Never Tag Internal Links with “rel=nofollow” Says Google


UPDATE: After the Google panda effect only  useless links like comment links should be tagged as nofollow. Links pointing to your post pages should be kept dofollow like labels and archives





don't-nofollow-internal-linksYou waste an important use of your homepage PR when you don’t link your internal pages or when you link internal pages as nofollow. A PR flows like a river between all pages that you link to. The better the PR flow within your blog the better will your blog get indexed. Robots enjoy crawling content which is well organized in terms of linking. I have already discussed in detail on how to flow the PR juice to internal pages and just today I also published a post discussing the importance of nofollow tags. I shared in detail some steps that can help you better maintain your PR and make good use of it. It is really important that you understand the importance of in-page and off-page link building. The previous post discussed: when should you link sites with rel="nofollow" tag but great emphasis was made on the fact that all internal links should be kept do follow. 




Matt Cutts from Google “Webmaster help” has given a detailed video explanation on the use of rel="nofollow" tag and he has paid great stress on the fact that all links that point from one page on your blog to another whether they are hyperlinks or anchor tags must be kept dofollow.







Matt Cutts explaining Should Internal Links Use rel="nofollow"?






If you have any questions then feel free to post your query. You will also enjoy these SEO tips:




When Should You Tag External Links as nofollow?

nofolllow and dofollow linksUnderstanding Google’s algorithm for PageRank is really essential in order to rank higher on search engine results. I have already explained that PageRank is not much important compared to Alexa Rank. But if you wish to compete well on SERPS then understanding its algo is very important. The entire infrastructure or foundation of Google is mainly based on backlinks. The more backlinks your site have the more its significance increases in the eyes of Google. It is very important to keep a balance between incoming links and outgoing links. Your incoming links are the backbone of your blogs success. Incoming links are links that come from other websites to your blog. When people like your content they will mention you on their site by giving a credit link or attribution link and the more backlinks you receive the more you grow in sense of authority and trust in internet.

What are Internal and External Links?

Internal links are links pointing to any page within your site. For example If I link an old post I am actually increasing the number of my internal links. Always keep internal links as DoFollow

Never make the mistake of adding a nofollow link to any of your internal page. Increase the number of inbound links as much as you can so that search robots may enjoy crawling and indexing your pages.

External Links are links that point to other sites from you site. In other words when you link to any site on the web you are actually increasing the number of your outbound or external links. Keep external links minimum. Link other webs only when necessary.

When should you add a nofollow or dofollow Tag to external Link?

If you have observed my PageRank dropped from PR 4.0 to PR 3.0  on first Google Update but just yesterday Alhamdulillah I got back my PR. I can not claim that it took place because of the changes I made but I can assure you the steps I learnt and applied will benefit MBT in future. Its true to say that you learn from your mistakes and I have learnt a lot from some of the mistakes that I made and this is one reason why I am sharing this post today.

I was linking all major websites like Facebook and Google services blindly because somewhere I had read that linking major social networks will improve your blog’s relevance and its respect and trust will increase in the eyes of search robots because linking big sites shows that you are writing on something worth sharing and Google always makes sure to promote blogs that provide quality tutorials by discussing products availed by major web services.. But whatever I read earlier was all wrong! because I have personally experienced the pros and cons now. How? Lets first understand what exactly is PageRank and what increases or decreases its value.

PageRank:

In layman terms when more and more sites link to you the more your PageRank increases. PR algorithm or in other words the entire Google infrastructure is based on promoting sites that are recommended (backlinked) by other websites with good reputation. Therefore if a site has PR0 it means, that site is not well trusted and does not publish content that can entertain Google users. But if a site or blog has PR > 1 then it means, that site has now some importance in the eyes of search robots. Robots enjoy crawling PR ranked sites several times per day. MBT is Alhamdulillah crawled every single second by Search Spiders. The moment we publish a post the next moment it appears on Google search listings. This is because the more PR you have the faster your site gets crawled.

In short more backlinks you have, the better your site gets crawled and the faster your traffic grows. Furthermore you will succeed in attracting sponsors too. That’s what PR is all about.

Got PR? Now how to flow the PR Juice wisely?

After your blog receives a PR increase it does not mean that you should party out and yell and scream out of excitement rather you should know that now you need to be more careful in maintaining the PR. It takes months to build it and few days to loose the PR. PR Increases only when your incoming links grow. When more and more site link to you, your PageRank improves. Whenever you link to an internal page (Page Within your site)  or an external page (Other websites)  you are basically sharing the PR juice with those pages. If you keep on linking external pages blindly then on next PR update you will experience a PR drop because you shared your bottle of juice with others therefore your share of juice decreased. So what to do then? Follow up

Read more on PR Juice & Linking internal pages here…

Which links should you tag as nofollow?

