Using rel='nofollow' to improve internal PR voting

I've read many posts and articles on internal PageRank distribution or voting. Something overlooked in most solutions seems to be the rel='nofollow' attribute.

Internal PageRank distribution is something to consider for SEO. Most sites let a user friendly navigation dictate how PageRank is ditributed between their pages. The homepage usually gets the highest PR, as all pages link to it. Categories and sub categories follow shortly.

But, these pages may not be the pages that bring you most profit, or should have a high PR, because their keyword density is good enough to knock out the competition, but the PR isn't.

One could solve this by changing the insite navigation, but this usually doesn't contribute to a good usability.

I therefore suggest leaving the navigation in tact so users can browse your site logically and easily. If spiders navigate your site in the same way, they'll distribute the PR as sketched above. But most spiders have already provided a solution by recognizing a rel='nofollow' attribute in the link tag.

A rel='noffolow' attribute basically tells spiders not to follow the link and therefore PageRank is also not passed on. By using this pages that should have a high Pagerank (in your oppinion) could get normal links pointing to them, while the homepage is blocked by the rel='noffolow' attribute.

Offcourse, all pages on a website should be found by a spider, so be cairfull implementing this or use a sitemap to tell spiders which pages are available.

Added on: March 4, 2007 - 6:28 pm