Nofollow tag: Should I sculpt link juice?

Hello,
Should I use nofollow tages to sculpt the link juice of my site? I'd like to hear from SEOs who have this practice in use on a site, or have stopped using this practice, as I know one time it was used by SEOs.
Sincerely,
Brian

[AussieWebmaster]

the no follow sculpting is not effective though there are varying stories about this

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/pagerank-...ow-still-works

[nicesonu]

ya you can use it to protect your site PR to share with other site that is linked with your site...

[AccuraCast]

Google's Matt Cutts himself back-tracked on it and said it wasn't a good idea after all. So perhaps you're best off using the good old method of just creating sensible navigation paths.

[BrianCosgrove]

I remember it sort of working at one point.
One problem is that most people will no follow their about us, contact us, privacy policy, to sculpt page rank.

I suspect that pages like those that are 1.) part of convention for decent websites, 2.) provide assurances against use, and 3.) provide physical location information are all things that could be detected and used in an algorithm that describes that domain's "trust".

As someone who has dealt with SEO issues and Web Analytics, I've had to do some pretty tricky things with JavaScript to have SEO-friendly URLs for search engines and trackable ones (that essentially end at the same place) for Web Analytics. I've also done something similar in reverse. One of the easiest ways to sculpt page rank is to use some convoluted JavaScript method to implement less important links. Secondly, it's to just eliminate the link from a cost/benefit standpoint. This notion won't win an award from usability and compatibility committees but it works.

The following two ideas won't change your page rank but they will help with the idea (I'm theorizing here) that Google may generally prioritize first to last with site links and content importance.
Keep boiler-plate menus lower in your code regardless of how you position them on the page with CSS.
Make links in order of importance whenever possible.

[jag]

To be simple nofollow tag do not give direct value but gives indirect value when the content is relevant.

[Robert William]

You can use rel="nofollow" attribute on each and every link on your OBL. It will safe your sites rank.

[beanstalk]

Originally Posted by AussieWebmaster

the no follow sculpting is not effective though there are varying stories about this

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/pagerank-...ow-still-works

Thanks AussieWebmaster. I read the question and you saved me hunting down the references to post them.

Dave Davies, CEO
Beanstalk SEO

[AussieWebmaster]

Originally Posted by Robert William

You can use rel="nofollow" attribute on each and every link on your OBL. It will safe your sites rank.

There are many articles that state you get bleed using that method... worked in to css possibly but the robots.txt file is also important - and also not 100%