Brand new website, should I nofollow almost all internal links?

[wlw2009]

Hi,

As I am creating a completely new website for my employer (she will have zero incoming links, even the URL will be different), would it be advantageous to allow follows to the other internal pages from the home page, but disallow follows on all other internal links on each subsequent page?

So, for example each page will have this many internal links:

Home page: 5 (all 5 service pages)

Recruiting: 1 (home link)

Services: 1 (home link)

Talent Assessment: 1 (home link)

etc.

Does this make sense to bolster the home page until we can get some links coming in?

[SEO5Team]

Not necessarily, if the internal links are correctly in place to guide visitors in the right direction , then you're ok having them on the internal pages. You mentioned only 1 internal link for the inner pages , which should be ok. The issue would be if you overdid it and had lots of keyword rich internal links created to link to other pages.

[wlw2009]

Well, I plan on having my internal links so that the visitors can go from one page to the next from any page. The layout of the website is rather simple. It will be a home page and 5 supporting pages as of now. So, each page would have a total of 6 internal links if they were followed. Is that okay or would it matter if I just made the home page the only followed link?

[SEO5Team]

as long as they are not targeting one particular keyword, you should be ok

[wlw2009]

You mean, as long as each link is its own keyword, but doesn't repeat the keyword from the homepage?

[AndyMacLean]

If its a new web site best practise is not to no follow any pages you want indexed. That said internal no follows are ignored anyway nowadays. Internal link juice manipulation, like external is not a great idea.

[SEO5Team]

yes and from a content perspective , it looks sensible and goes with the flow.

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi there,

As a general rule, you almost always want to "follow" internal links - this includes links between internal pages. To do otherwise could hurt your SEO.

Links do a lot of things. They create a path for search robots to crawl your site. They send off relevancy and popularity signals to ranking algorithms.

Is there any particular reason you thought of "nofollowing" your internal links?

About the only time you want to add nofollow to internal links is when doing so prevents search robots from going down the wrong path, such as so-called spider traps, or sometimes as a layer of protection to keep robots from crawling certain pages (not the best method to use)

Regardless, making sure your internal links are followed has many, many benefits. This is one of my favorite blog posts of all time - although a little dated, it applies to internal links as well as external: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-illustrations-on-search-engines-valuation-of-links

Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!