Regarding nofollow on internal links, does it hurt? Does it help? There are lots of discussions going on over it in webmaster’s forums. Let’s hear the latest from Matt Cutts, the Google guy.
In a recent video, he answered a question on this. According to him, it’s NOT a good idea to use the nofollow relation attribute on internal links. Let’s see why..
- Pagerank Flow : When pagerank comes to your site from your backlinks, it flows throughout your site based on the internal links that you have on your site. If you add nofollow on your internal links, that’s causing your links to drop out of the link graph.
- Internal Backlinks : Sometime, internal links are counted as backlinks as well. When you link a content page from another, it becomes a backlink for the linked page if the content is on same niche. Use of nofollow will cut those chances to nil.
- SERP Boost : It’s also noticed that not using the nofollow on internal links boosts SERP. This may sound wired, but a cse study that I am monitoring (and, will be posting soon) showing huge boost in SERP after removing the internal nofollows.
Below is the video where Matt Cutts answered the question..
