Page Rank Shaping

Google frowns upon an SEO method called page rank shaping.  In fact they changed the way the rel=nofollow tag is now viewed by their bots simply to slow down page rank shaping.  Essentially, page rank shaping is do something deliberate to change how your blog/website is view in where it ranks in the search results.  Here is where it gets a little bit cloudy for a blogger.

By default as a blogger your number one goal is to get noticed by the search engines so that you get that lovely organic traffic.  Everything you do on your blog from adding regular content to optimizing your images to moderating your comments is at some level a form of page rank shaping.  You really are only doing certain things or using certain elements for their page rank appeal.  When it comes to comments, essentially unless you let every single comment through including spam you are shaping your page rank.

It started with using the rel=nofollow tag on comments so urls links on comments would not affect your PR.  In late 2010 Google announced it had not been honouring the no follow tag for at least a year.  Now, other search engines do so don't go through and remove all those tags just yet.  With Google's announcement the sage advice from SEO experts has been to moderate comments or eliminate them entirely.  Weblogs started out as online diary so really the idea of allowing comments is a moot point.  Comments came about because some blogger somewhere thought they would be the nice, touchy, good thing to do.  In an ideal world they may be but just as in real life comments can be very problematic.  In some ways without actually saying it Google is encouraging nixing comments on blogs.  It's quite clear that Google is holding bloggers responsible for any comment to the tune of it affecting PR.  So is it any surprise that bloggers are resorting to page rank shaping by removing comments, rejecting comments and simply not allowing comments all together?

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