No-Follow in the Menu (Beneficial or Harmful)

Should I use no-follow in the main Menu for SEO optimization

[digitalcuriosity]

Hi Friends!

I have made links to my home page. I don't want Google to pass link juice to other pages like "About Us" "Login" "Testimonial" etc.

Is it good to put No-follow links in the menu for these pages?
Please let me know if you are really sure about something.

Thank you.

[Dimitri]

Please let me know if you are really sure about something.

Anyone claiming to be "really sure" about Google's algorithm is a liar ... just saying.

[graeme_p]

There are real experts here who know far more than me, so lets see if they agree with this (which I am fairly confident about)

Google can probably recognise a menu for what it is. Definitely if you use the correct markup for it. They can therefore treat the links appropriately.

I think adding no follow to internal links will look artificial and is more likely to harm than hurt.

[Marshall]

I think adding no follow to internal links will look artificial and is more likely to harm than hurt.

Agreed. The only time I ever use a nofollow on an internal link is either the page is temporary or it is something I do not want indexed. Otherwise, nofollow is strictly reserved for external links.

[graeme_p]

@Marshall, for those cases, I prefer a noindex tag on the page or excluding it in robots.txt. Its a bit more reliable.

[Dimitri]

By the way, I never use nofollow neither for internal nor for external links, and all is fine. I assume that Google is smart enough, and I let them decide on what to do with the links they find at my site.

At a time , when the nofollow attribute was created, yes, there was a legitimate reason, but since, Google evolved and I am sure they have the ability to evaluate the value of each link.

As for external nofollow, I am old school, and I think it's against the state of mind of the Internet, which is based on sharing, and discovering of pages/sites. But thats only my opinion.

[lucy24]

The underlying meaning of nofollow is supposed to be “I can’t vouch for this link so please don’t place the weight of my reputation behind it”. Why would you tell a search engine that you don’t trust your own pages?

[Dimitri]

Why would you tell a search engine that you don’t trust your own pages?

:)

[digitalcuriosity]

Dear Members thanks for answering me.

Probably I have not elaborated on my concern clearly.

As for as I know -

Every Page has its Authority and backlink value
Its link value further gets distributed to all its outbound links (*if these are do-follow)
The home page also has good link value (*we generally make more backlinks to the home page)
The menu is part of every page and every post of our website
Now the concern is:

Let say a page has 60 Link value and it has 6 internal page links. Then each page will get 10 link value.
60/6 = 10
And if this has just 2 internal links then each page will get 30 link value.
60/2 = 30 (*More link juice = Greater chance to rank higher)

Now if I don't want to rank for my contact us page, testimonial page and use no-follow for that, I think that is a good practice.

Please suggest.

[Dimitri]

I doubt you can rank higher because you nofollow your about/contact/testimonial pages ....

[not2easy]

Nofollow suggests that you do not vouch for or trust your own pages. The proper practice is to offer ordinary links to those pages/resources and noindex the pages themselves - assuming you do not want those to be indexed/landing pages for your site. Adding a nofollow to the link for your own pages is not a good practice as pretty much every response has agreed.

Its link value further gets distributed to all its outbound links

The idea that each link is equal to every other link on a page is long outdated. Search engines see menu links and footer links for what they are. Links to more information on another site do not have the same "value" as a link to your privacy policy.

Designing for manipulating search results has a cost. Worrying about link juice is not a good way to design your site, worry more about user experience, providing users what they want. ;)

[NickMNS]

Let say a page has 60 Link value and it has 6 internal page links. Then each page will get 10 link value.
60/6 = 10
And if this has just 2 internal links then each page will get 30 link value.
60/2 = 30 (*More link juice = Greater chance to rank higher)

No your math is wrong. The issue is that you cannot look and the propagation of link-juice by looking at a single step. Link-juice flows, one must look at all the links on all the pages in an iterative process.

Example:
- One external link feeds 10 link juice(LJ) to the Home-Page.
- The home page has two links one to page 1 the other to page 2.
- Page 1 gets 5 LJ, page 2 gets 5 LJ (so far this coincides with your calculation)
- Page 1 has one link to Page 2, thus Page 2 gets an additional 5LJ, now Page 1 has 5LJ and page 2 has 10LJ
- Page 2 has one link to Page 1, thus Page 1 gets an additional 5LJ
- Finally the Home page 10LJ, Page 1 has 10LJ and page 2 has 10LJ (assumes page 1 and 2 each have a link to the home page)
(note: this example is over-simplified, because there is a circular reference at play, but assuming every page links to every other page then this holds)

Now lets take page 2 out of the equation:
- One external link feeds 10 link juice(LJ) to the Home-Page.
- The home page has one link one to page 1, page 2 to is orphaned
- Page 1 gets 10 LJ
- Finally the Home page 10LJ, Page 1 has 10LJ and page 2 has 0LJ

The net result is that page 1 didn't gain any link juice by removing page 2.

Simply put links from every page to every other page will distribute the LJ evenly throughout the site. Removing or for that matter adding a page will not have any impact on the total LJ.
However, adding an additional links to a specific pages that one would like to draw attention to will have an impact. It will be a far more effective means of ensuring that those page will get more "LJ" as these links will make the difference.

If you really insist on preventing link juice from flowing to a certain pages you can use javascript instead of a link. But then you will run into issues of users that have js disabled.I certainly wouldn't use no-follow for the reason described by Lucy24.

nofollow is supposed to be “I can’t vouch for this link so please don’t place the weight of my reputation behind it”