To Ping or *NOT* to Ping
ByHey hey!
I know it’s been a long time since I last posted. As always, being a secret ninja warrior keeps me busy…well, that and I just finished my first triathlon
visited my folks up in Seattle
took Bubba (our SEO dog) out to chase seagulls on the beach for the first time
That's a seagull up top... and the tiny dot is Bubba desparately trying to catch up...
and of course… the re-launch of SEO Networker.
But, here I am taking a little breather just so I can talk to you 
Since I last wrote, there’s been an important change with the Google algorithm that I want to share with you concerning the “nofollow” tag. In case you’re unfamiliar with the “nofollow” tag, it is a HTML tag that you can embed in your html links to “No Follow” specific links… And yes, I just used the darn word in its own definition – fux pas I know! Let me explain.
NoFollow & PageRank
So you should know something about PageRank right? If you don’t (AND don’t know about the “nofollow” tag then by gawd, visit SEO Networker and opt in to get some free lessons on fundamentals of SEO.) In a nutshell (and this is oversimplifying it) Google “grades” your webpage on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the “best”.
Now, where “nofollow” links come in is that Google looks at your outbound links and determines that each outbound link on that page is sort of like you “lending” your PR to those pages you are linking to. The more pages you link out, the more of your PageRank you have to divide by so the less each link is “worth” in terms of SEO value.
So if you webpage A has 1,000 links one of which links to webpage B… To website B, that link isn’t worth as much as if webpage A only had two links. With me?
Well, folks use to be able to mold their outbound linking (i.e. they can decide whom to pass their PageRank/SEO juice to) by putting the “nofollow” tags on those links they DON’T care about.
For example, let’s say I want to link to SEO Networker and on the same page, link to CNN. Well, I don’t care about SEOing CNN but I do care about passing my PR to SEO Networker, so I’d nofollow CNN to make all of my PR go to SEO Networker.
Well, that USE to be the case.
Nofollow No More… Sort Of
Well just recently, for whatever reason, Google decided to disallow SEOists from playing this game. They changed the nofollow tag such that no matter if you nofollow a link or not, that link still counts against your overall PageRank/SEO juice passing of the webpage. That means in the example of linking to both SEO Networker and CNN, it doesn’t matter if I nofollow the link to CNN, the mere fact that I have a link to CNN on that page diminishes the PageRank I am passing off to SEO Networker.
However, because of the nofollow, CNN will NOT benefit from the linking. Bizarre huh?
There are a lot of implications to this change along with strategies people are advocating to get around this change including using iFrame and JavaScript… But I am not going to get into that. Instead, I want to talk to you about something very WordPress specific, and that has to do with pingbacks.
To Pingback or Not?
Pingback is where if someone links to one of your posts or pages on your WordPress site, it alerts you in your comment section that someone has referred to your post and linked to it. This helps encourage discussions etc. Well, here’s the catch, pingbacks sets a link back to the person who linked to your post/page.
As you can see in the example above, there’s a link that goes out to the site that linked to my post.
That didn’t use to be a problem because the comments are by default nofollowed. But now, with this silly change done by Google, you can see how each pingback results in diminished outbound linking power of your page. 
So what I did was turn off automatic pingback (by logging into your WordPress backoffice, going to Settings -> Discussion, and uncheck “Allow link notification…”) and I approve and reject pingbacks manually. What I mean by that is I don’t reject all pingbacks. If I really like the website linking to me and think that it adds value, I leave it in. If that pingback adds social proof to me and my blog, I leave it in. If it’s someone I like/trust/do business with, whatever, I leave it in.
You get the point. Start being wary of how you are linking OUT from your webpages.
Hope that helped and please feel free to leave comments and ask questions
Raymond
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NEWS FEED
Raymond,
Thanks for pointing me in the direction of a clear and concise answer. I searched Google a lot yesterday and never got a clear answer that was easy for the SEO novice (<- = ME). Also, tell I am loving the SEO Networker Program. Two months ago I couldn't even build a website let alone be working on getting some high rankings in Google. Awesome program! If you guys get anyone that is completely new to internet marketing and is questioning whether they can do it,have them contact me and I can be a glowing recommendation for this program. I feel like I am going from being an internet marketing ZERO to being a HERO in the short time I have been in your program.
Thanks
Eric McMillan
Excellent information, Ray!
I actually had a conversation just yesterday about whether using “nofollow” was still an effective strategy, so I figured I’d drop by and refresh my memory (and make sure I have my facts straight).
Hey, don’t know if you’ve seen yet, but just this past week I finally got around to silo structuring my blog.
Thanks again for explaining this SEO stuff in language all of us “non-rocket scientists” can understand!
@Ferny Haha! I totally agree, man! We should all protest the capricious whims of one company’s algorithm having so much influence on our access to information.
Will someone please come around and kick Google’s ass! Please!
At this point, I would support an unprovoked attack by Microsoft on the Google headquarters.
There’s no reason why one company should have this much power and influence — I liked the good ol’ days when Microsoft was in control and their lazy programmers allowed us marketers to be one step ahead of the game.