Would it make sense to add no-follow on certain interlinks?

[knielsen]

I run a job board and some results pages may display Page 1, 2, 3 last. Should I consider making those page numbers no-follow. What about sign in and join us pages? There is nothing of relevance on those pages. I have previously posted a similar question and was advised not to no-follow pages from my own site. However, I see very successful competitors no-following very few select interlinks (like the page 1, 2, 3 scenario). This does not mean their approach is the best, but it makes me question......

[Valarlf]

If the pages have relationship between them, you could use the rel canonical tag
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/canonicalization

[SEO5Team]

I would only use the no follow tag when i want to protect some information posted on the site from getting accessed by everyone. This includes any confidential internal info posted on the site or info that's behind a login. If you do not utilize the no follow attribute properly you can end up doing more harm than good. No harm in getting some additional pages indexed by Google as long as they don't compromise any data.

[mattbeswick]

As Luis says, the canonical tag would be your best bet, although that's more of a band aid than a complete fix as it's not guaranteed to be adhered to. In your example, I'd advise the following:

• Use a META Robots tag (http://www.robotstxt.org/meta.html) to NOINDEX,FOLLOW any content that you don't want to be indexed. This could include your sign in / sign up pages, etc.
• Use rel=prev and rel=next on your pagination (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html) and canonicalise back to page 1 if and only if you genuinely don't want the subpages to be indexed.

The last of those two is completely dependent on your circumstances, and I'd advise looking and thinking about things like:

• Whether you're getting organic traffic to the sub-pages (a reason not to);
• Whether they sub-pages target a different keyword to the main one (a reason not to);
• Whether the sub-pages create any duplicate content issues (a reason to do so);
• Whether having the sub-pages affects your crawl quota (if so, a reason to do so).

Finally, on the note about your competitors... there's loads of stuff that will influence rankings so don't be guided by them too much

Hope that helps - let me know if you have any more questions, or just post a link here if you want me to take a (very) quick look at your site.

Matt

[knielsen]

great answer, Matt. sub-pages should be indexed - they have SEO value. This is my site: www.hawaiijobengine.com. 
Mahalo as we say in Hawaii

[mattbeswick]

Mahalo!

I've had a -really- quick look and to me it seems that you're doing fairly well already! Being up against Career Builder, Monster and Indeed (I hope I'm seeing the correct results - did a non-pers Google.com check) is never going to be easy but the few rankings I checked look pretty good.

I'd probably leave it as it is and spend my time thinking about content creation and outreach as you've already got a great foundation

Good luck!

Matt

[knielsen]

thx, Matt. Yes, rankings are pretty OK already (.7.5 months in to the project). I think you are right: focus on more content and outreach.......

what is a non-pers google.com check? I can check my ranking compared to my competitors? Let me know the site if you can

thank you

[knielsen]

Matt, let me ask you 1 more: many of the employers posting on my site re-direct job seekers to their career websites. I have set up those external links (clients' career websites) as no-follow. This does make sense, right?

[mattbeswick]

Hi Kristian,

Sorry this is a bit late - logged off when you posted this (I'm in the UK) and only just had chance to get my 'Moz fix

"non-pers google.com" just referred to using the SEOMoz Chrome Toolbar to do a 'Non personalised' check on Google.com for your keywords. If you want to check rankings compared to your competitors, use your SEOMoz Pro account (if you have one) or if you need something large scale and custom, get in touch with AuthorityLabs.

As for the no-follows, yeah - it would make sense to me. Again, depends on the exact situation but sounds like a sensible thing to do...

Matt