Removed Internal Rel=NoFollows from power internal page - how long till reflected in Google?

[MattAaron]

I just started with a client, who has an internal page (not the homepage) that gets about 70% of all total links to the site and ranks #1 for a highly competitive keyword.

For some reason, the first set of links, including the first anchor text link to the homepage are nofollowed. I removed the nofollows yesterday.

Today, The internal page has already been reindexed in Google showing the followed anchor text link to the homepage

Should I expect a jump in link juice pointing to my homepage immediately with a corresponding rankings boost? Homepage is #8 for target term.

I hope this makes sense. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[activitysuper]

Well the nofollow on the homepage link along with the others is to stop the link juice at that page, that's one of the reasons im guessing it ranks so well.

As you have allowed the links to follow and therefore the link juice, you might find some of the other pages rank a little better but the #1 page might drop but im not 100% sure so best see what others say as well.

[RyanKent]

Removed Internal Rel=NoFollows from power internal page - how long till reflected in Google?

Depending on the page's importance Google can update the page within less then an hour. The two questions i would have are:

• what is the page's PR or PA?

• does the page contain static content? or does the page's content change often?

Either way you can do a search for page in Google and check the cached page. At the top of the cached page is a date/time stamp. When the time stamp is updated you know Google has recrawled the page and had an opportunity to view the changed tags.

Parts of Google's ranking algorithm are a mystery. It may take recrawling both the home page and the internal page before Google updates the PR. I suggest checking the home page cache to see if it has been updated as well.

Once Google has crawled the changes, your pages should immediately benefit from the change. That benefit may or may not actually result in a ranking change. Generally speaking, I would not expect a ranking change because I acquired a single new link. It certainly can happen and depends entirely upon how your web pages compare with your competition.

[MattAaron]

Thanks Activity -- The amount of links (and high quality) pointing to the internal page are so strong that I don't think it will drop?? I do want to give link juice to the homepage as its' keyword is more important. It will be interesting to see what happens; how Google handles internal links that were nofollowed for years -- how fast do they react??

[MattAaron]

So the internal page has a PA of 67 -- homepage 55.

Internal page has already been indexed, waiting on the homepage to be indexed.

Thanks for your insight

[RyanKent]

Assuming those PA metrics are valid (i.e. the links are authentic) then those page values are strong. I would expect them to be updated rather quickly. I know you desire a time frame for "quickly" so I will offer 1 day as an estimate.

[MattAaron]

Thanks man. Hopefully the homepage gets reindexed soon. I will post results here in a week.

[MattAaron]

Hi Ryan,

The homepage dropped from #8 to #16 -- why would that happen?

[RyanKent]

It wouldn't be related to your removing nofollow from an internal page. Look to other changes you made with your site over the past month.

[MattAaron]

Only changes I have made over the last month is written articles and obtained links from quality sites. I highly doubt it has to do with something else than this immediate change.

[activitysuper]

When you say obtained links in the last month, how many are we talking? and did you use the same anchor text link?

Are you sure when you unlocked the PR it defiantly did not have a route to the homepage before you did it? and roughly how many pages on the site? 100, 1000, 10,000.

[RyanKent]

If you believe the follow/nofollow change had any effect on your home page ranking feel free to change it back and see if your ranking is restored. I don't have any logical explanation for the result you experienced other then an outside factor influencing the result.

[activitysuper]

Ryan, if he built a large number of links in one month to the homepage could that effect his ranking as it might look unnatural?

Or the likely-hood of that happening is very unlikely?

[MattAaron]

In the last month, 8 - 10 links of varied anchor text. Roughly 100 pages on the site.

There was a followed link to the homepage on the powerful internal page as well as a nofollow. I removed nofollows and made the first link per html code an anchor text link to the homepage.

[RyanKent]

When I search Google.com for "Career Change" I see your home page as the # 9 result.

I would share if you change your title to "Career Change" it would be better for ranking purposes. This change alone may or many not make an immediate difference, but once your ranking stabilizes and you are sure no other factors are an influence you may wish to experiment.

The only reason to add other words to the title is if you felt it would help your Click Through Rate. Generally speaking I try to rank as high as possible first, then adjust for CTR. I would therefore remove the "Can we Help You" from your title.