SEO questions an nofollow advice

[MikeCloutier]

I've been reading up on Search Engine Optimization and would like to get some advice.

I understand that having a lot of external links on a site is detrimental to search engine page ranking. I use two sidebars almost exclusively for external links. One sidebar uses the WP125 plugin and I have about 20 banners with links to the advertisers' web pages. The other sidebar contains RSS feeds. I use KBB Advanced RSS Widget for each feed and there could be 50 links to newspaper and blog stories on my pages and I'd like to have more. I sometimes embed a link in a post, but not usually.

Do these links dilute my ability to increase my page rank?

KBB allows the insertion of html code before each link. Would it be useful to include the rel="nofollow" command? WP125 has no such option.

Your thoughts and advice are appreciated. Thanks

[Ryan]

Yes that does reduce your page rank. However the more pertinent question is "does this negatively affect your search rankings".

Adding rel="nofollow" would definitely prevent the drop in page rank. The purpose of "nofollow" (within Google) is to remove the flow of page rank through links.

[MikeCloutier]

Okay. I don't think I understand the difference between page rankings and search rankings. I'd like to rank higher in the search results than my competitors when a phrase we both use is searched and I wonder if having all those RSS links prevents that. I'll look up the difference between page rank and search rank. Thanks

[Ryan]

Googling for this information is tricky as most of what you will find is incorrect. There's a lot of SEO garbage posted on the web, most of which and/or incorrect is misinformed unfortunately.

Basically, Page Rank is an algorithm based on the number of links into and out of pages. It was part of a PhD by Sergey Brin and Larry Page. That's all it is, nothing more, nothing less.

Google uses Page Rank within it's own internal algorithm, but it is not the only factor which it uses to choose page relevancy (in fact on it's own it's pretty useless). Search rankings on the other hand is a reference to your actual ranking with a search engine, hence is probably what you are looking to improve - which is affected by changes in Page Rank.


Having all those external links WILL decrease your Page Rank, but whether it decreases your position in the search engine rankings is less obvious as Google may (or may not) have ways of understanding that your site's high number of external links does not make your own content less relevant.


In general, Google requests that you link organically, ie: don't use "nofollow" unless there is an explicit reason why you shouldn't be passing Page Rank elsewhere, ie: with paid links or (potentially spammy) user submitted links.


I haven't actually answered your original question sorry because I don't know the answer.

[MikeCloutier]

On the contrary, you are helpful. I know now the answer to the original question is much more complicated than I thought. In fact, a whole industry is built around it.

Since the RSS links are "good" sites, like newspapers, as opposed to "spammy" sites, I won't use the nofollow.

Do you know if Google follows the more tags on my original content?

[Ipstenu]

I believe they do (which is why I don't bother with a sitemap anymore).

[Ryan]

Google will pass Page Rank through any HTML links which are not "nofollow"d.

[MikeCloutier]

Is that the general consensus on sitemaps? Would it be a waste of time to use a plugin like Google XML Sitemap Generator?

[dancole]

Random:
I don't get why some people are overly obsessed with SEO. Is it really worth while? My common sense and natural flow of doing things gets me a pagerank of 6 and near the top of quite a few search terms (None of which I really deserve, IMHO). I think people who write good content and do what's nice, from a functional point of view, for your visitors, are the ones that have high placed results in the search engine. If you share the same goals as a search engine, in terms of how it helps other people, then you should rank well.

[Otto]

Google is well-known for giving contradictory information on this sort of thing, because frankly they don't want you to be doing "tricks" to get higher rankings. They want a natural flow. Also, they continually refine their techniques, so your tricks will get worked around eventually.

Best practices:
- Write good content.
- Use semantically meaningful HTML in your theme (proper use of H1-H6's and lists and such, as few CSS tricks as possible, etc).
- Sitemaps help Google index your site slightly faster and more efficiently. They don't help with rankings, but they can reduce load in extreme cases. They don't *hurt* is really what I mean, so I use them.
- Use PuSHPress. Seriously, it's awesome when you make a new post and Google Reader shows it in under 30 seconds. (Note, not compatible with FeedBurner, for various reasons.)

So-called "SEO Tricks", for the most part, don't work. There's no need to run an "SEO" plugin. It won't really help, and it makes things overly complicated and annoying.