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.
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?
-
In that case, you can create some rules in your robot.txt file. All depends on the configuration of your site. Also, you need to check on your search console and your crawl budget.
As I mentioned all depends on your site. If you deal with 10 new users per day, just take it easy, config your robot.txt file in the other hand if you deal with 1000 or 10000 users, in that case, you will need to think in a better solution.
The first idea that comes to my mind is to create a script on javascript who evaluate some parameters on those pages and if meet the parameters (do not add the tag) if not **(add the tag) **
-
As my pages are dynamic, so if I want to remove noindex after few days as page will have something. Is that google going to consider quickly enough that I removed noindex for those pages?
-
Well, if those pages do not have any value your best choice is add the no-index tag, I mean if they don't answer any question and aren't useful they will consume your crawl budget. Thin content can be identified as low-quality pages that add little to no value to the reader. Examples of thin content include duplicate pages, automatically generated content or doorway pages.
Google tries to provide the best results that match the search intent of the user. If you want to rank high, you have to convince Google that you’re answering the question of the user. This isn’t possible if you’re not willing to write extensively on the topic you like to rank for. Thin content rarely qualifies for Google as the best result. As a minimum, Google has to know what your page is about to know if it should display your result to the user. So try to write enjoyable, informative copy, to make Google, but first an foremost, your users happy.
How to Determine if a Page is "Low Quality"
https://moz.com/blog/low-quality-pagesWhat is Thin Content and Why is it Bad for SEO?
https://www.custard.co.uk/thin-content/How to Turn Low-Value Content Into Neatly
https://moz.com/blog/low-value-content-next-levelNow is a good idea to familiarize yourself with Google’s Quality Guidelines. Think long and hard about whether you may be doing this, intentionally or accidentally.
You’re probably not straight-up spamming people, but you could do better.
the golden rule to identify if your page needs the no- index tag or not, is very simple
“Does this add value for your visitors?” Well, does it?Also, check what Google says about it** "Thin content with little or no added value"**
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3-obcXkyA4IN SUMMARY, Adding the no-index tag to unuseful pages will not hurt your site
Hope this info helps you with your question.
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
-
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 -
Best way to "Prune" bad content from large sites?
I am in process of pruning my sites for low quality/thin content. The issue is that I have multiple sites with 40k + pages and need a more efficient way of finding the low quality content than looking at each page individually. Is there an ideal way to find the pages that are worth no indexing that will speed up the process but not potentially harm any valuable pages? Current plan of action is to pull data from analytics and if the url hasn't brought any traffic in the last 12 months then it is safe to assume it is a page that is not beneficial to the site. My concern is that some of these pages might have links pointing to them and I want to make sure we don't lose that link juice. But, assuming we just no index the pages we should still have the authority pass along...and in theory, the pages that haven't brought any traffic to the site in a year probably don't have much authority to begin with. Recommendations on best way to prune content on sites with hundreds of thousands of pages efficiently? Also, is there a benefit to no indexing the pages vs deleting them? What is the preferred method, and why?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | atomiconline0 -
Having 2 brands with the same content - will this work from an SEO perspective
Hi All, I would love if someone could help and provide some insights on this. We're a financial institution and have a set of products that we offer. We have recently joined with another brand and will now be offering all our products to their customers. What we are looking to do is have 1 site that masks the content for both sites so it appears as there are 2 seperate brands with different content - in fact we have a main site and then a sister brand that offers the same products. Is there anyway to do this so when someone searches for Credit Card from Brand A it is indexed under Brand A and same when someone searched for Credit Card from Brand B it is indexed under Brand B. The one thing is we would not want to rel:can the pages nor be penalised by googles latest PR algorithm. Hope someone can help! Thanks Dave
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CFCU1 -
Should I be using meta robots tags on thank you pages with little content?
I'm working on a website with hundreds of thank you pages, does it make sense to no follow, no index these pages since there's little content on them? I'm thinking this should save me some crawl budget overall but is there any risk in cutting out the internal links found on the thank you pages? (These are only standard site-wide footer and navigation links.) Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GSO0 -
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 -
How do I get rel='canonical' to eliminate the trailing slash on my home page??
I have been searching high and low. Please help if you can, and thank you if you spend the time reading this. I think this issue may be affecting most pages. SUMMARY: I want to eliminate the trailing slash that is appended to my website. SPECIFIC ISSUE: I want www.threewaystoharems.com to showing up to users and search engines without the trailing slash but try as I might it shows up like www.threewaystoharems.com/ which is the canonical link. WHY? and I'm concerned my back-links to the link without the trailing slash will not be recognized but most people are going to backlink me without a trailing slash. I don't want to loose linkjuice from the people and the search engines not being in consensus about what my page address is. THINGS I"VE TRIED: (1) I've gone in my wordpress settings under permalinks and tried to specify no trailing slash. I can do this here but not for the home page. (2) I've tried using the SEO by yoast to set the canonical page. This would work if I had a static front page, but my front page is of blog posts and so there is no advanced page settings to set the canonical tag. (3) I'd like to just find the source code of the home page, but because it is CSS, I don't know where to find the reference. I have gone into the css files of my wordpress theme looking in header and index and everywhere else looking for a specification of what the canonical page is. I am not able to find it. I'm thinking it is actually specified in the .htaccess file. (4) Went into cpanel file manager looking for files that contain Canonical. I only found a file called canonical.php . the only thing that seemed like it was worth changing was changing line 139 from $redirect_url = home_url('/'); to $redirect_url = home_url(''); nothing happened. I'm thinking it is actually specified in the .htaccess file. (5) I have gone through the .htaccess file and put thes 4 lines at the top (didn't redirect or create the proper canonical link) and then at the bottom of the file (also didn't redirect or create the proper canonical link) : RewriteEngine on
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Dillman
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^([a-z.]+)?threewaystoharems.com$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. [NC]
RewriteRule .? http://www.%1threewaystoharems.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L] Please help friends.0 -
Meta Keywords Good or Bad
Hi All, I've been reading more about the meta keyword tag and why it may not be a good idea to include them on pages and am looking for thoughts/feedback on this idea. If you have employed this tactic, can you give me some insight into any results you saw. If you decided to not employ this tactic, why did you choose not to? I wan to understand all sides of this before employing any changes to my company's websites. Thank you for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | airnwater0 -
How get rid of duplicate content, titles, etc on php cartweaver site?
my website http://www.bartramgallery.com was created using php and cartweaver 2.0 about five years ago by a web developer. I was really happy with the results of the design was inspired to get into web development and have been studying ever since. My biggest problem at this time is that I am not knowledgable with php and the cartweaver product but am learning as I read more. The issue is that seomoz tools are reporting tons of duplicate content and duplicate title pages etc. This is likely from the dynamic urls and same pages with secondary results etc. I just made a new sitemap with auditmypc I think it was called in an attempt to get rid of all the duplicate page titles but is that going to solve anything or do I need to find another way to configure the site? There are many pages with the same content competing for page rank and it is a bit frustrating to say the least. If anyone has any advice it would be greatly appreciated even pointing me in the right direction. Thank you, Jesse
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WSOT0