On Thursday, my article Sculpting Your PageRank For Maximum SEO Impact was published in Search Engine Land. In it, I describe the SEO technique of distributing the PageRank you have garnered in a strategic manner, so that the most important pages on your site get a larger slice of PageRank than your inconsequential pages (e.g. Legal Notices, Privacy Policy, Order Status, Customer Help Center, Testimonials, Email Us, View Shopping Cart, My Account, FAQ, About Us, and Shipping Info). This technique is valid for low-value outbound links too, such as “Click to Verify” VeriSign and HackerSafe seals. Doing so will save a larger share of PageRank for the remaining links to your more important pages (e.g. category pages and top-selling product pages).
I consider “sculpting” the flow of PageRank through one’s site through the use of nofollows to be one of the more untapped SEO opportunities. Indeed, in my impromptu analysis of the home pages of the Internet Retailer “Hot 100 Retail Websites,” I found only one retailer of the 100 to be sculpting PageRank with rel=nofollow to any serious degree.
For more tips about PageRank sculpting, check out my full article.
