Use the Nofollow Attribute to Increase Search Engine Results
To get the most out of your site links you should use the nofollow attribute. Below I’ve laid out the basics of the nofollow attribute. There is a lot of debate over the value and implementation of this attribute so I welcome any suggestions and ideas from readers. Your comments will help others.
What is a nofollow attribute?
The nofollow attribute (usually called: nofollow tag) is a simple attribute that you place within your page links that informs the search engines (Google mostly) that you don’t want them to follow that link.
What’s the value of a nofollow tag?
Every link on your site has weight and can influence search engine results. If you have hundreds of page links pointing out of your site you will be passing your site’s weight away from your site and giving to other sites. Sometimes you might want to pass weight, and anchor text links, to other sites, but sometimes you just want to acknowledge a site. That is a time to add the nofollow tag in your link code.
You should also place nofollow tags on links within your own that link to pages you don’t want to show up in search engine results. Do you really want to waste your site’s weight on your disclaimer page?
How do I add a nofollow tag?
Simply include rel=”nofollow” in your link between the a and href
<a rel=”nofollow href=”link”>anchor text</a>
If you’ve been struggling to get your site ranked well in Google this simple fix might help your rankings. It’s only one of dozens of factors that can influence rankings, but one you shouldn’t overlook.