The whole point of a solid internal link structure about getting the end-user to the conversion point. It can also be used for search engine optimiZation in several ways. If you are using a content management system that has a keyword tagging feature you can have it search for keywords within the content and link to relevant pages. This will increase conversions and increase the time the end-user spends on your website. Robots also like internal links within content that point to other, unique relevant content and they follow these links.

This is where the use of a “nofollow” attribute comes in handy.  The nofollow was intended to reduce the certain instances of search engine spam, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing pages from being loaded with extraneous terms and links from occurring in the first place.

What it does is tell the search engines that you do not endorse the page you have linked to. Using this on internal links like your About, Contact or other pages will increase the amount and quality of links that are passed on to the important pages. A good example of this is if your template navigation is always the same; add nofollow attributes to all of the links beyond the front page so that you place in your content will get all of the benefit of the link volume.

Just be sure not to confuse the search engines by using the same keyword anchor text as the key word you are optimising the page for.  Moderation is a key strategy that can easily be overlooked.

Additionally when you are creating new pages based on the keyword selection, you can link to them from the front page or an internal doorway page built for ‘closer-to-the-root-file’ navigation. Put nofollows on everything except your anchor text that points to these new pages. If your homepage carries a good Page Rank it will pass it down to the new page and should give you a boost in the rankings. The goal is that you want to find a niche phrase, build an optimized page for it, add a link to it from a well ranking page and improve your rankings the term.