I was over at SEO Book, reading Aaron Wall’s post from June 16, entitled “Expert SEO Testing: Usually Worthless,” and was surprised to learn that rel=”nofollow” no longer works. Matt Cutts, Google’s spokesperson, admitted that was true at the recent SMX Conference.
So, Wall linked to Danny Sullivan’s post “Google Loses “Backwards Compatibility” On Paid Link Blocking & PageRank Sculpting,” which made me curious. So I went over to Danny’s blog, which explains the situation in much clearer detail.
Page rank sculpting is the practice of adding “no follow” to links going to your overhead pages, like your privacy page, your terms of service, or other pages that you don’t want ranked in the search results. It used to be that if you had 10 units of page rank and each link on your page was worth 1, when you added “no follow” to 5 of those links, they would transfer their page rank to the remaining links, right? So, then, each of the bare links would be worth 2.
What Matt Cutts is telling everyone now is that “no follow” no longer transfers page rank to the bare links. So, basically, by using no follow, you’re merely wasting PR. The “no follow” links will be worth zero, but the bare links will still only be worth 1.
I should say, “Is,” because apparently, this has been true for about a year and nobody noticed.
Great.
If you’re using “no follow,” don’t run around trying to change the links back to bare links. It’s not worth the time and effort. Just understand that you don’t need to do that anymore. It’s a waste of time.
Why did Google decide to institute the practice in the first place? Basically, to stop blog comment spamming, and yet, it didn’t really stop anything, so it “no follow” means “bupkiss.” It’s like the keywords META tag. Another useless convention.
Put your time into more important things like developing good, unique content and solid keyword research. Those should always pay off. I say, “should,” because there’s just no accounting for the whim of the Google ghods.
Keep your eyes and ears open to what’s happening, and try not to get caught up in the fads or fancies. Nobody truly knows the algorithm but Google, and they’re changing it all the time. Even the few people who claim to know it probably have no 100% clear idea.
According to Aaron Wall, a well-respected Search Engine Optimization specialist, Google is about to do more than change the algorithm. The now 10-year-old search giant seems to be poised to expect top-notch client experience, rather than keyword density or any of the other familiar aspects we know as SEO.
| Why is this change going to be so different? In the past, the search engines have incrementally updated certain aspects of their algorithms to improve the quality of their SERPs, for example, eliminating the positive effect of Meta tag keyword stuffing which was being abused by spammers. Anyone who has been in the SEO industry for more than a few years probably remembers the chaos and panic when the major search engines stopped ranking websites based on this approach. This time around though, were looking at something much more significant than simply updating an algorithm to favor particular factors or discount others. We are looking at not only a completely new way for search engines to assign value to web pages, but more importantly, a new way for search engines to function. |
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Scary? Shouldn’t be, if you’re not using Black Hat techniques. Wall sees Google penalizing for paid linking on both sides of the equation and duplicate content becoming invisible. He also goes on to say that local search will become more important as will plain old quality, unique content.
So, is SEO dead? Wall doesn’t think so, and neither do I. Just as with any other change that Google has made, we’ll have to learn to adapt.
This shouldn’t be too tough, if you’ve been putting the good silver out, instead of the every day flatware. Serving our clients and readers well is what it will probably be all about, according to Wall.
And shouldn’t it be, after all? Who wants to search for something and find the same damned thing over and over again on the page? The more I thought about the Howie Schwartz method of just blasting things out into Web 2.0, the more I realized that it’s a huge time sink. It may work now, but I wonder how long the effects will last? If you’re doing throw-away campaigns, I guess it works in the short-run. But…
I encourage you to read the full article to see what Wall sees as Google’s next evolution.
I often go to sites like 103 Bees and HitTail to figure out what the heck people are searching for, and how they got to my blog. One of the most searched keywords in my list happens to be http://inventory.overture.com, a site that used to give you a pretty good rule of thumb when it came to keywords.
But stop looking at that folks! It’s either totally dead or it just won’t give you updated information. The last time the list of keywords was updated was in January 2007, and you don’t want to base your SEO on outdated search stats.
Here are a few places you can go, if you want some great keywords:
Aaron Wall’s SEO Book: http://SEOBook.com
I totally like this one. Aaron Wall is a respected SEO, and his tool is pretty comprehensive. You get stats from the big three (Google, Yahoo, and MSN), but a whole lot more, like links to Google Trends, Google Keyword Selection Tool, Quintura, and more. Pretty cool.
WordTracker’s Free Tool: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com
This is a pretty basic search, and if you loved Overture, you’ll like this one, just as well. It’s a bare bones keyword search.
Good Keywords: http://goodkeywords.com
This is a bit of free software you can download. Good Keywords is a great way to get suggestions and it combines words to give you long-tail phrase ideas, as well.
Those are three good suggestions for you to replace Overture. If SEOBook’s keyword discovery tool is too complicated for you, try one of the other options. I’m sure you’ll find that one works quite nicely for you.
