Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Can noindexed pages accrue page authority?
-
My company's site has a large set of pages (tens of thousands) that have very thin or no content. They typically target a single low-competition keyword (and typically rank very well), but the pages have a very high bounce rate and are definitely hurting our domain's overall rankings via Panda (quality ranking).
I'm planning on recommending we noindexed these pages temporarily, and reindex each page as resources are able to fill in content.
My question is whether an individual page will be able to accrue any page authority for that target term while noindexed. We DO want to rank for all those terms, just not until we have the content to back it up. However, we're in a pretty competitive space up against domains that have been around a lot longer and have higher domain authorities. Like I said, these pages rank well right now, even with thin content. The worry is if we noindex them while we slowly build out content, will our competitors get the edge on those terms (with their subpar but continually available content)? Do you think Google will give us any credit for having had the page all along, just not always indexed?
-
Yes, Google will give you credit for adding value to pages. You must have them crawled as a Googlebot immediately after no indexing is removed.
Your no indexing will pass page rank of thin content could save you potentially from a penalty however if you have a better page redirected to that page using a 301.
You will not receive the existing traffic if your ranking for that keyword at all if you noindex it. Well, you'll lose a lot of it until it's fixed.
You will have more trouble ranking for that keyword if you remove the page from Google's index. However, if you feel your content is that thin I would recommend no indexing them if you are going to fix them. And you must be willing to fix them extremely soon. How are you going to rank for a term Organically if you no index it you will hurt it that is not currently getting traffic?
A NoIndex tag is an instruction to the search engines that you don’t want a page to be kept within their search results. You should use this when you believe you have a page that search engines might consider being of poor quality.
What does a noindex tag do?
- It is a directive, not a suggestion. I.e., Google will obey it, and not index the page.
- The page can still be crawled by Google.
- The page can still accumulate PageRank.
- The page can still pass PageRank via any links on the page.
(PageRank, in reality_, there are a lot of other signals that are potentially passed through any link. Better to say “signals passed” than “PageRank passed.”)_
Crawl frequency of a noindex page will decline over time.
Crawl frequency refers to how often Google returns to a page to check whether the page still exists, has any changes, and has accumulated or lost signals.
Typically crawl frequency will decline for any page that Google cannot index, for whatever reason. Google will try to recrawl a few times to check if the noindex, error, or whatever was blocking the crawl, is gone or fixed.
If the noindex instruction remains, Google will slowly start to lengthen the time to the next attempt to crawl the page, eventually reducing to a check about every two-to-three months to see if the no index tag is still there.
The no index page will be excluded from Google's search index, So it will not help you rank for that term unless you have other pages that are cannibalizing it and trying to rank for that term as well. If so 301 redirect the poor content page to the right content page.
Your question on page rank and no index yes page rank can accrue Google will still read the page. They will derive some information from the hypertext inside the URLs.
Before you remove content
The following are some guidelines you can use:
- Make an educated (non-biased) judgement: Is your content’s quality “worse” than this content?
- Do you cover the topic in enough length and sufficiently in-depth?
- Which aspects of this content is your page not covering completely?
- Which “user intent” queries is your content not answering?
- How can you make your content better?
- Can you use any great imagery or diagrams to supplement your content?
- Are there any YouTube or other videos which can add value to your content.
Iterate and do the above for all of the pages which are outranking yours. The first few are going to be the hardest — it’s likely that the rest will follow a similar pattern.
There are no short cuts. You’ll have to review all the pages which are outranking you to ensure you leave no gaps.
Update Your Content To Fully Answer The User Search Query
Once you’ve seen what you are up against, you need to update your content.
To put it simply, your content needs to be better than the competition. It also needs to fully answer the user search intent which we have identified previously.
Make it the BEST content out there.
Given that you’ve already analyzed your competitors’ content, you should have a pretty good idea of what your content is missing.
Supplement your existing content with that additional content, but
- Don’t rewrite it completely. You’ll likely lose the precious content that Google was ranking you for.
- Don’t write a new post with the hope that this will rank better. It’s a much longer and harder journey than pushing up your already existing content.
- Of course, don’t change the URL.
As discovered in this case study 468% traffic increase case study, Google will reward you for your efforts.
Use the judgment calls from your competitive research to plan what needs to be added or updated.
Enhance it with any missing content
While looking at the organic keywords which you are ranking for you might come across user search intent keywords for which you have no content.
