Ever since Google dropped a bombshell on webmasters attempting to sculpt pagerank (control link juice flow using the nofollow attribute), SEOs have been trying to figure out ways to achieve the same results via other means.
Some of the percieved successful methods to sculpt pagerank include:
- Hiding/Redirecting links in Javascript (Potentially excludes up to 4% of search engine users)
- Embedding links in Flash (Google can now find links in Flash and you can potentially exclude up to 7% of users)
- Cloaking Links (against search engine guidelines)
The above methods are more risky and far more labour intensive than URL consolidation which I will discuss below:
The idea behind URL consolidation is to consolidate all pages on your site that are unimportant for driving traffic into one.
An example of such pages are ”utility pages” such as T&C’s, Privacy Policy, etc under one URL instead of each having it’s own.
In order to allow users to link to specific sections of the newly combined Utilities page, you can use the hashtag “#” to create seperate links to each of the sections of the page.
The same idea can be implemented for other pages on your site including the about us section, the advertising section and even blog comments and paginated pages.
Using URL consolidation has officially become the new pagerank sculpting, jump on the bandwagon, if you haven’t already!
