Comments on: How to fix your nofollow screwup

By: himanshu160

himanshu160 — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 12:23:16 +0000

Hi Michale,
ur posts are very insightful. The good thing about them is that u dont write just for the sake of writing and explain everything in great details. I found you randomly on Google. I was searching for something related to seomoz and found one of your old blog post. u used to write for them and u explained why u left them and something like it. Anyways, i had PR 3 before i implemented the nofollow. Now it is 1, although i have removed all internal nofollows now. Yes i tried to sculpt PR and that too just a week before Matt announcement that PR sclutping doesnt work anymore.

By: Michael Martinez

Michael Martinez — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:31:33 +0000

Sorry about the registration issues. I believe our email system was having problems that are just now being resolved.

A veneer is a facade or layer of Web pages that help you navigate to deep content. Think of it as an alternative sitemap or an alternate face for your Web site categories with its own navigation system.

If you mean you lost your Toolbar PR when you removed your internal nofollows, I suppose that is entirely possible. I would have to ask if you had Toolbar PR before you implemented the nofollows. If so, then you can reasonably expect it to come back in time.

But unless you’re selling links Toolbar PR really doesn’t mean anything. You should be looking at crawl data from your server logs and cache data in the search indexes to make sure your content is being refreshed correctly.

And I have to ask why you implemented the nofollows in the first place. If you were trying to fix a problem, that problem still exists. If you were just following bad SEO advice and trying to “sculpt” PageRank for the sake of improving search performance, then just leave things alone until the search engines have had time to recalculate the flow of PageRank-like value throughout your site.

By: himanshu160

himanshu160 — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 18:44:00 +0000

It was a great headache posting u a comment. First i need to register, then it took me ages to get the username and password. Anyways i still feel like commenting u on ur good post. But i am still not clear about this ‘veneer’ thing. Where i can find more information about it. Also i lost my PR because i removed all of my internal nofollows at once in a hope to save my PR from evaporating. But i guess it still backfired. I still dont get how alternative site structure will fix the problem, how an ideal site structure should be in the first place and what is bad site architecture.

By: onlinedesign

onlinedesign — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:25:33 +0000

My new favorite quote, or inspiration: “I think it’s critical that an SEO experiment with new and better ways of doing things, even on the job. Search engine optimization is a perpetual learning process.”
- SEO Just Say On

By: Michael Martinez

Michael Martinez — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 07:21:36 +0000

If the experimentation is done at the client’s behest or with the client’s knowledge and permission, then I would say it’s acceptable. However, most of my clients are pretty conservative. I do most of my experimenting on other sites.

Your mileage may vary.

I don’t mean to imply that experimentation is bad — far from it. That’s part of the SEO Method: Experiment. Evaluate. Adjust.

By: SEO Just Say ON

SEO Just Say ON — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 18:52:22 +0000

I mildly disagree with your statement that “there is too much at stake with commercial sites for SEOs to be getting experimental on the clients’ time.”

I think it’s critical that an SEO experiment with new and better ways of doing things, even on the job. Search engine optimization is a perpetual learning process. Without experimentation, the work will suffer, the creativity component of SEO suffers, and the learning process is halted. Professional search marketers can’t afford to stop learning. Ever.

Enjoy your blog.

By: Michael Martinez

Michael Martinez — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 18:17:16 +0000

Veneers (also called facades, by the way) can either piggyback off the site’s existing PageRank or you can point more external links to them.

The XML sitemap controversy will probably never go away. The search engines don’t even promise to index URLs they find in them.

However, I’ve never seen a site experience trouble with an HTML sitemap. Although I have compared them to classic crawl pages, a good HTML sitemap should be user-friendly. They have helped me find content on large sites whose navigation systems were too complex.

The thing to remember with HTML sitemaps, however, is that they only work when they are treated with respect. You MUST have all (or most) of the pages link to the sitemap in the primary navigation.

Think of an HTML sitemap as a magnifying glass for user navigation and search engine crawl. It definitely helps. I would be interested to see any site where the owner (or SEO) feels the HTML sitemap is hurting.

By: Springboard SEO

Springboard SEO — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:23:34 +0000

Excellent, detailed post, Mike.

I might be misunderstanding something here, but in case I’m not:
In creating an alternate veneer, how would you prevent this new veneer content from falling into supplemental results if the indexed content links back to it?

I’m hesitant to use XML/HTML sitemaps at all, as I see them as a bit of a “carpet that can tend to hide a messy floor”. I’ve also been hearing stories lately of dips in SE traffic after XML sitemap inclusion.
I’d be interested in your take on this.

Matt