WordPress SEO Master Nofollow Module - Distribute PageRank Using Nofollow
The WordPress SEO Master Nofollow module allows you to tell WordPress to set the rel=”nofollow” attribute on links to individual posts, pages, image links and external links in page content and footer text. This is good for preserving and concentrating page rank and page reputation to where it’s needed the most.
Correct use of the nofollow attribute to distribute PR to selected pages is something that can be very powerful and something that is somewhat underused in the SEO community.
For example you might want to nofollow links to your “About Us” and “Contact Us” pages as you don’t need those pages found in the search engines. Instead you want to concentrate the page rank and reputation to pages like “Blue Widgets” and “Red Widgets” or some other pages with content that you want to be highly ranked in the search engines.
You also have the option to nofollow links on homepage only. This could be good when you want to optimize your site for “Blue Widgets” that is a highly competitive phrase in the search engines and also “Blue Widget Accessories” that has less competition.
You can then apply the rel=”nofollow” attribute on navigation links to “Blue Widget Accessories” only on the homepage and not on other pages so it still gets a lot of page rank and reputation but not as much as “Blue Widgets”.
Post & Archive Template Requirements
For the posts and archive link settings to work you need to replace the wp_get_archives() function in your sidebar.php template (or any other template that uses wp_get_archives()) with the function wp_seo_get_archives().
If your template function looks like wp_get_archives(’type=postbypost&limit=10′) or wp_get_archives(”type=monthly”), you could just replace it with the following code:
<?php if(function_exists(wp_seo_get_archives)) { wp_seo_get_archives(’type=postbypost&limit=10′); } else { wp_get_archives(’type=postbypost&limit=10′); } ?>
or
<?php if(function_exists(”wp_seo_get_archives”)) wp_seo_get_archives(”type=monthly”); else wp_get_archives(”type=monthly”); ?>
Global Nofollow Options
In the “Global Nofollow Options” section you set some global options described below. The “Nofollow Image Links”, “Nofollow External Links”, and “Footer Links” settings can be overridden by adding rel=”follow” or rel=”nofollow” to links that you always want followed/nofollowed.
Nofollow Image Links
As image links don’t pass page reputation they should be nofollowed, but only if there also are text links to the page that the search engine can follow to find it.
Nofollow External Links
You may want to nofollow external links if you want to preserve page rank.
Nofollow Archive Links
The archive links are the ones that say “May 2007″ or “2007″. These kinds of links should be nofollowed as the page reputation from “May 2007″ is not the best. It’s better to use the available page rank and page reputation on more important links with a better link text.
Post Template Requirements
The post settings will be triggered by the custom WP SEO Master function wp_seo_get_archives(), which means that for the archive links nofollow settings to work on your WordPress installation you have to change the default wp_get_archives() function calls to wp_seo_get_archives().
Nofollow Category Links
When you write a new post it is always placed in one or more categories, either the default category or the category/categories you select. The category links usually contains good keyword phrases which means that you may not want to set it to “Nofollow All Category Links”, but maybe just on the homepage.
Nofollow Blogroll Links
The blogroll links are the ones you specify under the menu “Blogroll” in WordPress administration panel. These are usually good links, but you may want to nofollow them on the homepage only to preserve available page rank.
Follow Comment Links
Some people want to disable nofollow on comment links to encourage more people to comment on their blog, this feature allows you to remove nofollow from comment links.
You have the ability to specify if the user has to be registered and the required user role (Administrator, Editor, Subscriber, etc.) for their comment links to be followed.
You can set the minimum number of days before the rel=”nofollow” attribute is removed from the comment links if you want to have som time to check out if the comment links are “good” links.
Set the minimum number of comments to follow links to any number if you want to encourage the visitors to make more comments to be able to get the links to pass Page Rank. The two radio buttons below this field gives you the option to set how this minimum number should be counted:
- Minimum # Of Comments Counted For Any Post (Even In Same Post)
If you for example set the minimum number of comments to 3 and one user makes three comments in the same post or in different posts, the rel=”nofollow” is removed. - Minimum # Of Comments In Unique Posts
If a user makes three comments in the same post, the nofollow attribute is NOT removed, if he/she makes two comments in the same post and one in another post, the nofollow attribute is NOT removed. Only if the visitor makes three comments in different posts, one comment for each unique post, the nofollow attribute is removed.
