Noindex
-
I have been reading a lot of conflicting information on the Link Juice ramifications of using "NoIndex". Can I get some advice for the following situation?
1. I have pages that I do not want indexed on my site. They are lead conversion pages. Just about every page on my site has links to them. If I just apply a standard link, those pages will get a ton of Link Juice that I'd like to allocate to other pages.
2. If I use "nofollow", the pages won't rank, but the link juice evaporates. I get that. I won't use "nofollow"
3. I have read that "noindex, follow" will block the pages in the SERPs, but will pass Link Juice to them. I don't think that I want this either. If I "dead end" the lead form with no navigation or links, will the juice be locked up on the page?
4. I assume that I should block the pages in robots.txt
In order to keep the pages out of the SERPs, and conserve Link Juice, what should I do? Can someone please give me a step by step process with the reasoning for what I should do here?
-
I have a private/login site where all pages are noindex, nofollow. Can I still monitor external site links with Google Analytics?
-
Yes, there is a way to keep them out of the SERPs and restrict them from getting link juice: using noindex + nofollow, but bare in mind you'll be loosing that link juice and impairing it's flow throughout your site, besides indicating Google that you don't "trust" those pages.
A workaround would be consolidating those links.
-
So what you are saying is that there is no way to keep the pages out of the serps and restrict them from getting link juice?
This is nuts. My conversion pages will be getting huge amounts of link juice - there are links to them on every page.
I'm not happy about this. Any workarounds?
-
Using robots.txt won't ensure that your pages are kept out of the SERPs, since any external link to those pages could get them indexed. If you need to make sure, the best way should be the noindex meta tag.
Now, in order not to loose your linkjuice, you should make sure to use "noindex, follow" in your meta, that way you're still preventing the pages from being indexed but you are allowing the juice flow through them.
If you want to pass the less possible juice to those pages, you should try to link them as little as possible or consolidate those links in fewer pages throughout your site.
Here's some useful information on the subject:
Google Says: Yes, You Can Still Sculpt PageRank. No You Can't Do It With Nofollow
Link Consolidation: The New PageRank Sculpting
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
-
What should I do after a failed request for validation (error with noindex, nofollow) in new Google Search Console?
Hi guys, We have the following situation: After an error message in new google search console for a large amount of pages with noindex, nofollow tag, a validation is requested before the problem is fixed. (it's incredibly stupid decision taken before asking the SEO team for advice) Google starts the validation, crawls 9 URLs and changes the status to "Failed". All other URLs are still in "pending" status. The problem has been fixed for more than 10 days, but apparently Google doesn't crawl the pages and none of the URLs is back in the index. We tried pinging several pages and html sitemaps, but there is no result. Do you think we should request for re-validation or wait more time? It there something more we could do to speed up the process?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ParisChildress0 -
Internal Clicks and CTR. Is REL=canonical better than Noindex in this case?
