with IBP's Top 10
Optimizer. The optimizer will tell you whether the links and
the content of your web pages are good enough for Google and
it will also tell you what exactly you have to change so that
web surfers will find your site on Google's first result page.
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