No-follow for article directory?
-
My clients pull from a central article directory on our server (medical directory), as the information is about standard medical issues. This said, the MOZ analytics is showing these articles for each client as indexed and duplicate in content, descriptions, titles, etc. Would it be better to use a no-follow for these articles to avoid looking like duplicate content, or should I consider overhauling the resource section into static pages and making each article unique to each client-considering the latest updates in Google?
Any help/insight would be greatly appreciated!!!!!
Thanks
-
OK, so I think my last paragraph might be the best option.
Let me explain.
Is the content also hosted on a master site that you own. Or is it only available on the sites you distribute it to? i.e is there a main source?
If yes, I would re-write the content taking small snippets of text from the original article and write a few paragraphs, this way you can reduce the amount of work you need to do. Then I would link to that main source but using a nofollow link.
So essentially you have all your sites with some unique content that references the master piece of content in some way and links to it for further reading if need be.
If you no index the content then those sites will never have a chance of ranking for those key phrases.
If there is no original source of that content hosted on a master site somewhere then re-write the content or noindex it. All those sites hosting the exact same content is not good for any of them.
-
Hi Gary-thanks for your response. Basically, we offer as a part of my company's services a medical article directory that pulls from our server, but is used for all of our clients' sites. So I think what I am asking is should I noindex the articles, even though it is valuable content or do I have to rewrite the content for each client? I don't understand your last paragraph. Could you please explain? Thanks again for your insight and help!!!!
-
So you have multiple clients all in the same field that each have the same content on their sites?
What links are on those articles that require a nofollow? or do you mean that you should noindex the content?
Re-writing the content is a good idea and will remove any Panda de-valuations you might have as a result of duplicate/shared content. It will be hard to compete with that content if it is distributed to so many places.
It might be a good idea to take references from each article and point nofolllow links to those articles. and surround those references with some unique content.
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
-
Blog article cannibalizes our home page
Hello there, We're having a rather big SEO issue that I’m hoping someone here can help us with, perhaps having experienced the same thing or simply understanding what's going on. Since around June, our website's home page has lost the majority of its most important rankings. Not just dropping, but losing them entirely and all at once. We think it was self-inflicted: Almost at the same time, a blog article of ours (which we had recently updated) started ranking for almost all the same keywords. While our home page is a commercial page highlighting only our own product, the article that usurped the position is a comparison article, comparing our own solution to competitors. The reason we created that article is because we noticed a trend of Google increasingly favoring such comparison articles over dedicated product pages. But of course we didn’t plan to cannibalize our own home page with it. My question is whether anyone has experience with such a case? Is there a way to "tell"/influence Google to rank our home page again, instead of ranking that article? Thanks a lot, Pascal
Technical SEO | | Maximuxxx1 -
Escort directory page indexing issues
Re; escortdirectory-uk.com, escortdirectory-usa.com, escortdirectory-oz.com.au,
Technical SEO | | ZuricoDrexia
Hi, We are an escort directory with 10 years history. We have multiple locations within the following countries, UK, USA, AUS. Although many of our locations (towns and cities) index on page one of Google, just as many do not. Can anyone give us a clue as to why this may be?0 -
No Follow & Rel Canon for Product Filters
Our site uses Canonicals to address duplicate content issues with product/facet filtering. example: www.mysite.com/product?color=blue Relcanon= www.mysite.com/product However, our site is also using no follow for all of the "filters" on a page (so all ?color=, etc. links are no follow). What is the benefit of utilizing the no follow on the filters if we have the rel canon in place? Is this an effort to save crawl budget? Are we giving up possible SEO juice by having the no follow and not having the crawler get to the canonical tag and subsequently reference the main page? Is this just something we just forget about? I hope we're not giving up SEO juice by
Technical SEO | | Remke0 -
Hi! I first wrote an article on my medium blog but am now launching my site. a) how can I get a canonical tag on medium without importing and b) any issue with claiming blog is original when medium was posted first?
Hi! As above, I wrote this article on my medium blog but am now launching my site, UnderstandingJiuJitsu.com. I have the post saved as a draft because I don't want to get pinged by google. a) how can I get a canonical tag on medium without importing and b) any issue with claiming the UJJ.com post is original when medium was posted first? Thanks and health, Elliott
Technical SEO | | OpenMat0 -
Should a login page for a payroll / timekeeping comp[any be no follow for robots.txt?
I am managing a Timekeeping/Payroll company. My question is about the customer login page. Would this typically be nofollow for robots?
Technical SEO | | donsilvernail0 -
404 Errors for Form Generated Pages - No index, no follow or 301 redirect
Hi there I wonder if someone can help me out and provide the best solution for a problem with form generated pages. I have blocked the search results pages from being indexed by using the 'no index' tag, and I wondered if I should take this approach for the following pages. I have seen a huge increase in 404 errors since the new site structure and forms being filled in. This is because every time a form is filled in, this generates a new page, which only Google Search Console is reporting as a 404. Whilst some 404's can be explained and resolved, I wondered what is best to prevent Google from crawling these pages, like this: mydomain.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/TopCategoriesDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=90&catalogId=1008&homePage=Y Implement 301 redirect using rules, which will mean that all these pages will redirect to the homepage. Whilst in theory this will protect any linked to pages, it does not resolve this issue of why GSC is recording as 404's in the first place. Also could come across to Google as 100,000+ redirected links, which might look spammy. Place No index tag on these pages too, so they will not get picked up, in the same way the search result pages are not being indexed. Block in robots - this will prevent any 'result' pages being crawled, which will improve the crawl time currently being taken up. However, I'm not entirely sure if the block will be possible? I would need to block anything after the domain/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/TopCategoriesDisplay?. Hopefully this is possible? The no index tag will take time to set up, as needs to be scheduled in with development team, but the robots.txt will be an quicker fix as this can be done in GSC. I really appreciate any feedback on this one. Many thanks
Technical SEO | | Ric_McHale0 -
Rel canonical with index follow on query string URLs
Hi guys, Quick question regarding the rel canonical tag. I have lots of links pointing at me with query strings and previously used some code to determine if query strings were in the URL and if they were then not to index that page. If there weren't query strings then the page would be indexed and followed. I assume I can now use the rel canonical tag on each of these pages so the value goes to the proper URL minus any query string. However do I need to have the rel canonical tag above the index, follow tag on the page? So URL is site.com/page.html?ref=ABC meta robots is "index, follow" Rel canonical is "site.com/page.html" Does the order of the meta robots and canonical tag matter? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | panini0 -
If you add a no follow to a time sensitive link, will it get picked up as broken link 404 in WMT report?
We have a client who publishes deals that are time sensitive. Links to the deals expire and so Google's crawlers are picking them up and finding a 404 If I no follow them, will the 404's still get picked up and reported in WMT? The same question applies to SEOMoz Pro.
Technical SEO | | Red_Mud_Rookie0