I currently have a search facility in a website that noindexes the search results which is ok. But when you click one of the results it takes you to a product which is noindexes as it has URL params. e.g. https://www.visitliverpool.com/accommodation/albion-guest-house-p305431?bookurl=%2Fbook-online%3Fstage%3Dunitsel%26isostartdate%3D2017-10-31%26nights%3D1%26roomReq_1_adults%3D1%26NumRoomReqs%3D1%26fuzzy%3D0%26product%3D305431 The product also exists as this which is indexed : - https://www.visitliverpool.com/accommodation/albion-guest-house-p305431 Should I canonicalise is this instance instead of no index? Does CTR apply to internal links? i.e. Does search console consider internal clicks? Are internal clicks a ranking factor?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andrew-SEO0 -
Landing pages for paid traffic and the use of noindex vs canonical
A client of mine has a lot of differentiated landing pages with only a few changes on each, but with the same intent and goal as the generic version. The generic version of the landing page is included in navigation, sitemap and is indexed on Google. The purpose of the differentiated landing pages is to include the city and some minor changes in the text/imagery to best fit the Adwords text. Other than that, the intent and purpose of the pages are the same as the main / generic page. They are not to be indexed, nor am I trying to have hidden pages linking to the generic and indexed one (I'm not going the blackhat way). So – I want to avoid that the duplicate landing pages are being indexed (obviously), but I'm not sure if I should use noindex (nofollow as well?) or rel=canonical, since these landing pages are localized campaign versions of the generic page with more or less only paid traffic to them. I don't want to be accidentally penalized, but I still need the generic / main page to rank as high as possible... What would be your recommendation on this issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ostesmorbrod0 -
Sanity Check: NoIndexing a Boatload of URLs
Hi, I'm working with a Shopify site that has about 10x more URLs in Google's index than it really ought to. This equals thousands of urls bloating the index. Shopify makes it super easy to make endless new collections of products, where none of the new collections has any new content... just a new mix of products. Over time, this makes for a ton of duplicate content. My response, aside from making other new/unique content, is to select some choice collections with KW/topic opportunities in organic and add unique content to those pages. At the same time, noindexing the other 90% of excess collections pages. The thing is there's evidently no method that I could find of just uploading a list of urls to Shopify to tag noindex. And, it's too time consuming to do this one url at a time, so I wrote a little script to add a noindex tag (not nofollow) to pages that share various identical title tags, since many of them do. This saves some time, but I have to be careful to not inadvertently noindex a page I want to keep. Here are my questions: Is this what you would do? To me it seems a little crazy that I have to do this by title tag, although faster than one at a time. Would you follow it up with a deindex request (one url at a time) with Google or just let Google figure it out over time? Are there any potential negative side effects from noindexing 90% of what Google is already aware of? Any additional ideas? Thanks! Best... Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Putting "noindex" on a page that's in an iframe... what will that mean for the parent page?
If I've got a page that is being called in an iframe, on my homepage, and I don't want that called page to be indexed.... so I put a noindex tag on the called page (but not on the homepage) what might that mean for the homepage? Nothing? Will Google, Bing, Yahoo, or anyone else, potentially see that as a noindex tag on my homepage?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Philip-DiPatrizio0 -
Should I noindex the site search page? It is generating 4% of my organic traffic.
I read about some recommendations to noindex the URL of the site search.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
Checked in analytics that site search URL generated about 4% of my total organic search traffic (<2% of sales). My reasoning is that site search may generate duplicated content issues and may prevent the more relevant product or category pages from showing up instead. Would you noindex this page or not? Any thoughts?0 -
Why do my https pages index while noindexed?
I have some tag pages on one of my sites that I meta noindexed. This worked for the http version, which they are canonical'd to but now the https:// version is indexing. The https version is both noindexed and has a canonical to the http version, but they still show up! I even have wordpress set up to redirect all https: to http! For some reason these pages are STILL showing in the SERPS though. Any experience or advice would be greatly appreciated. Example page: https://www.michaelpadway.com/tag/insurance-coverage/ Thanks all!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarloSchneider0 -
Noindex, Nofollow to previous domain
Hi, My programmer recently did a horrible mistkae by adding noindex, nofollow to our website without me noticing for two days. At the same time he did it we bought a new domain and redirected the old domain to the new domain: The Old domain is: http://www.websitebuildersworld.com and the new one is: http://www.websiteplanet.com Now unfortunatly I didn't notice the noindex,nofollow when it was on the old domain and I redirected it to websiteplanet.com before I fixed the noindex, nofollow. I fixed the problem around 10 hours ago on the new domain (www.websiteplanet.com) but the old domain didn't get indexed back (yet), so for example if you search for WebsiteBuildersWorld in google you will not reach the homepage as google deleted it because of the noindex,nofollow. My question is:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ouzan
Do you think that it will be fixed and google will retrieve websitebuildersworld homepage to his search results and then redirect it to websiteplanet? Or because I redirected websitebuildersworld.com to websiteplanet.com before letting google crawling websitebuildersworld.com without the noindex,no follow it wouldn't get indexed again? I hope I explained the problem good enough. Looking forward for your valuable replies. Thanks.0