Conflicting follow/nofollow links

I think your problem is more of a usability nightmare than anything else.

1. How many links are being displayed?
2. The pages will be followed anyway, through the non-nofollowed links and through the regular links of your site (links to older articles)
3. What makes you think that nofollowing the links will stop SEOmoz from reporting too many links?

I have seem some webpages, with the nofollow tags to selected links on those pages, so I guess you can do that but don't know how.

No!

If google sees duplicate links on a page, one of which is nofollow, and one of which is dofollow, it treats BOTH as if they were nofollow.

My testing has shown that Google ignores duplicate links for pagerank and anchor text purposes. Only the first link actually counts. If you nofollow the second one, then the first one doesn't count either.

Yes it ignores duplicate links for page rank as far I know, but I saw no difference if I had two links point to the same page and marking one of them as nofollow. The page pointed by the link had rank. That was a while back when I did the test with internal links. It may depend on the current algo they use. For example if they filter duplicated links and then process only the first link, then the position of the nofollow link may play a role.

Thanks all for your replies. I am using the "Nofollow Internal Links" plugin for wordpress. Their description is:

Besides followed external links,internal links can also take too much pagerank away from homepage.If you want to increase Google PageRank of your website Home page,try nofollowing unimportant internal links!

Once activated,this plugin will add the "nofollow" rel attribute to unimportant internal link,including: read more, tag cloud links, categories, archive links,author post_link and comments popup link.

Agree or disagree?

Regardless, we are spending a lot of money on writers writing unique content and we have thousands of subscribers that get the articles as an email newsletter. The purpose of the blog is to get maximum seo value for the content. Is wordpress, the way to go and if not, is there any publishing platform that is proven to have the best seo value?

Highly disagree.

Nofollow has changed a lot.

10 internal links. 10% juice to each page. I nofollow 5 of them

Before: 20% juice to 5 of them (those dofollowed) and 0 to the other 5.

Actually: 10% juice to 5 of them (those dofollowed) and 0 to the other 5. The remaining 50% just vanishes.

Result: don't try to sculpt PR, is not the best thing you may focus your efforts. Better focus on the new panda update or external linkbuilding.

@mememax

Thanks for your reply.

Would you be kind enough to elaborate on "Better focus on the new panda update or external linkbuilding?"

Essentially, in your opinion, what is the best overall actual strategy seo's should do to increase traffic long term?

Are there any percentage rules for nofollow/dofollow external links on a site? I had an SEO expert from this list advise me to install the Wordpress 'nofollow' all external links plug-in. I did, left it at that, then had problems with contributors to site wanting a 'dofollow' link for their efforts. Overriding the plug-in manually was impossible, so I left it not knowing what to do.

I've now deactivated the plug-in. All external, and internal, links on my site are 'dofollow'. I think this is much better than the advice of the "SEO expert" as it shows I trust my content/references, etc. which I do.

But now I am worried that I need SOME nofollow links for SEO purposes. Is that true? I can think of a few I can add manually rel=nofollow to but do I really need to? REALLY CONFUSED about this issue. My site is quality content, now 350 pages and will be continually growing, etc.

What should I do? Is there a percentage rule of sorts for nofollow dofollow on a site? Does Google mark as a red flag sites with all dofollow? Though that would be ridiculous as many simply do not know how to work with a 'nofollow' tag and all URLs are by default dofollow.

Molly

Geezopete.

I only NOFOLLOW affiliate links, and apart from that, don't worry about the rest of them, internal or external. Sometimes I have multiple links to an URL, most times I don't. Whatever makes sense for your USERS. You don't need NOFOLLOW links for SEO purposes (and whoever gave you that impression is no "expert")

Don't worry about PageRank, for cripes sake. That and a dollar won't get you a cup of coffee.

I'm not an expert link builder by a long shot, but I am absolutely convinced that one of the reasons my sites and my clients sites succeed is that I link out, freely and without worrying about it, wherever it makes sense to do so. My standard rule is if the link will enhance the user experience to some significant degree, then I add it - dofollow. That said, I am pretty picky about who I will link to - they have to provide value and authority. And guess what? A bunch of 'em notice and link back, without my having to ask. Some don't, but that's ok too.

I'm pretty sure that's how it's supposed to work. And it does.

Google changed the way nofollow links interact with total PageRank a couple years ago, see [webmasterworld.com...]

It's no longer true that "internal links can also take too much pagerank away from homepage.If you want to increase Google PageRank of your website Home page,try nofollowing unimportant internal links!"

This used to be called a kind of "PR sculpting" and Google made it not work - so dump the plug in and move on.

Thanks Netmeg & Tedster... I think the person was trying to be helpful but for some reason off on this issue, and I was too new to realize I should have researched the topic independently.

I'm with Netmeg... I can't think of a link I've included that wasn't for value's sake... and if the dofollow links are not taking away from my PR (which was the 'old thinking' that person was working off of) it's ridiculous to nofollow them.

Feel much better now, largely due to the fact I finally understand the issue to some degree! Plug-in deleted.

Thanks Netmeg & Tedster... I think the person was trying to be helpful but for some reason off on this issue, and I was too new to realize I should have researched the topic independently.

I'm with Netmeg... I can't think of a link I've included that wasn't for value's sake... and if the dofollow links are not taking away from my PR (which was the 'old thinking' that person was working off of) it's ridiculous to nofollow them.

Feel much better now, largely due to the fact I finally understand the issue to some degree! Plug-in deleted.