Optimizing Free Sites

[Maj. Stress]

Originally Posted by Halfdeck

It's no myth.

I didn't say lack of nofollows cause problems. I said they can.

Ranking proves nothing because if all your competition does exactly what you do they're in the same boat as you are.

Looking at SERPs will tell you very little about SEO.

PageRank is also not the only ranking factor. The primary reason for using nofollow is to get pages to stick in the main index. If you can pull that off without using nofollow, so much the better.

This is just my opinion but I think people read way to deep into what search engines like and dislike. The "nofollow" tag was originally designed to eliminate ranking comment spam. Why would a good algo read a "nofollow" in a zone that was not designed to allow comments?

Just use the basics and build a unique page or site. Depending on your kw competition you might have to add some ibl's or a little extra (or sometimes a lot). Nofollow is not going to help in a place where it's use is not intended. That is trying to manipulate the serps.

[Halfdeck]

Nofollow is not going to help in a place where it's use is not intended.

Major, I agree with your attitude. SEO is not needed if you're happy with your Google rankings. If you're not happy with your rankings, on the other hand, getting inbounds and creating good content is just the tip of the iceberg.

The "nofollow" tag was originally designed to eliminate ranking comment spam. Why would a good algo read a "nofollow" in a zone that was not designed to allow comments?

I don't have time for an elaborate reply Major, but here's the short of it:

REL=nofollow has evolved since inception.

Technically, rel=nofollow is a granular META ROBOTS NOFOLLOW, which prevents all links on a page from passing link value. From Google's POV, rel=nofollow is not limited to blog comment spam, though it was introduced to combat it.

Google recommends nofollowing uneditorial links, paid links, advertisement banners, affiliate links, etc. (I don't have the time right now to dig up where Google recommends this).

Google also recommends using nofollow to get more pages indexed by controlling the flow of PageRank.