Would this be a good link?

[yoyoma]

I recently finished developing a new website with a partner. This partner happens to have a page from 1996 that ranks #1 for a specific food and big country. It has won a lot of awards that he has linked to at the bottom of the page.

I told him that it would be valuable if he added a link to this new site even though it's not related to food or that country, but would contain keywords related to the new site, ie "For information about keyword a, keyord b, keyword c, check out site B" where these keywords are not related to the old page but would be linked to the new site.

I also told him to add "nofollow" tags to the links pointing to the awards he got, some of which probably don't even exist anymore.

He believes that since the page is not related in anyway to the new site in question it won't help at all.

Who is right? Thanks.

[Tiggerito]

It will probably help but not quite as much as if it was an authority in a relevant field.

Not sure why you want to add nofollows to the other links?

[yoyoma]

I figure the nofollows would give more influence to the link to the site. Is this not correct?

[Planet13]

I figure the nofollows would give more influence to the link to the site. Is this not correct?

It would have a few years back, but not any more. Changing a link to a nofollow DOESN'T increase the amount of page rank that is flowed to the d0-follow links that remain on the page. It just sends that amount of page rank into a "black hole" as it were.

So in effect, it is not possible to "sculpt" page rank using nofollow links the way it was done a few years back.

You would either have to remove the links to the award sites, or put the link to his other site in a more prominent position (say, in the middle of a paragraph high up on the page) to influence the amount of page rank being flowed to the link to his other site.

However, removing the links to the awards pages MIGHT have unintended negative consequences. We just don't know enough that one can say for sure that they should remove the links to the awards sites.

[yoyoma]

Interesting, good to know. Does it make sense to put a link in for the new site even though it's not related, or will it not make a difference?

[Planet13]

It will PROBABLY make a difference, but if link is in the middle of content on a page that is RELATED to the content on the new site, then it would be better, in my opinion.

[yoyoma]

Ok, the food the page is about is related to a sub topic on the new site so maybe it would be best to just link to the sub topic page directly. Thanks for the help.