4) Link Sculpting
Why it Killed Yesterday
Years ago, the search engines got together and created the ?nofollow? tag. Designed initially as a way to discourage blog comment spammers, the tag quickly turned into a requirement to mark paid links. It was a way for us to notify the search engines which links should not pass any link value to the linking page due to it not being a free, organic link.
It didn?t take long for SEOs jump on that as a way to ?sculpt? how link flow should be passed through the site. Essentially, SEOs believe that if you had ten outgoing links on a page, and you nofollowed all but one of them, the ?dofollow? page would receive 100% of the outgoing link value.
Got a page that you don?t want ?stealing? link value from other pages? No problem, just add a nofollow tag to all the links and it?s just as if that link wasn?t there! If Page A has three links to Page B, you would nofollow two of those links so only the value of one of those links was lost.
Why it Will Get You Killed Today
The problem with link sculpting is it never really worked. According to Google, a nofollowed link doesn?t prevent the link value from flowing out of the page, it just prevents it from flowing into the linked page. The link value is still lost.
If you have the same ten links, all but one nofollowed, the dofollow link passes only one-tenth of total value available. The other nine-tenths is lost. Gone. Kaput.
Nofollow tags should not be used for internal site links. They should only be used for external links to other sites that you don?t want to pass link value to (or are paid ad links). When you fill your own site with nofollow links to your own pages, you?re just hurting yourself. You?re not hoarding page value, you?re causing it to disintegrate into thin air.
How to Kill it for Tomorrow and (maybe) Forever
So link sculpting doesn?t work, and we don?t want to lose page value by adding links that don?t pass it on. The problem is, sometimes there are hyperlinks that have to be added to your site that are designed to perform a function rather than going to other site pages. Those links, essentially, are causing you to lose page value.
The solution, then, is to eliminate the hyperlink from those functions. Just as if someone was using their mouse to click on a tool, those clicks don?t count as hyperlinks. Similarly, if someone wants to logout, view cart, socialize a post, write a review, sort, filter, compare, email page, etc., those functions also shouldn?t count as a link to a page. But as long as you are using HTML hyperlinks for those actions, they most likely do count as links.
Instead of using HTML, however, you can use JavaScript to trigger the on-click function. Some functions will lead to other pages, but that doesn?t make them function any less. A great example of this is social sharing. That?s a function for the visitor but it?s not a ?new page? for them to visit. They do the function and come back. No need to build hyperlinks for those functions when a functional JavaScript will suffice. While Google can follow JavaScript links, there is evidence that they don?t allow link juice to pass through them.