using the no follow meta tag

SEO and the NO-FOLLOW meta tag

HTML includes a meta tag to allow a site designer to communicate, albeit in a one-way fashion, to search engine spiders, often known as robots.  This can be useful in a number of ways, blocking all robots from indexing the page it used in, inviting all robots robots to the indexing, and similarly allowing or disallowing said spiders from following the links contained on the page.  In this article, we’ll look at why the no-follow tag could be useful in promoting a high page rank.

<meta name=”robots” content=”index, nofollow”>

The line entered above is an instruction to robots which happen to crawl the the site, and tells them that the page should be indexed, but that any links found on the page should be ignored.  This could be useful if, for instance, the page in question contains links to other sites that are of questionable relevance to the page itself. Maybe the page is a sub, or internal, page on the site, and contains a set of links to popular directories, or perhaps the links on the page branch away from the keywords on the page to the personal sites of the company employees.

For whatever reasons, the site designer feels that the page should be a part of a spider’s indexing, but that the links on the page, while they are indexed with the site, should not be followed.  Obviously, you cannot control what content your employees may have, or their sites are no longer personal, but are merely additional pages for the company site.  Ditto for mentioning sites that are in direct competition.  You don’t mind telling people where those sites are, because your site is so much better, but you are hesitant to use your valued PageRank to benefit your competitors, through positive association.  So you instruct the robots that the links are non-supportive, meaning you do not endorse the material that is found at the site.

Another possibility is that the page is discussing sites that could be detrimental to well-thought SEO.  Obviously, if search engines determine that you are linking to these black hat sites, you risk being grouped with them, even though your only intention was to warn others of the potential dangers.  You want your readers to be well informed, and to be able to see actual examples of the sites, but you don’t want to lose your search engine ranking as a result of providing useful information.  Using the index, nofollow tag makes this possible, so that your reader CAN be pointed to sample sites that use unfavorable tactics, but doesn’t put you on the list of supporters of the unfavorable sites.

Article written by SEOnotepad.com