The Minimum # Of Characters In Comment To Follow Links (Signature Included) field lets you encourage your visitors to make longer comments to be able to get the rel=”nofollow” attribute removed from their links.
Nofollow Footer Links
You can add a footer text besides the one you have in your footer template. The nofollow settings for the footer applies on internal links only. The external link settings can be set in the “Nofollow External Links” section described above.
Nofollow Posts/Pages Tab
Selecting one of the “Posts” or “Pages” tab will get you a list of all your posts/pages with nofollow settings for each post/page. The settings will be applied to navigation links to each post/page.
The post settings will be triggered by the custom WP SEO Master function wp_seo_get_archives() and the pages by the WordPress default page link list function wp_list_pages().
That means that for the post links nofollow settings to work on your WordPress installation you have to change the default wp_get_archives() function calls to wp_seo_get_archives().
You also have the option to make these settings for each post/page when you manage posts and pages.
Joe Says:
This is a total misuse of the way no-follow is to be used. It is to be used on links you DO NOT trust. Putting them on your own pages will kill yout trust.
zenia Says:
I have a free blog in wordpress and I would like to take off the nofollow attribute in my text links (in my content)… Is there any way?
Internet Marketing Tools Says:
No Joe, nofollow will not hurt your site’s trust.
According to Googles official spokesperson Matt Cutts, the nofollow tag is a great way to funnel Page Rank to your sites most important pages:
Below is an excerpt from an interview between Eric Enge and Matt Cutts:
http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts.shtml
Eric Enge: What we’ve been doing is working with clients and telling them to take pages like their about us page, and their contact us page, and link to them from the Homepage with a NoFollow attribute, and then link to them using NoFollow from every other page. It’s just a way of lowering the amount of link juice they get. These types of pages are usually the highest PageRank pages on the site, and they are not doing anything for you in terms of search traffic.
Matt Cutts: Absolutely. So, we really conceive of NoFollow as a pretty general mechanism. The name, NoFollow, is meant to mirror the fact that it’s also a metatag. As a metatag NoFollow means don’t crawl any links from this entire page.
NoFollow as an individual link attribute means don’t follow this particular link, and so it really just extends that granularity down to the link level.
We did an interview with Rand Fishkin over at SEOmoz where we talked about the fact that NoFollow was a perfectly acceptable tool to use in addition to robots.txt. NoIndex and NoFollow as a metatag can change how Googlebot crawls your site. It’s important to realize that typically these things are more of a second order effect. What matters the most is to have a great site and to make sure that people know about it, but, once you have a certain amount of PageRank, these tools let you choose how to develop PageRank amongst your pages.
See also http://www.seomoz.org/blog/questions-answers-with-googles-spam-guru where Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz asks Matt Cutts: “Does Google recommend the use of nofollow internally as a positive method for controlling the flow of internal link love?”
Matt Cutts answers: “Yes – webmasters can feel free to use nofollow internally to help tell Googlebot which pages they want to receive link juice from other pages”
Matt’s precise words were: “The nofollow attribute is just a mechanism that gives webmasters the ability to modify PageRank flow at link-level granularity. Plenty of other mechanisms would also work (e.g. a link through a page that is robot.txt’ed out), but nofollow on individual links is simpler for some folks to use. There’s no stigma to using nofollow, even on your own internal links; for Google, nofollow’ed links are dropped out of our link graph; we don’t even use such links for discovery. By the way, the nofollow meta tag does that same thing, but at a page level.)”
william Says:
Nice plugin, however it doesn’t seem like a good idea, to force the options on every write post page. I prefer to let All In One SEO deal with the meta tags so I have disabled that module in your plugin, however it is still showing itself under every edit box.
Its also not a great idea as not all the writers we have are going to be comfortable being presented with that many options.
william Says:
Ah, I figured out it was easier to to just delete the SEO-MASTER and META.php files and leave the NOFOLLOW.PHP intact.
I would still be nice to have the option that not everyone sees the nofollow options when writing a normal article.
Pcbooboo.com Says:
Ehh, I prefer nofollow on comments for blogs.
PhotoFan Says:
Does it able to add “nofollow” to the external links in existing posts?
Internet Marketing Tools Says:
PhotoFan, yes it will add nofollow to all links on all links in existing posts on your blog if you want to.