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Okay, so I think I get it. The page has a fixed amount of juice divided equally among the links. Even if I nofollow some outbound links this does not preserve more link juice for the resources page or other dofollow outbound links. The juice essentially evaporates with the nofollows? Do I have it right and is this widely agreed upon among SEOs?
Recently, in a discussion on resources pages EGOL informed me that just because I had no followed the links on my my resource page, I was still leaking link juice. He mentioned that this was a recent change in Google policy.
This was quite a surprise. I have done a couple of searches on this recent change but have not found any information. Am I simply the last one on the planet to learn this and this change is widely known and understood? If so, does that mean honest resource pages (I have two such pages) that are there to help visitors are negatively impacting the site - at least in terms of SEO? If they are leaking link juice is it comparable to a followed link or a smaller amount that has less impact?
Okay, so I have a resource page listing related websites from trade folks that I know. I added these sites as a courtesy but nofollowed them of course. Are you saying that this is harmful and these links should be converted to a reciprocal do follow and if not, removed altogether?
Here is the page if you are interested:
Great thread. I just realized my site has a site wide footer link from my developer and I had no clue! Irving stated this in an earlier post:
"if the links are nofollowed, both parties lose, PR is still leaked from the owners site and benefit is not gained for the website company"
How can this be? I thought nofollow was the very tool we used so we would not leak PR?
Hey Irving,
Thanks for these insights...I have been doing the keyword optimization on the site and perhaps that is not such a great idea. I was happy when the moz page analyzer gave me an A for the homepage but I was looking at keywords and not overall page health.
I think I need a good on-site SEO person who can systematically work through these issues and implement solutions. Naively, I thought my developer of the Magento site would bring these skills to the table but perhaps that is a very different skill set. Do you agree? If so, are there some folks you can recommend (that are reasonable and available....difficult combination I know)?
I really appreciate your time...it is kind of like therapy as I feel like I am on my own out here!
Hunter
Hey Irving,
It turned out that the Open site explorer info was erroneous.....errr. My developer spent a couple of hours trying to find something wrong.
He sink me these links to third party redirect verifications that don’t show anything like what seo moz is saying.
http://www.seologic.com/webmaster-tools/url-redirect?utf8=✓&url=www.leatherhidestore.com
http://www.internetofficer.com/seo-tool/redirect-check/
Any other advice regarding the homepage not ranking for keywords? Pretty frustrating when even the moz tools are working as they should. I did disavow some of those link exchanges per your advice.
Happy Holidays!
Hey Irving,
Thanks for responding and I have forwarded the info to my developer (who also host the site). Open site explorer can lag behind so I am not sure if it is picking up something that is no longer there. I do know that my old URL is of course no longer indexed in Google so I am not sure how my new URL could redirect to it and it not throw some sort of page not found error? Do you think duplicate content could be playing a role or is that incidental to this issue? Lastly, I wouldn't know the problem with the htaccess is I was looking right at it. Can you recommend someone who would be especially capable at resolving such an issue?
Thanks again!
Hunter
I recently move my site (www.leatherhidestore.com/servlet/StoreFront) off of the ProStores platform because I could never get Google to show my homepage in SERP results - instead always selecting random product pages to rank. However, I never had this problem with Yahoo and Bing as they always defaulted to the homepage except when the category was a better match.
Fast forward and I have just launched the site (www.leatherhidestore) on Magento Community and I STILL CANNOT GET GOOGLE TO USE MY HOMEPAGE FOR SERP RESULTS although I'm getting okay SERPS for random pages.....ERRRRRR! Of course, as if to rub salt in the wound, Yahoo and Bing are behaving just perfect. Still, I must think that if my Google would recognize my homepage (where the PR is and backlinks point to) I would be doing 10x better.
I am showing duplicate page content and title problems which the developer is trying to solve but I do not know if this will fix the homepage Google issue. I feel like I must be in some sort of canonicalization death spiral. Has anybody dealt with this issue before and will mercifully share what I should do to fix it...please!
Hunter
Hi Thomas,
Yes, like many folks I do have some crappy links. Moz is a little behind as I have BBB and about 1/2 dozen high authority links not accounted for (SEO spyglass is a better assessment of link profile). More importantly, is that some of my main competitors that have less moz authority and really crappy links are sitting on top of the SERPs. I actually have lots of keywords ranking high (especially in Yahoo and Bing where the domain is perceived correctly). Even the random products and categories that are selected by google for my keywords get respectful page 2 rank but these pages have no PR or DA and I have to think that if Google recognized my homepage as the authority page I would be neck and neck with competitors that have a fraction of the quality site (and content) that I do plus they have much more polluted linking profiles. See why I am so frustrated?
Hunter
Hi Thomas,
Yes the URL with the servlet was required by Prostores, my old platform, so when we moved over to Magento I was able to have my dedicated domain name. A 301 was put into place for the www.leatherhidestore.com/servlet/StoreFront but since the move was just done on 11/5 I am wondering if Google is still sorting this all out? This servlet URL is no longer indexed by Google and leatherhidestore.com also directs to www.leatherhidestore which is my preferred domain. I know the use of rel=canonical will help but what specifically might be going on that would lead Google to choose things like my FAQ page or randon products instead of my homepage? All my competitors have their hompage ranking so it cannot be the nature of the products. This is even more vexing since I have a solid backlink profile that nearly all points to my homepage? It does not make sense.