To make sure that your homepage may not loose the PR, simply add a nofollow tag to links that point to external sites. When robots crawl your content they look for links on your page and if you have tagged a link as nofollow then robots will crawl it as normal text and they will not bother looking at where the link is taking them. This prevents the PR flow to those sites tagged as nofollow. Always link mega sites and social networks as nofollow but never add a nofollow tag to any internal page. Some examples include:

  1. Facebook Profiles, Pages, Developers page etc
  2. Google Services such as Gmail, Google+, Adsense, Feedburner, Blogger, YouTube etc.
  3. Mozilla and Chrome and other browser add-on pages
  4. Microsoft, Yahoo, Google
  5. Torrent links, rapidshare links, megashare links etc etc.
  6. Demo, Download and Iframed Pages
  7. and Thousand others…

To learn how to add a nofollow tag to a link please read this post:

So which links should be tagged as dofollow?

In real terminology there is nothing such as dofollow Tag When you leave a link in its original form without adding a nofollow tag then it means that the link is dofollow. The spiders will crawl the link, index it and will count it as an external link thereby sharing your PR juice with that external page that you have linked. So which should be kept as normal? The answer is: All Internal Links/Inbound Links and niche links.

Internal links will help spiders crawl your pages more deeply and they will get indexed often. When you link to a previous relevant post, the spider will go and check where the link is taking him thus re-indexing the previous post. This improves your search listings.

Niche links can be can not be dofollow. Always give a link to a friend’s blog or to a blog that shares the same content as you do. Of course you are linking to him because you liked his content and you wish to share his content with your readers. This is also a polite thing and more importantly when that person finds that you have linked to him then may be someday he would link to you too as a thanksgiving. Most people make network friends this way.

Now lets see how Google supports whatever I shared today:

I hope this little post may help most of you in better understanding in-page and off-page link building. If you have any question you are most welcomed to post your query. Hope you utilize and maintain your PageRanks well because after all that is one proof of your hard work. Good day friends. :>

Add Auto Comment Count Below Post Titles in Blogger

auto-comment-countComment bubbles or comment links are often added to blogger templates to let readers now how popular a post is and what kind of hot discussion is going on. I am sure almost every template has this feature by default but with a incorrectly programmed code. If you observe carefully the comment count links under each of my post titles follow a order. When there are no comments posted the link says “Be the First to comment!” and when there is just one comment it says “1 comment so far” and when the comments are more than one then it says “x comments so far” . This makes things beautiful and professional. Most of the comment count links on blogger templates just show the same text irrespective of the number of comments posted. You must make sure you encourage readers to post their views by using different variations of bubble texts. Lets add this automatically working comment link just below post titles along with a comment bubble.

 

How To Add Automatic Comment Count Link

  1. Go To BLogger > Design > Edit HTML
  2. Backup your template
  3. Click the Expand Widgets Template box
  4. Search for this,

<div class='post-header-line-1'>

If you could not find it then search for this code instead,

<data:post.title/>
        </b:if>
     </b:if>
      </h2>
    </b:if>

 

and just below anyone of them paste the code below,

<span class='post-comment-link' style='Float:right;'>
        <b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != &quot;item&quot;'>
          <b:if cond='data:post.allowComments'>
            <a class='comment-link' expr:href='data:post.addCommentUrl' expr:onclick='data:post.addCommentOnclick' style='background:url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh87LpH441CH-KYxeQ8ITfmgwgpjnGjjtjhALTawrW9BL_2kAJMq0kBOT4K123JJbnPzFho_U2VwxLu3ovaAr4rayoEuzimQacgXiBcZlhPxasleMMzZK58iyqptoAw6GxGjWgk7aEy-LyM/s400/icon_comments.png) no-repeat;Padding-left:20px;'><b:if cond='data:post.numComments == 0'>Be the first to comment!<b:else/> <b:if cond='data:post.numComments == 1'><data:post.numComments/> Comment so far<b:else/><data:post.numComments/> Comments so far</b:if> </b:if></a>
          </b:if>
        </b:if>
      </span>

 

 

You can replace the bolded text with anything you like or you can simply keep it as it is. If you wish to change the comment bubble image with one of yours then simply change the highlighted yellow image link with your bubble image link.

 

     5. Save your template and view your blog to see it in action.

The link will appear only on homepages. If you wish the link to appear even on post pages then simply delete the purple text. Have Fun! :>

Add Google Plus Profile Button To Blogger Blogs

google-plus-buttonsSince a new social networking fellow has taken birth known as Google+, therefore it is now important that you pay due importance to your Google+ Fan list by adding a profile button on your blogs so that people could easily find you and follow your updates. A fair amount of traffic can be received from Google plus especially using the Sparks feature. To add the official Google+ profile button on your blogs kindly follow the easy steps below.

