No index directory pages?
-
All,
I have a site built on WordPress with directory software (edirectory) on the backend that houses a directory of members. The Wordpress portion of the site is full of content and drives traffic through to the directory. Like most directories, the results pages are thin on content and mainly contain links to member profiles.
Is it best to simply no index the search results for the directory portion of the site?
-
Thin content is something penalized by Google's Panda, and to avoid it, definitely use James' suggestions depending on what you want from your site.
-
Thanks James. So, if it were you, you would not simply let the pages be crawled without utilizing one of the tactics mentioned above?
-
You could utilise the canonical tags on these pages and point them to rich content related pages, or if you do not want to you could just no index the files in robots.txt.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
"One Page With Two Links To Same Page; We Counted The First Link" Is this true?
I read this to day http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-one-page-two-links-page-counted-first-link-192718 I thought to myself, yep, thats what I been reading in Moz for years ( pitty Matt could not confirm that still the case for 2014) But reading though the comments Michael Martinez of http://www.seo-theory.com/ pointed out that Mat says "...the last time I checked, was 2009, and back then -- uh, we might, for example, only have selected one of the links from a given page."
Technical SEO | | PaddyDisplays
Which would imply that is does not not mean it always the first link. Michael goes on to say "Back in 2008 when Rand WRONGLY claimed that Google was only counting the first link (I shared results of a test where it passed anchor text from TWO links on the same page)" then goes on to say " In practice the search engine sometimes skipped over links and took anchor text from a second or third link down the page." For me this is significant. I know people that have had "SEO experts" recommend that they should have a blog attached to there e-commence site and post blog posts (with no real interest for readers) with anchor text links to you landing pages. I thought that posting blog post just for anchor text link was a waste of time if you are already linking to the landing page with in a main navigation as google would see that link first. But if Michael is correct then these type of blog posts anchor text link blog posts would have value But who is' right Rand or Michael?0 -
After I 301 redirect duplicate pages to my rel=canonical page, do I need to add any tags or code to the non canonical pages?
I have many duplicate pages. Some pages have 2-3 duplicates. Most of which have Uppercase and Lowercase paths (generated by Microsoft IIS). Does this implementation of 301 and rel=canonical suffice? Or is there more I could do to optimize the passing of duplicate page link juice to the canonical. THANK YOU!
Technical SEO | | PFTools0 -
Pages removed from Google index?
Hi All, I had around 2,300 pages in the google index until a week ago. The index removed a load and left me with 152 submitted, 152 indexed? I have just re-submitted my sitemap and will wait to see what happens. Any idea why it has done this? I have seen a drop in my rankings since. Thanks
Technical SEO | | TomLondon0 -
How to verify a page-by-page level 301 redirect was done correctly?
Hello, I told some tech guys to do a page-by-page relevant 301 redirect (as talked about in Matt Cutts video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA) when a company wanted to move to a new domain when their site was getting redesigned. I found out they did a 302 redirect on accident and had to fix that, so now I don't trust they did the page-by-page relevant redirect. I have a feeling they just redirected all of the pages on the old domain to the homepage of the new domain. How could I confirm this suspicion? I run the old domain through screaming frog and it only shows 1 URL - the homepage. Does that mean they took all of the pages on the old domain offline? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | EvolveCreative0 -
What can be the cause of my inner pages ranking higher than my home page?
If you do a search for my own company name or products we sell the inner pages rank higher than the homepage and if you do a search for exact content from my home page my home page doesn't show in the results. My homepage shows when you do a site: search so not sure what is causing this.
Technical SEO | | deciph220 -
Will rel=canonical cause a page to be indexed?
Say I have 2 pages with duplicate content: One of them is: http://www.originalsite.com/originalpage This page is the one I want to be indexed on google (domain rank already built, etc.) http://www.originalpage.com is more of an ease of use domain, primarily for printed material. If both of these sites are identical, will rel=canonical pointing to "http://www.originalsite.com/originalpage" cause it to be indexed? I do not plan on having any links on my site going to "http://www.originalsite.com/originalpage", they would instead go to "http://www.originalpage.com".
Technical SEO | | jgower0 -
Page not being indexed
Hi all, On our site we have a lot of bookmaker reviews, and we are ranking pretty good for most bookmaker names as keywords, however a single bookmaker seems to have been shunned by Google. For a search "betsafe" in Denmark, this page does not appear among the top 50: http://www.betxpert.com/bookmakere/betsafe All of our other review pages rank in top 10-20 for the bookmaker name as keyword. What to do if Google has "banned" a page? Best regards, Rasmus
Technical SEO | | rasmusbang0
