Noindex : Do Follow or No Follow Tags?
-
Hello,
I have a website with tags (which have the noindex tag) on each article post.
I've been told that I should noindex/nofollow these tag pages, because they are getting link juice passed to them, and since they aren't getting indexed, it's wasting link juice to those pages, when the link juice could be passed to a page that is actually getting indexed.
What are your thoughts on this?
Also, what would be the point to noindex/follow a page, if you are noindexing that page? Isn't it just wasting link juice?
What is the proper SEO way to optimize tags.
-
I think the way you have your tags set is perfect. While having a robots=noindex tag allows google to read the page and pass pagerank, there's no point listing them in search results as they actually don't offer any valuable content; they link to, but they don't have it.
That said, google goes over your tag pages passing pagerank, which ultimately get more juice to your articles. Sometimes, within a post, you can link to a tag page within the content, so users can read more about certain topics and you are passing more juice to that tag page, although not being indexed, that tag page passes pagerank back to the articles.
The noindex has nothing (almost) to do with pagerank, it could be a tremendously useful page (you can even earn links to it from external sources), but they are only valuable to users reading your content and interested in a particular "subject" you mention within the post/context.
-
The use of nofollow does not retain link juice (Google made this change years ago). Each link uses link juice; a follow link passes link juice to the other page and nofollow throws the link juice away. You should use nofollow for paid links and if you can not vouch for the other page (e.g. spam links in a blog comment). If you link to a quality site that is not a paid link, then follow is fine.
Best,
Christopher
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
-
Mobile Canonical Tag Issue
Hey so, For our site
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ggpaul562
we have the desktop version: www.site.com/product-name/product-code/ The mobile version www.site.com/mobile/product-name/product-code So...on the desktop version we'd have the following.. | | Now my question is, what do we do as far as canonicals on the actual mobile URL? Would it be this? | |
| | OR are we NOT supposed to have mobile canonical tags whatsoever since we've already added "rel alternate" ? Would like some clarificaiton. | | |0 -
Using Hreflang Tags For Australian Domain Extension
Hi Guys, We have a company with a Australian domain www.domain.com.au which has just launched in the US market. The company is in the process of purchasing the .com version of the domain and then the plan is to have one single global .com site (like apple.com) on a new domain which would be domain.com and put both the (US version) and (Australian Version) on the new domain: domain.com (global). e.g. domain.com/us and domain.com/au However the .com version won't be available till March 2016. The company still wants to launch in the US market asap with it's current .com.au domain. which it has. So basically the current set-up is like this: http://www.domain.com.au/us/ (US homepage) http://www.domain.com.au/ (Australian homepage) I was wondering, does anyone know if hreflang tag can be used on a .com.au extension to target specific pages to the US. e.g. I was wondering will the hreflang tag override the fact that Google would automatically geo-target the .com.au extension to Australia? e.g. would the http://www.domain.com.au/us/ (US version) with the hreflang tag above be considered as the US version, even-though we it's on a .com.au domain extension? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
Noindexing Thin News Content for Panda
We've been suffering under a Panda penalty since Oct 2014. We've completely revamped the site but with this new "slow roll out" nonsense it's incredibly hard to know at what point you have to accept that you haven't done enough yet. We have thousands of news stories going back to 2001, some of which are probably thin and some of which are probably close to other news stories on the internet being articles based on press releases. I'm considering noindexing everything older than a year just in case, however, that seems a bit of overkill. The question is, if I mine the logfiles and only deindex stuff that Google sends no further traffic to after a year could this be seen as trying to game the algo or similar? Also, if the articles are noindexed but still exist, is that enough to escape a Panda penalty or does the page need to be physically gone?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlfredPennyworth0 -
Should I set up no index no follow on low quality pages?
I know it is a good idea for duplicate pages, blog tags, etc. but I remember somewhere that you can help the overall link juice of a website by adding no index no follow or no index follow low quality content pages of your website. Is it still a good idea to do this or was it never a good idea to begin with? Michael
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Michael_Rock0 -
How does the use of Dynamic meta tags effect SEO?
I'm evaluating a new client site which was built buy another design firm. My question is they are dynamically creating meta tags and I'm concerned that it is hurting their SEO. When I view the page source this is what I see. <meta name="<a class="attribute-value">keywords</a>" id="<a class="attribute-value">keywordsGoHere</a>" content="" /> <meta name="<a class="attribute-value">description</a>" id="<a class="attribute-value">descriptionGoesHere</a>" content="" /> <title id="<a class="attribute-value">titleGoesHere</a>">title> To me it looks like the tags are not being added to the page, however the title is showing when you view it in a browser and if use a spider view tool, it sees the title. I'm guess it is being called from a DB. So I'm a little concerned though that the search engines are not really seeing the title and description. I'm not worried about the keywords tag. Can anyone shed some light on how this might work? Why it might not being showing the text for the description in the page code and if that will hurt SEO? Thanks for the help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BbeS0 -
Scanning For Duplicate Canonical Tags
I'm looking for a solution for identifying pages on a site that have either empty/undefined canonical tags, or duplicate canonical tags (meaning the tag occurs twice within the same page). I've used Screaming Frog to view sitewide canonical values, but the tool cannot identify when pages use the tag twice, nor can it differentiate between pages that have an empty canonical tag and pages that have no canonical tag at all. Any help finding a tool of some sort that can assist me in doing this would be much appreciated, as I'm working with tens of thousands of pages and can't do this manually.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edmundsseo0 -
tags inside <a>tags - is this bad?</a>
Hi, I'm currently redesigning my website, and in many places, I've now decided to make links a little bit more obvious for the user, using tags within a <a>tag in order to make the entire block of text clickable. I was just wondering if this could have a negative impact in the search engines. My gut feeling is no, since I'm actually improving usability, but I guess it could have an impact on how Google looks at the anchor text? An example of the HTML is as follows: </a> <a></a> <a></a> [Cristal Night Club Hotels <address>1045 5th Street
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mjk26
Miami Beach, FL33139</address> 6.4 miles from Miami Dade County Auditorium](http://localhost:8080/frontend/venue-hotels/cristal-night-club-hotels/301022 "Hotels near Cristal Night Club") Thanks for your thoughts and comments, Best wishes Mike0 -
Can Anyone show me a site that has followed the seomoz seo rules
Hi i have been reading the seo information on here which is very interesting and i would like to know if anyone can point to any sites that have followed the rules and advice. It is great when you can read the info and rules but i feel it is also better to see a site that has followed the rules and to hear from people who have followed the information and put them into practice and explain what results they have got. I am currently building the following website http://www.womenlifestylemagazine.com so it would be great to see a site that has followed all the rules and who can explain if they work or not.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ClaireH-1848860