Ever heard of the term PageRank Sculpting? Some say it’s the craze of on-site SEO until Matt Cutts came out with the news of its apparent death. So what’s the truth about PageRank sculpting? Or sometimes known as Link sculpting? Can you still use it?
PageRank Sculpting is about trying to manipulate your page rank flow in your website through controlling your link juice flow. There are 2 types of links that you need to know: dofollow and nofollow. You sculpt page rank structure by using the nofollow attribute.
For example, you have a webpage with 5 outgoing links. You want all the Page Rank juice to flow to two of those links, so you put the nofollow attribute on the other three. During the earlier years, this could work. Now, it’s leaning more towards a negative implication than a positive one. Why?
Because this technique was abused.
Let me diagram to you in pictures how link sculpting works so you could understand it easier:
This is the normal Page Rank flow within your site. No sculpting involved.
This is how Page Rank sculpting used to be. As you can see, it was a way to put in more page rank juice to specific webpages that you want to rank. It is manipulating the Page Rank flow from one of your pages to another via interlinking and the use of nofollow tag.
This is how Page Rank sculpting looks like today. As you can see, even if you do block the link juice with a nofollow tag attribute, the linkjuice that your other webpages would get is still the same. What the nofollow tag does is that it just cuts out the linkjuice that you could have passed on to a webpage that wasn’t so important. In essence, you don’t gain anything and you lose something. Not a good idea.
The possible page rank that you could have given the webpage is cancelled out and is not re-distributed to the other webpages that you are linking to. So link sculpting is not advised any longer. In fact, the nofollow attribute is now being discouraged. Matt Cutts claims that part of their Ranking Algorithm promotes linking out to other relevant sources.
It’s up to you as to whether to believe him or not. As for me, trial and error is still the only way to go in this ever-changing profession.
Can you still use Link Sculpting?
Well I’ve stumbled upon a site that promises the use of link sculpting as a possibility until today. They claim that you can still ‘game’ Google by putting in a little JavaScript code. Of course, you won’t really know until you try, right?
But just for your curious little minds, I’ve taken the liberty to link to them just for this resource code that they have allowed to go public. You can download it here.
The code isn’t too simple and isn’t too complicated. You need at least a basic knowledge of HTML and PHP to install this code and use nofollow to your advantage.
About Sean
A website that does not make it sound to complicated love it! Thank you!
Interesting theory, the link sculpting aside, there is no loss I see from the “new” distribution of juice, just a diminished effect that dampens the flow. If correct still allows for linking to competitive sites that you respect but wish to beat on some level, enhancing the user experience with the links but not enhancing the score.
When considering javascript and the fun things that can be done to code that google can not “see” right now there is the flipside, that at some point they will catch up and then a negative will be seen, hidden in the mire of a hundred tweaks. But then we’ll have more tricks up our proverbial sleeves by then right?
Hi Sean,
It is an interesting theory, but is there any evidence about what you are saying (that PageRank wont flow to other important pages even if you block the flow to other pages with nofollow tag)?…
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There used to be evidence. Now I’m not so sure. Google is getting more and more sophisticated with its algorithm. It might have already adopted to PR sculpting as I see less and less news about it now.
Thanks for this article.I have heard about this before but didn’t know what this is called .But using any kind of javascript or code intentionally to fool google is against their terms .I’m not sure but I think if found out it can result in your site being penalized.What do you think sean ?Would like to hear your opinion about this
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For me, just stick to the basics. I wrote this article just to educate not for direct application. You can try it for educational purposes not for business practice :)
Currently I am having 10 nofollow links on my site. Among them 8 are internal and rest 2 are external So if its not helping me than it could be a reason of my SERP Drop?
I don’t think you will experience a SERP drop just by putting nofollow tags in your internal links. On the other hand, build dofollow links from external sources to increase rank.
Good article Sean on PR Sculpting. BTW Rel=nofollow tag should only be used to link out to untrusted sites, atleast that’s what I use it for. For the rest, just be natural in what you do – i.e. provide great content, link out as needed and never try to fool the Big G. Search engines are a lot smarter these days and there is no use tricking them. Matt Cutts is always reiterating on the fact that there is no need to go overboard on the SEO thingy and put all your focus and effort in providing useful, high quality content to our audience, rest will be smoothly taken cared of by the search engines.
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Good insight Eapen. I’m sure naturally linking out has its benefits – I, on the other hand, give dofollow links only to those who deserve it.
thanks for this info.. by the way.. what is the exact date of google page rank update date ?
Hi Dave,
No real exact date when it updates. You just see it when it does :)
Hi Sean, interesting to be tested, just don´t like Javas fooling around and going “live”, I understand you pointed out this risks, but anyway worth giving a try in some testing webs. I´ll come back if interesting and reasonably trustful results. Thanks
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