Rel=nofollow and SSL Certs

[AnthonyYoung]

Will I lose or gain seo benefit from using rel=nofollow on my SSL certificate?  every page on the site refers (links) to the cert and the server call to display the cert adds over 500ms to my page load speeds.

<updated question="">  Is there a way to display the cert to cut down on load speeds?  Also, would Google discount or penalize the site if the cert were nofollowed?</updated>

Thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

[AnthonyYoung]

So I made the SSL cert badge from Starfield Tech a simple clickable .jpg rather than a 3rd party server (which included flash... WT?) call and it cut my page load speeds site wide by 1,000ms ... pretty awesome. Thank you guys for attempting to answer my admittedly poorly asked question.

[alexhoug]

Hi Anthony,

Adding "rel=nofollow" to the link to the certificate won't affect the load time, as the link is still there along with the badge and such. All that will do is make the link not pass any value to where ever it goes. Secondly, "rel=nofollow" cannot sculpt PageRank any longer. That became ineffective over a year ago with some Google updates. They basically didn't want people to manipulate PageRank on their own sites. So the best solution would be to find a different way to display the certificate/get the point across that your site is secure.

Alex

[AdamThompson]

Adding rel=nofollow to a link won't affect your page load time.

I would not expect you to gain or lose any SEO benefit by nofollowing a link to your SSL certificate page.