Indexed Link Removal request in GWT, good idea?
-
Hello,
I used a plugin to no-index a lot of pages on my website, and its been couple months and they never disappeared from serps, so i used the google webmaster tool "remove urls" to ask google to remove them. Is that a good idea? Or does it look bad in googles eyes? any thoughts would help a lot.
Thanks
-
Hello Vlad,
You are using the tool correctly - as Mat said, this is what the tool is for.
There seems to be something of a consensus that removing an entire link profile (due to extended poor linking processes) is a red flag and might be negatively assessed. That being said, if you are removing a couple bad pages from your profile in order to provide a better experience (or as a response to negative SEO), this is in line with "best practices" and will not be penalized. If you have already gone to the trouble of nofollow-ing them, you should also have them removed as they might hurt you in the future if they are not addressed.
Of course, you could stick with the nofollow for now and see if it impacts your rankings negatively - if so, move to the removal. If not, there's no risk in doing nothing.
Cheers!
Rob
-
If you have set them up for removal and no longer want them in the index then go for it. That is what the tool is for.
There was some suggestion from John Mueller some time ago that lots of removals could be seen as an issue, but it seems that is an exception.
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
-
No index vs removal - Subdomains
One of my clients has a subdomain - docushare.***.edu (vs ***.edu) that they would like to not influence SEO.
On-Page Optimization | | Crescent_Sense
the question is: should they no -index these pages or remove as a subdomain? Thank You! jeremy0 -
How to remove subdomains in a clean way?
Hello, I have a main domain example.com where I have my main content and then I created 3 subdomains one.example.com, two.example.com and three.example.com I think the low ranking of my subdomains is affecting the ranking of my main domain, the one I care the most. So, I decided to get rid of the subdomains. The thing is that only for one.example.com I could transfer the content to my main domain and create 301 redirects. For the other two subdomains I cannot integrate the content in my main domain as it doesn't make sense. Whats the cleanest way to make them dissapear? (just put a redirect to my main domain even if the content is not the same) or just change the robots to "noindex" and put a 404 page in the index of each subdomain. I want to use the way that will harm the least the performance with Google. Regards!
On-Page Optimization | | Gaolga0 -
Our SEO suggests thinning our homepage - is this a good idea?
We provide a single medical service in London. Our domain is "service"london.co.uk. Our home page consists of: Welcome message (40 words) Reasons why customers choose us (720 words) - as bullet points Benefits of the service (380 words - as 6 subheadings) Then a small sample of testimonials It currently looks word doc boring so that's definitely an area we are talking to our designer about. We currently rank second or third for our most popular keywords which are mostly variations of "service london" - these go straight to our home page. Our competitors do the same. The only other pages that rank are /pricing (for "service london price") and /reviews (for a tiny proportion of rarer keywords) The main variations in the services we provide is adult and children. We have /adults and /children pages for this where we describe the actual procedures (these are relatively new pages so perhaps they will rank for "adult/children service london" in the future, but right now, they still go to the home page). Now our SEO agency suggests we spread the content into more pages: Why us page, Benefits of service page etc., (also suggested we add more high quality content pages). Our home page will be similar to what moz suggested on whiteboard Friday - a few key points then directing them towards the sub-pages to read more. However I am unsure if this is suitable for us where the great majority of our organic traffic comes from "service london". These visitors should ideally still come to our home page and I'm not sure if Google will be thrilled that my home page is now poorer in terms of content despite the fact that the home page still links to these high quality pages on my site. Would really appreciate this beautiful community's insights on this. Thank you.
On-Page Optimization | | LondonAli0 -
Internal Linking Question(s)
Is it unwise to link internally to a page more than once on the homepage. I am reading that it is considered spammy. I am also reading that it passes PR twice to the internal page instead of just once... Which is it? Is there a way to stop passing PR to the "contact us" page. I watched an older video that Matt Cutts suggested a nofollow. Now I read that this strategy is a no no? Which is it? Thanks! 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | JML11790 -
Too many links on the same page
I have a problem with to many links on the same page, and there all for the classified adds of my web site, what would be the best way to handle this.
On-Page Optimization | | clickit2getwithit0 -
Good idea to use hidden text for SEO purposes due to picky clients not allowing additional content?
I do SEO for eCommerce websites both in-house and for clients. A few of our clients want increased rankings but are not willing to allow us to make the changes internally to help make that happen. One of which is adding content to the webpages since 90% of them have very little to none. I have a couple clients that are extremely picky about what can be seen on their eCommerce website. They have the site setup the way they want it but it is not SEO friendly in the slightest. The pages (including homepage) have little to no content, and the only things they want changed are things visitors CANNOT see on the webpages (META, ALT Tags etc). The tactic i am wanting to use is often used by spammers but i have a legitimate reason to use this and wanted to know if this would be a good idea. They are wanting to target fairly competitive keywords but are unwilling to allow any on-page changes to add any information and keywords to help with rankings. I was thinking about adding text behind images or hide the text in whatever ways to prevent the end user from viewing it (except for the search engines). My idea was simply to add a paragraph or two of content for the search engines purely to help in ranking because they have a lot of pages that have zero content except for product image and title listings. Is this tactic recommended or does anyone have any other ideas for these type of situations. Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | VITALBGS
Stephen0 -
I have a client where every page has over 100 links
Some links are in the main navigation (it has a secondary and tertiary level) and some links are repeated in the left navigation. Every page has over 100 links if crawled. From a practical standpoint, would you (a) delete the 3rd-level links (or at least argue for that) or (b) rel='nofollow' them? From a usability standpoint, this setup works as they are almost one click from everything. From a crawl standpoint, I see some pages missed in google (the sitemap has over 200 links). Looking for the best on-page current SEO advice to set these guys on the road to success.
On-Page Optimization | | digimech0 -
Is this type of Internal Linking Bad or Good for my Site????
A while back we were schooled on "Link Silos" a reputable SEO source.... and one suggestion was to create links from our product pages (bottom of link silo), back up to it's higher category page. So for example... Home > Tools > Hair Dryers > "Product" On the subject product... we chose to link back to "Hair Dryers" and then "Andis" (that product's brand page. You can see this at the below product page. We added the links below "Related Categories" in the product description. http://www.beautystoponline.com/Andis-Colorwaves-Tourmaline-Hair-Dryer-Blue-Green-p/an1dry0295.htm We are now thinking this may be just too much as there is already a "bread crumb" trail at the top of the product page. These are in essence links back up to higher categories. Any input on these types of links would be appreciated.. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | BeautyStop1