Robots.txt vs noindex
-
I recently started working on a site that has thousands of member pages that are currently robots.txt'd out.
Most pages of the site have 1 to 6 links to these member pages, accumulating into what I regard as something of link juice cul-d-sac.
The pages themselves have little to no unique content or other relevant search play and for other reasons still want them kept out of search.
Wouldn't it be better to "noindex, follow" these pages and remove the robots.txt block from this url type? At least that way Google could crawl these pages and pass the link juice on to still other pages vs flushing it into a black hole.
BTW, the site is currently dealing with a hit from Panda 4.0 last month.
Thanks! Best... Darcy
-
if you add the meta noindex, follow tag , it will keep the page out of the SERP but allows pagerank to flow through them to other pages.
See this interview of Matt Cutts for more info : http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts.shtml
-
Hi Saijo,
Thanks for the response. Do you think that would yield the benefit I'm looking for of recapturing that lost link juice?
Do you think there'd be any downside to the switcheroo from robots.txt to noindex, follow?
Best... Darcy
-
Since you said " The pages themselves have little to no unique content or other relevant search play and for other reasons still want them kept out of search. " I would use meta robots "noindex, follow"
-
HI Lesley,
Thanks for the thoughts. I don't see this as a real option for a number of reasons, including but not limited to that there are 50,000 profiles, most with very little information. The members of this site are 95% busy professionals who aren't trying to advance their career via their profile. So, there'd be some privacy concern and the potential for tens of thousands of low content/highly templated pages. Not really a search dream come true!
Also, converting it into a system where different levels of profile completeness are acknowledged would not really resonate with this community nor would it be near the top of our engineering priorities.
What I really want to get clear on is how best to keep them search invisible while not losing link value into a robots.txt'd black hole. Really just looking for confirmation if, with those goals, "noindex, follow" and remove from robots is the way to go. I'm pretty sure it is, but would like to hear more about that.
Thanks... Darcy
-
I think what I am going to say is going to sound like it is going against the grain, but it really isn't. I have noticed in some places if you want an active community, you reward your members. Look at how moz does their forum, they don't really noindex the pages, but once you hit a point they psuedo drop the nofollow off of your profile link (it could be argued whether they really do). But the point is reward your members that are active. I would set up some automatic noindex tag in the header that grabbed the users post numbers. Then you can noindex all of the spammers and have prominent members shown in the search. If it were me that is how I would do it. I have a PA of 49 on my profile in one forum I regular, I have seen the stats, it is regularly an entry page to the forum. Another member has a 64 on a 93 domain, his is used a lot more than mine for entry as well. Think of it this way, if someone is googling my name, the second result is http://screencast.com/t/jIx7a4hcWV Moz's forum. 2nd search results still get a lot of clicks.
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
-
Schema Markup Validator vs. Rich Results Test
I am working on a schema markup project. When I test the schema code in the Schema Markup Validator, everything looks fine, no errors detected. However, when I test it in the Rich Results Test, a few errors come back.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Collegis_Education
What is the difference between these two tests? Should I trust one over the other?1 -
Http vs. https - duplicate content
Hi I have recently come across a new issue on our site, where https & http titles are showing as duplicate. I read https://moz.com/community/q/duplicate-content-and-http-and-https however, am wondering as https is now a ranking factor, blocked this can't be a good thing? We aren't in a position to roll out https everywhere, so what would be the best thing to do next? I thought about implementing canonicals? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Subdomain vs totally new domain
Problem: Our organization publish maps for public viewing using google maps. We are currently getting limited value from these links. We need to separate our public and private maps for infrastructure purposes, and are weighing up the strengths and weaknesses of separating by domain or sub domain with regards SEO and infrastructure. Current situation: maps.mycompany.com currently has a page authority of 30 and mycompany.com has a domain authority of 39. We are currently only getting links from 8 maps which are shared via social media whereas most people embed our maps on their website using an iframe which I believe doesn't do us any favour with SEO. We currently have approx 3K public maps. Question: What SEO impact can you see if we move our public maps from the subdomain maps.mycompany.com to mycompanypublicmaps.com? Thanks in advance for your help and happy to give more info if you need it!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eSpatial0 -
Two websites vs each other owned by same company
My client owns a brand and came to me with two ecommerce websites. One website sells his specific brand product and the other sells general products in his niche (including his branded product). Question is my client wants to rank each website for basically the same set of keywords. We have two choices I'd like feedback on- Choice 1 is to rank both websites for same keyword groupings so even if they are both on page 1 of the serps then they take up more real estate and share of voice. are there any negative possibilities here? Choice 2 is to recommend a shift in the position of the general industry website to bring it further away from the industry niche by focusing on different keywords so they don't compete with each other in the serps. I'm for choice 1, what about you?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rich_Coffman0 -
New Domain VS New Page Backlink?
Assuming you've already got a link from:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sam.at.Moz
sitea.com/page1 (Moz domain rank 55, Moz page rank 30) You have two choices for another link: 1. Another link on the same domain but a new page:
sitea.com/page2 (Moz domain rank 55, Moz page rank 30) 2. A link on a new domain but with a lesser domain & page rank
siteb.com/page1 (Moz domain rank 30, Moz page rank 20) Assuming you have no other links to your site - both sites are relevant to your industry, both 5 years old, both have the same number of visitors/external links/ads and the content and anchor text remains the same. Which will have a bigger impact on SERP movements? Sam0 -
Microsites: Subdomain vs own domains
I am working on a travel site about a specific region, which includes information about lots of different topics, such as weddings, surfing etc. I was wondering whether its a good idea to register domains for each topic since it would enable me to build backlinks. I would basically keep the design more or less the same and implement a nofollow navigation bar to each microsite. e.g.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kinimod
weddingsbarcelona.com
surfingbarcelona.com or should I rather go with one domain and subfolders: barcelona.com/weddings
barcelona.com/surfing I guess the second option is how I would usually do it but I just wanted to see what are the pros/cons of both options. Many thanks!0 -
Multi-Location SEO: Sites vs Pages
I just started with a new company that requires multi-location SEO for its niche product/service. Currently, we have a main corporate website, as well as, 40+ individual dealer websites (we host all). Keep in mind each of these dealers consist of only 1-2 people, so corporate I will be managing the site or sites and content strategy. Many of the individual dealer sites actually rank very well (#1-#3) in their areas for our targeted keywords, but they all use the same duplicate content. Also, there are many dealer sites that have dropped off the radar in last year, which is probably because of the duplicate and static content. So I'm at a crossroads... Attempt to redo all of these location sites with unique and local content for each or Create optimized unique pages for each of them on our main site and redirect their current local domains to their page on our site Any advise regarding which direction to go in and why. Why is very important. It will be very difficult to convince a dealer that is #1 with his local site that we are redirecting to our main site, so I need some good ammo and reasoning. Also, any tips toward achieving local seo success will be greatly appreciated, too! Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | the-coopersmith0 -
Panda Updates - robots.txt or noindex?
Hi, I have a site that I believe has been impacted by the recent Panda updates. Assuming that Google has crawled and indexed several thousand pages that are essentially the same and the site has now passed the threshold to be picked out by the Panda update, what is the best way to proceed? Is it enough to block the pages from being crawled in the future using robots.txt, or would I need to remove the pages from the index using the meta noindex tag? Of course if I block the URLs with robots.txt then Googlebot won't be able to access the page in order to see the noindex tag. Anyone have and previous experiences of doing something similar? Thanks very much.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ianmcintosh0