FOLLOW or NOFOLLOW?
Should I use follow or nofollow for my internal links?
To follow, or not to follow… Links have several options that can be specified for search engines. One of those options is rel=”nofollow”, which instructs a search engine not to follow the link, but to continue on the current page. The questions has been asked “should I use follow or nofollow for internal links“? The quick answer is NO, you should not use rel=”nofollow”. Who says so, you may ask? See this video about Matt Cutts (from Google); he gives you an excellent answer in about 2 minutes. It is well worth the time to watch it about FOLLOW and NOFOLLOW links.
Why do some people suggest to use nofollow for internal links?
What is the reasoning behind using rel=”nofollow”? Some believe that using FOLLOW on internal links creates excessive searching and/or indexing for search engines. If this were the case, precious resources could be wasted having bots follow links that eventually all bring themselves back to the same pages. How would this benefit the website? It would seem that excessive searching within the same site would ensure a thorough indexing of it. This may not be the case, though. If there are flaws within the internal structure of your website, pages or entire sections of your website could be missed.
How important is a sitemap.xml for search engines to index my site properly?
Missing data is the last problem you want when it comes to your website. The best way to ensure that your site is indexed properly in Google, and other search engines, is to use a sitemap file–“sitemap.xml”, “page-sitemap.xml”, “post-sitemap.xml” and so on. The larger the website, the larger (or at least more thorough) the sitemap should be. One of the advantages of using a content management system (CMS) is that these files can be automatically generated and updated by the system.