How To Add Google+ Profile Buttons To Blogger?

  1. Go To Blogger > Design
  2. Select HTML/JavaScript widget
  3. Paste this code inside it,

<a rel="author" href=https://plus.google.com/107381172453188253394/posts>
  <img src="http://www.google.com/images/icons/ui/gprofile_button-32.png" width="32" height="32">
</a>

Please replace the bolded text with your Google+ Profile URL. You can copy the URL from your address bar by going to your profile page as shown below,

google profile url

      4.   Save your widget and you are done!

There are four sizes available. The above code uses the standard size if you wish to use a different size then replace the yellow highlighted code above with one of these.

Small Size: 16px

 

imageimageimageimage

  <img src="http://www.google.com/images/icons/ui/gprofile_button-16.png" width="16" height="16">

Standard Size: 32px

 

<img src="http://www.google.com/images/icons/ui/gprofile_button-32.png" width="32" height="32">

Medium Size: 44px

<img src="http://www.google.com/images/icons/ui/gprofile_button-44.png" width="44" height="44">

Tall Size: 64px

  <img src="http://www.google.com/images/icons/ui/gprofile_button-64.png" width="64" height="64">

Read Google Plus Notifications on Your Desktop

Google+ NotificationsDanny has created a useful windows utility software named G+ Notifier. It fetches latest updates from your Google Plus network and displays notifications on your windows toolbar. It is extremely easy to install and use. Since there is no API for Google+ as yet therefore this application uses the Awesomium Web-Browser Framework. User will be prompted to login to Google+ on startup. The browser window is kept open but hidden on your toolbar and G+ Notifier will fetch data and display it to you on a real-time while you work on your computer. At present it is compatible with all latest versions of windows OS.  It is an open-source project so you can fully customize it and develop it further using the source code if you are good with algorithm.

 

Google+ Notifications

How to install G+ Notifier

  1. Download This Zip File
  2. Extract the file using winrar or winzip
  3. Run DanTup.GPlusNotifier.exe to start the application. You can be prompted to download the latest version of .Net framework. You can download it from here.
  4. That’s it you are done!

Now you will be alerted with a pop-up message whenever an activity takes place on your Google+ profile, you will be notified. You just need to click the icon on your system tray to find out what new comment, photo tag, video tag have you received or where have you been mentioned. Have fun! :)

How To Delete Circles In Google Plus?

delete circlesCircles are one of the best features of Google+ that gives you more control over your privacy. You can categorize your friends in different circles and share stuff with people you want. However sometimes you wish to block a person in a specific circle or you may wish to delete the circle completely without loosing the contacts. According to Google+ if you delete a circle then the people in that circles will get disconnected from your updates and will not be able to see your stream updates. However there is a work around which we will discuss here.

 

Create a Circle

To create a circle kindly read the simple steps on my earlier post which you can read by reading this tutorial:

Delete a circle

To delete a circle simply do this:

  1. Go to your Google Plus account and click on circles

     2.    Right click on any circle you wish to delete and choose Delete Circle   

Delete a circle

Note:- If you do this then you will loose all contacts in that circle though they will still me in your friends list. In order to avoid this choose people you don’t want in the circle and drag them out. A red –1 sign will animate indicating that the person is removed from your circle.

remove a person from circle

Use your mouse cursor and pull out that person from the circle. Do the same for all you don’t want in the circle and wish to remove them from that category. This is how you remove a person from a circle.You have now successfully removed a person from a circle.

Block a person

You can also block a person in a circle by right clicking the circle and choosing Edit Circle

A new window will open. Select a person and then choose more option from the top-right corner of the window as shown below.

block a person

Now select Block. That’s it. Now that person wont receive any updates you share with this circle. Hope this helps most of you. Have fun. :>

Watch Live Tarawih Prayers From Makkah on YouTube



tarawih in masjid ul haramIn this blessed month of ramadan, a YouTube channel named MakkahLive has been launched that shows live prayers from Al Masjid al-Haram in Saudi Arabia.  This is indeed a Ramadan gift from Google To Muslims worldwide. The prayers from the holy city are recorded live and broadcasted live through YouTube. Both audio and translation makes your heart feel as if you are in Makkah. The video stream was made live on July 31 2011. For the time being HD quality is not available but sound quality and buffering seems good.







Masjid ul haram is the largest Mosque in the world. Where often the largest human gathering takes place during Hajj pilgrimage.


Watch Live Stream from Al-Masjid al-Haram in Mecca



You can watch and hear the prayers going on live on our blog too. Just hit the play button to take a live tour.





2012 Live Tarawih Prayer










I wish peace and blessings for everyone in this beautiful month of ramadan. Be blessed and stay happy. Peace out! :>