Let’s say, for example; your content discusses enabling Joomla SEF URLs.
If in your research you find that you are ranking for “disabling Joomla SEF URLs,” make sure that your refreshed content answers that query also.
These queries are pure gold — make sure you are answering them
You can see a larger version of the photos below here
Reference
- http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/duplicate-content-problems/#thin-content-classifier
- https://www.stonetemple.com/gary-illyes-what-is-noindex-and-what-does-it-do/
- https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/
** when rebuilding**
- https://moz.com/learn/seo
- https://ahrefs.com/blog/link-building/
- https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-link-building
- http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/what-is-pagerank/
this is similar because it addresses turning off pages and turning them back on
I hope this helps,
Tom
-
From a Google perspective if you noindex a page sooner or later it will be removed from the index and hence you will lose your search term.
If you have no particular need to remove the pages, create new pages with the new content (Google will like that anyway), almost certainly you will find that some of those pages will outrank the thin content pages by definition in time.
In due course you could then 301 the old link which in theory will pass on most of the authority to the new page.
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
-
Rel canonical tag from shopify page to wordpress site page
We have pages on our shopify site example - https://shop.example.com/collections/cast-aluminum-plaques/products/cast-aluminum-address-plaque That we want to put a rel canonical tag on to direct to our wordpress site page - https://www.example.com/aluminum-plaques/ We have links form the wordpress page to the shop page, and over time ahve found that google has ranked the shop pages over the wp pages, which we do not want. So we want to put rel canonical tags on the shop pages to say the wp page is the authority. I hope that makes sense, and I would appreciate your feeback and best solution. Thanks! Is that possible?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shabbirmoosa0 -
How i can increase my page authority?
Hi, I have website and i want to increase my page authority. My website is latestdatabase.com I have making more backlinks but not good page authority so far. Please give me suggest.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LatestMailingDatabase1 -
Should I apply Canonical Links from my Landing Pages to Core Website Pages?
I am working on an SEO project for the website: https://wave.com.au/ There are some core website pages, which we want to target for organic traffic, like this one: https://wave.com.au/doctors/medical-specialties/anaesthetist-jobs/ Then we have basically have another version that is set up as a landing page and used for CPC campaigns. https://wave.com.au/anaesthetists/ Essentially, my question is should I apply canonical links from the landing page versions to the core website pages (especially if I know they are only utilising them for CPC campaigns) so as to push link equity/juice across? Here is the GA data from January 1 - April 30, 2019 (Behavior > Site Content > All Pages😞
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wavelength_International0 -
Is it good or bad to add noindex for empty pages, which will get content dynamically after some days
We have followers, following, friends, etc pages for each user who creates account on our website. so when new user sign up, he may have 0 followers, 0 following and 0 friends, but over period of time he can get those lists go up. we have different pages for followers, following and friends which are allowed for google to index. When user don't have any followers/following/friends, those pages looks empty and we get issue of duplicate content and description too short. so is it better that we add noindex for those pages temporarily and remove noindex tag when there are at least 2 or more people on those pages. What are side effects of adding noindex when there is no data on those page or benefits of it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | swapnil120 -
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 -
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 the sitemap include just menu pages or all pages site wide?
I have a Drupal site that utilizes Solr, with 10 menu pages and about 4,000 pages of content. Redoing a few things and we'll need to revamp the sitemap. Typically I'd jam all pages into a single sitemap and that's it, but post-Panda, should I do anything different?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EricPacifico0 -
Paging. is it better to use noindex, follow
Is it better to use the robots meta noindex, follow tag for paging, (page 2, page 3) of Category Pages which lists items within each category or just let Google index these pages Before Panda I was not using noindex because I figured if page 2 is in Google's index then the items on page 2 are more likely to be in Google's index. Also then each item has an internal link So after I got hit by panda, I'm thinking well page 2 has no unique content only a list of links with a short excerpt from each item which can be found on each items page so it's not unique content, maybe that contributed to Panda penalty. So I place the meta tag noindex, follow on every page 2,3 for each category page. Page 1 of each category page has a short introduction so i hope that it is enough to make it "thick" content (is that a word :-)) My visitors don't want long introductions, it hurts bounce rate and time on site. Now I'm wondering if that is common practice and if items on page 2 are less likely to be indexed since they have no internal links from an indexed page Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | donthe0