Noindex, nofollow on a blog since 2009
-
Just reviewed a WordPress blog that was launched in 2009 but somehow the privacy setting was to not index it, so all this time there's been a noindex, nofollow meta tag in the header. The client couldn't figure out why masses of content wasn't showing up in search results.
I've fixed the setting and assume Google will spider in short order; the blog is a subdirectory of their main site. My question is whether there is anything else I can or should do. Can Google recognize the age of the content, or that it once had a noindex meta tag? Will it "date" the blog as of today? Has the client lost out on untold benefits from the long history of content creation? I imagine that link juice from any backlinks to the blog will now flow back to the main site; think that's true?
Just curious what others might think of this scenario and whether any other action is warranted.
-
Thanks Dan. One thing I found interesting is that Google Webmaster Tools doesn't offer any alerts about pages that aren't indexed because of meta tags, only about those included in the robots.txt file.
-
Hi
Great responses Matt and Ben, thanks!! Only things I could add are;
Webmaster Tools
- Check google webmaster tools every few days for the first 2-3 weeks.
- You may turn up some 404s or other types of errors that should be corrected.
- And keep your eyes out for any other warnings
Analytics
- You're going to spike your traffic (potentially, hopefully) in analytics big time, or at least skew the data
- Use filters and advanced segments to separate blog traffic so you can still analyze things even after a potential spike in blog search traffic.
- At minimum make an annotation of the date you made it indexable.
Dates
- Regarding the dates, I did come across this recently - I have not tested, so please take it with a grain of salt - removing dates from the SERPs - I would only recommend trying it if the content was not "time sensitive" (like a cooking recipe).
Hope all this helps!
-Dan
-
Thanks for the clarification Ben. I think I'll leave older posts as is. They've been actively posting several times a week, so there should be enough fresh content. My hope is that Google recognizes the age of the blog because it's my understanding that age factors in the ranking algorithm.
-
Ahh yeah my bad, ignore that bit. I think you'd still want to make a subtle change to each post so WordPress can set the date updated flag on the sitemap to today, that way Google will put a higher priority on the content when indexing your site.
-
Thanks, the site maps are a good idea. Ben, I'm not sure what you mean about making the content different to what Google has in its index. Because of the meta tag, it doesn't have any content in its index, right?
-
You've done the most important step (removing the noindex/nofollow) tags. The only additional thing I would do is submit (or resubmit) the XML sitemap to Google. Make sure that XML sitemap is perfect and error free so that you don't create any additional errors.
Google should be smart enough to recognize the dates. I've never had a situation where it was years between publish and index. I have however had situations where it was days or weeks in between publish and index and in those situations Google has recognize the date. I'd imagine the same is true here (assuming of course, you have the date in a recognizable format and don't change the date to today).
I'd be curious to find out what happens. Definitely update this Q&A when you find out what happens!
-
I would probably re-arrange some of the paragraphs (or add some more content) to the old posts and update them in WordPress, this then makes the content different to what Google has in its index.
I would then use the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin to regenerate your sitemap. Since you've updated and added new content to the posts their last updated date would have changed so Google will probably see this as revised content. I would submit to all major search engines as your first port of call.
In terms of the "link juice", I would say that Google will still count links to the article as a ranking factor, but because you have noindex the content wont appear in search results. So the content will have a fairly good page rank (possibly) but its being held back by the exclusion of the search engine index.
Now that the setting has been changed and the sitemap / content has been updated you should start to see the results in the search results in due time.
You could also add a few new articles of content to the blog and publicise that over social media to help get back in the game a bit quicker.
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
-
Will adding /blog/ to my urls affect SEO rankings?
Following advice from an external SEO agency I removed /blog/ from our permalinks late last year. The logic was that it a) doesn't help SEO and b) reduces the character count for the slug. Both points make sense. However, it makes segmenting blog posts from other content in Google Analytics impossible. If I were to add /blog/ back into my URLs, and redirected the permalinks, would it harm my rankings? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | GerardAdlum0 -
Duplicate blog - will it be ok to do so
Hello, One of our client is interested in creating a duplicate blog under a new URL. We told them about Google penalizing the new blog since it would have duplicate content. Will it be ok to go ahead with the plan ? Their response was there are multiple news sites that carry the same stories. So, they said that it won't matter. Cheers
Technical SEO | | Johnroger0 -
Has anyone had problems with Wordpress plugins on their blog causing payment issues on the main site?
