Can adding "noindex" help with quality penalizations?
-
Hello Moz fellows,
I have another question about content quality and Panda related penalization.
I was wondering this: If I have an entire section of my site that has been penalized due to thin content, can adding "noindex,follow" to all pages belonging to that section help de-penalizing the rest of the site in the short term, while we work to improve those penalized pages, which is going to take a long time? Can that be considered a "short term solution" to improve the overall site scoring on Google index while we work to improve those penalized pages, and, once ready, we remove the "noindex" tag?
I am eager to know your thoughts on this possible strategy.
Thank you in advance to everyone!
-
Thank you for your posting, but I made further research on all this, and I tend to disagree with what you state.
It is now my understanding that if you remove a page from the index, that content is no longer considered by Google, because it is actually "out of the index"... therefore, if, let's say, a specific page or a specific section of the site which could have caused a site-wide "content" penalty is removed from the index, those pages are no longer affecting any algorithmic calculation on the quality of the site from a "contents" stand point, and such alleged "content-related penalty" should be lifted.
Anyone else can confirm that?
-
Hi Fabrizo,
I agree with Andy's response up above. No indexing is not as good as removing the content from the website altogether, but it still can work as long as there are no links or sitemaps that lead Google back to the low quality content.
No indexing the pages won't be a permanent solution, only a temporary one that might help you in the meantime.
-
I am sorry, but I haven't received an affirmative answer to my last inquiry above...
-
Thank you Andy for your reply.
While I was waiting for an answer here, I made further research, and it looks like this can be a good strategy to cope with Panda related penalties, at least until the "bad content" is updated and improved:
https://moz.com/community/q/noindex-vs-page-removal-panda-recovery
Your thoughts?
Thank you again!
-
Hi Fabrizio,
Yes, and no.
I have seen this work in the past and I have also seen it make no difference. My feeling these days is that no-indexing doesn't solve the issue, even while being worked on, as I have seen more occurrences of it not working.
How big a problem are you trying to deal with? I did help a company with 37k pages recover from Panda a while ago, but we have to do some pretty hefty trimming of the site in order to get it back into good shape again. There issue was that thousands of pages all had big pieces of the same content on many similar pages, so we cut out a lot of the problem areas and pulled the site into something that resembled a bit more sense.
-Andy
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
-
YouTube Ads - Disable?
Hi everyone I have been looking at removing ads from our videos - I have managed to disable the interest based ones but can't remove the location based ads.Our videos don't have copywritten material either.How can I get these ads removed? Any help would be much appreciated :)Becky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
95% of organic traffic lands in my homepage, despite having a 250 page website with a "seo optimized" hierarchical structure. Any suggestion as to what might be happening?
Challenging issue All the "usual suspects" have been discarded: all pages included in google index, no google penalties, metas optimized, kw's segregated by pages/cluster of pages to avoid cannibalization... BUT, we know we are missing something website is www.e-florex.com and is an e-commerce site based on magento Any ideas you might think are worth exploring? Thanks in advance for your help Juan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | juanmarn0 -
Why does old "Free" site ranks better than new "Optimized" site?
My client has a "free" site he set-up years ago - www.montclairbariatricsurgery.com (We'll call this the old site) that consistently outranks his current "optimized" (new) website - http://www.njbariatricsurgery.com/ The client doesn't want to get rid of his old site, which is now a competitor, because it ranks so much better. But he's invested so much in the new site with no results. A bit of background: We recently discovered the content on the new site was a direct copy of content on the old site. We had all copy on new site rewritten. This was back in April. The domain of the new site was changed on July 8th from www.Bariatrx.com to what you see now - www.njbariatricsurgery.com. Any insight you can provide would be greatly appreciated!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WhatUpHud0 -
With or without the "www." ?
Is there any benefit whatsoever to having the www. in the URL?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JordanBrown0 -
After reading of Google's so called "over-optimization" penalty, is there a penalty for changing title tags too frequently?
In other words, does title tag change frequency hurt SEO ? After changing my title tags, I have noticed a steep decline in impressions, but an increase in CTR and rankings. I'd like to once again change the title tags to try and regain impressions. Is there any penalty for changing title tags too often? From SEO forums online, there seems to be a bit of confusion on this subject...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Felix_LLC0 -
Using the Word "Free" in Metadata
Hi Forum! I've searched previous questions, and couldn't find anything related to this. I know the word "free" when used in email marketing can trigger spam filters. If I use the word "free" in my metadata (title tag, description, and keywords just for fun) will I be penalized in any way? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0 -
How Can Low Quality Links Be Removed?
Let's say that in looking in OSE that you find an overall low quality link profile. Let's say that some of those links were acquired by using article marketing systems like UAW or SEO Link Vine, which were hard hit in Penguin. Let's also say that some keywords were targeted within blog networks that passed a lot of page rank to targeted pages. Let's say that at one point in time an offshore link building team was used and they posted low quality blog comments on pages with hundreds of outbound links. Let's say as a result of the drop in SERPS that you've finally been convinced that there must be a better way and in the process join SEO Moz - and now you want to clean up the low quality link profile. How does one go about removing links on such a diverse number of sites? Are there best practices for how to remove links you longer want pointed to your site? Or is it simply best to go on about the work of building a lot of quality links and let the past be in the past? Thanks for your input Mozzers...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sdennison0 -
Has important is it to set "priority" and "frequency" in sitemaps?
Has anyone ever done any testing on setting "priority' and "frequency" in their sitemaps? What was the result? Does specifying priority or frequency help quite a bit?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline2