Pagerank sculpting, which as defined by Matt Cutts is simply trying to change how PageRank flows within your site using different methods such as the “nofollow” tag, is still plausible, however, in his post “PageRank Sculpting” he tells us why he doesn’t think you should bother doing it. Here’s an excerpt of his post on pagerank sculpting.
I wouldn’t recommend it [pagerank sculpting], because it isn’t the most effective way to utilize your PageRank. In general, I would let PageRank flow freely within your site. The notion of “PageRank sculpting” has always been a second- or third-order recommendation for us. I would recommend the first-order things to pay attention to are 1) making great content that will attract links in the first place, and 2) choosing a site architecture that makes your site usable/crawlable for humans and search engines alike.
So when is pagerank sculpting useful? According to Matt Cutts it is useful to use the “nofollow” tag for some pages such as links to a shopping cart or links to log-in pages but only “because those pages are different for every user and they aren’t that helpful to show up in search engines.” Other than that it would pay more if you spent your time optimizing your site in other ways.
Again make sure you make the best use of your time by giving attention to your site architecture and to your site’s actual content. Make sure that users find the info they need just a few clicks away from the main page and make sure that all pages you want indexed are crawlable.
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Google have never made it a secret: design your site for your readers. If you follow this advise then you can’t go wrong. It is my view that SEO is simply about doing everything you can to send a clear message about what your page is about. No more, no less. It is unfortunate that a massive industry has grown up over something that is really about following a few rules that Google themselves make very clear on their webmaster’s guide.
[...] month I wrote a post on pagerank sculpting (See “Pagerank Sculpting: Not Worth Your Time”) after reading Matt Cutts’ explanation on why there are other things you should focus on. One of [...]