I have used nofollow ever sincei it was introduced for various reasons. I do still think it should be used with precaution if your updating a large amoun of links on your site. It’s not unheard of a site being penalised for mass nofollow updates, unconfirmed by Google of course. Apart from that I pretty much agree with what you say, use the no follow on those sites that provide no real value to your content/product/service.

However the new debate is nofollow no longer works to channel PageRank http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-maybe-changes-how-the-pagerank-algorithm-handles-nofollow, I wouldn’t hold your breath for some Google clarity:)

Practically EVERY one of the articles I’ve read recently about this is so introverted and blinkered it’s unreal. Fortunately this one did at least accede to the existence of something else.

Hello! Earth to brain … Newsflash! Blogs are NOT the only sites on the web OR where nofollow might or might not be used legitimately. As has been said above by Tim Grice already, what about when a link is going to a competitor’s site (or elsewhere) from a commercial web site. Or to a business partner’s site. Or … another example: redirect links to affiliate product sites.

Let’s say I am promoting a particular affiliate product and in order to protect MY investment in traffic generation (HOWEVER that may have been achieved) I naturally want to cloak, as effectively as possible, MY link to that product offering. Now if product owners would only write their affiliate handling PROPERLY (some do) then there would be NO need for most of the convoluted cloaking that occurs, but there would STILL be a need for the “nofollow”. Why? ….

If nofollow (or an equally viable, simple & effective means) is not used, then the end destination (potentially) becomes directly visible in the search engines from their spidering of my site (if that’s where the redirection is occurring and clearly from my perspective that’s where I’d want it to be) thereby a) giving more kudos (PR, inbound links, whatever) to the product sales page/site with ZERO benefit to me but more importantly b) completely negating all my efforts (and expense) to drive traffic to “MY” landing page or link for the potential product sale. Err! WHY would ANYONE in their right mind wish to do that?

Now I realise that strictly speaking the robots.txt file should (perhaps) be used to exclude such links under such circumstances, but it is MUCH simpler, more accurate (fewer inadvertent ommissions from robots.txt) and a LOT cleaner from a code checking perspective to be able to see EXACTLY which links have been so excluded when scanning web site code for same. On top of all that Google (which conceived the idea, albeit for a somewhat different original purpose) recommends such usage. This is especially true when a site has many hundreds of links some “followable” and some not. Is anyone going to try to tell me that it is easier to do that in robots.txt – HOGWASH! It also does NOT make sense for “essential to be included for business purposes” but otherwise, static, generic content such as disclaimer text, policy documents and similar “legalese” to be spidered. No sense or value for Google, no sense or value to the site owner, no sense or value to the web browser (person, not IE or FF etc).

In the absence of anything better or more accurate, more easily implemented and more acceptable by the search engines, I for one say “Stuff you, nofollow haters. Take your pathetic religion somewhere else or provide us with a VIABLE alternative to the usage of nofollow before whinging about our (enforced) employment of it for totally reasonable & pragmatic purposes”.

Thanks & regards.
“rel=nofollow” (All vitriol & ranting above is aimed SOLELY at the “anti nofollow” brigade. If that’s you … tough!)

When it comes to requesting inbound links you have to be sure the person you are emailing will find your site useful. If not it can be a huge waste of time firing out emails (in my experience. If you are going to send a letter

- Keep it brief and to the point

- Show that you have at least read some of the content on that site and comment on it

I get at least 10 – 15 link exchange requests a week and to be honest most I don’t reply to as they are offering me a link back from an overloaded directory.

If your going to ask for a link exchange make sure you are offering them a quality link back.

I know it’s said a lot but the best way to get links is to publish quality content and then push it out into cyber space. This can be hard to when your site is new but will reap benefits in time.

Don’t under estimate the power of article marketing, directories, blog submissions and Press Releases I have seen many a site rank using the above as their sole link campaign.

Thanks for your comments

I always write in terms of blogging because I’m always blogging! You are right when it comes to a real website like a site for a moving company.

When it comes to blogging it’s a slightly different ball game and like you say we all need a little “peg up”.

However if I had a local van hire company and for whatever reason needed to link to a main competitor, there is no way I would be trying to help them out with passing on some link juice.

I guess it depends on the proximity of your product or service. I kind of wrote it half heartedly anyway

I have read a lot about nofollow recently some good and others not so good, so after your previous comment I thought I might as well put my ideas forward.

PageRank does play a part in serps but in my opinion it is small in comparison to the importance of relevance. If you pagerank has dropped you might want to first consider checking your external links to

A- See if they are active

and

B- Ensure they are carrying the same PageRank.

I’ll have a think on the flash idea, Google does definitely follow them as I can see some of mine in webmaster tools, although how exactly I’m not sure.

Watch this space

Ive begun implementing a few “no follows” into our (external) blogs, so that theres only 1-2 outgoing links on each of them pointing back to us.

Hopefully this will get our PageRank back up. We were a PR4 just a few months ago, and recentky we are a PR2, however our SERPs are better than ever!

We have added a lot more pages to the site, and Im guessing that’s why our PR dropped a bit as well.

Just goes to show, for now, PR really doesnt have all that much to do with SEO. Still I can’t help but want to get back to at least a PR3 just for aesthetics on my google toolbar.

Thanks again and Ill be reading all of your posts. They have been concise and useful without pages of filler.

Something you might want to consider for this post, is that (I think) Flash outgoing links count as well, but don’t use the same coding as regular text links.

We use a mix of both on our site.

Keep em comin!

- Dion