Looking to migrate a subdomain Wordpress site onto the main domain, but the payment system breaks based on one or more of the plugins used on the blog having been linked with spammy activity in the past. Need to isolate the plugin and remove before migrating or it'll break the site! Has anyone had any similar issues with some of the following plugins? Akismet Wordfence Security Subscribe2 Timber Backup Buddy
Technical SEO | | Amelia.Coleby0 -
Best way to implement noindex tags on archived blogs
Hi, I have approximately 100 old blogs that I believe are of interest to web browsers that I'd potentially like to noindex due to the fact that they may be viewed poorly by Google, but I'd like to keep on our website. A lot of the content in the blogs is similar to one another (as we blog about the same topics quite often), which is why I believe it may be in our interests to noindex older blogs that we have newer content for on more recent blogs. Firstly does that sound like a good idea? Secondly, can I use Google Tag Manager to implement noindex tags on specific blog pages? It's a hassle to get the webmaster to add in the code, and I've found no mention of whether you can implement such tags on Tag Manager on the usual SEO blogs. Or is there a better way to implement noindex tags en masse? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | TheCarnage0 -
Using a Feedburner RSS link in your blog's header tag
It was suggested in Quick Sprout's Advanced SEO guide that it's good form to place your Feedburner RSS link into the header tag of your blog. Anyone know if this needs to be done for every page header of the blog, or just the home/main/index page? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Martin_S0 -
"nofollow pages" or "duplicate content"?
We have a huge site with lots of geographical-pages in this structure: domain.com/country/resort/hotel domain.com/country/resort/hotel/facts domain.com/country/resort/hotel/images domain.com/country/resort/hotel/excursions domain.com/country/resort/hotel/maps domain.com/country/resort/hotel/car-rental Problem is that the text on ie. /excursions is often exactly the same on .../alcudia/hotel-sea-club/excursion and .../alcudia/hotel-beach-club/excursion The two hotels offer the same excursions, and the intro text on the pages are the exact same throughout the entire site. This is also a problem on the /images and /car-rental pages. I think in most cases the only difference on these pages is the Title, description and H1. These pages do not attract a lot of visits through search-engines. But to avoid them being flagged as duplicate content (we have more than 4000 of these pages - /excursions, /maps, /car-rental, /images), do i add a nofollow-tag to these, do i block them in robots.txt or should i just leave them and live with them being flagged as duplicate content? Im waiting for our web-team to add a function to insert a geographical-name in the text, so i could add ie #HOTELNAME# in the text and thereby avoiding the duplicate text. Right now we have intros like: When you visit the hotel ... instead of: When you visit Alcudia Sea Club But untill the web-team has fixed these GEO-tags, what should i do? What would you do and why?
Technical SEO | | alsvik0 -
Could Having Blog Posts as Home Page Cause Keyword Dilution?
Something I've never been a fan of is having a blog as the home page of a site. I've always thought that it's a bit like walking into someone's house through the kitchen out back.
Technical SEO | | WilliamBay
If it's a vistors first time, it can be a little disconcerting or ackward even if they are not familiar with the writers style. But something just dawned on me, and I'd love a second opinion on this. For websites that focus on multiple keywords (in my most of my client's case it's usually a mix of Wedding Photography, Engagement Photography, Portrait Photography, Family Photography, etc). A lot of these clients will include the photos in a blog post along with a snippet of text that may talk about the people they're photographing and maybe a bit about where they photographed. But they're usually optimizing for the overarching keyword (Wedding... Portrait..., etc as per above). Now I'm wondering if having three or 5 posts on the home page, where most of them are focusing on a specific keyword like New York Wedding Photographer, is actually diluting the keyword they are trying to rank for. My theory is that if I have them move their blog to a domain.com/blog, and solely focus on the desired keyword on the home page, that they would do substantially better in the SERPs. Can anyone subtantiate this? Thanks!0 -
Nofollow and ecommerce cart/checkout pages
Hi!! Another noob question: Should I be nofollowing my site's cart and checkout pages? Or as SEs can't get to the checkout pages without either logging in or completing the form is it something I shouldn't worry about? Have read things saying both. Not sure which is correct. Thank you! Appreciate the help. Lynn
Technical SEO | | hiphound0