2 replies to this topic

[lenwood]

Hi All,
one of my clients has a page which is long and broken up into smaller sections. At the top is a menu which links to each of the subsections. Its unlikely that a person would want to read everything on the page, so they haven't linked to the page, they only link to the subsections (ie, http://www.site.com/page.htm#section). I've linked directly to it in the sitemap that I've created. They do have links to the sections on every page of the site, though.
My question is, wouldn't it be better to have one link to the page itself, and nofollow the links to the subsections? In other words, because there are many links to the page on every page on the site, aren't they telling search engines that its their most important page (which isn't true)?

Thanks,
Chris

[Jill]

It really doesn't matter. They could no follow those links, but no biggie if they don't. It's doubtful there woudl be any difference either way. But something interesting to experiment with if you were so inclined.

[amabaie]

Just my personal view, but as soon as you place a NoFollow attribute on your site you are sending a very specific message to the search engines: This is not a world-class site. NoFollow was created by the engines to give webmasters a ay to show that links placed on their site by outsiders, such as in blog comments, could not necessarily be trusted. A world class site does not allow links that cannot be trusted.

What does a NoFollow attribute on an internal link tell the engines? A confused webmaster? An attempt to manipulate PageRank? I'm not sure, but I am pretty sure it can't be good