Lots of clients tell me they “tried everything” to get more Google PageRank but they still have PageRank zero (PR-O). When I look at their inbound links, it tells a big part of the picture. Google gives more credit to a webpage if it has inbound links that it considers “good” links. That is they are “do follow” links that have NOT been discredited with a rel=”nofollow”. The example above is from Web Design Workplace. Over 5,000 inbound links. That’s a lot and it’s because we have lots of websites that link back to our homepage. It’s typical for web design companies that have launched a lot of websites to have that many.
What is a Do-Follow Link?
A do-follow link looks like this:
<a href=”http://webdesignworkplace/about/”>
This link tells Google that the web page where this link resides trusts the target and it gives it full link credit.It allows Google Pagerank from the page where this link is written to flow to the target web page.
What is a No-Follow Link?
Here is the same link above written in a no follow style
<a rel=”nofollow” href=”http://webdesignworkplace/about/”>
This means the target source is NOT trusted and it’s an explicit command to Google telling it NOT to allow PageRank to flow through the link to the target.
So Do-Follow links are “good” links and they provide what we call “link juice” or PageRank going from the source page to the target page. That helps build Pagearank for the target page.
Do No-Follow Links build PageRank?
Google’s official answer is NO.
Take a look at Matt Cutt’s blog for his viewpoint. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/ The Google Algorithm clearly does not allow PageRank to flow through a no-follow link, although it subtracts PR from the page where the link is placed whether the link is do-follow or no-follow.
But the real answer is Maybe.
Google knows a real web page in the real world gets a mixture of do-follow and no-follow links. If a web page had a bunch of do-follow and no no-follow links at all, that would look a little weird. Maybe suspicious even. So my personal recommendation is to try to develope a mixture of both good links and no-follow links. Google is always looking for natural progressions in link building. To have a quick spike in do-follow links without a similar spike in no-follow links might seem artificially manipulated. So although the no-follow link does NOT pass PR, but it helps to prevent a trigger for link manipulation just by being there.(That’s my Professional Opinion).
Regards Everyone – Mal
