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.
Domain Masking SEO Impact
-
I hope I am explaining this correctly. If I need to provide any clarity please feel free to ask. We currently use a domain mask on an external platform that points back to our site. We are a non-profit and the external site allows users to create peer-to peer fundraisers that benefit our ministry. Currently we get many meta issues related to this site as well as broken links when fundraisers expire etc. We do not have a need to rank for the information from this site. Is there a way to index these pages so that they are not a part of the search engine site crawls as it relates to our site?
-
Glad to be of service!
-
Thank you for this response. This helps me a ton as I discuss with our web team on the best way to set the coding for the site so that we are not registering errors but also not hurting the actual site in any way.
-
This is a good idea, but Robots.txt stops pages being crawled - it doesn't stop pages being indexed. For that you need to fire the Meta No-Index directive on the affected URLs. If you can't edit their code you can fire the same directive through the HTTP header via X-Robots. On that linked post, you'll need to scroll down a little. If possible you could also alter those URLs to serve status code 410 (gone) so that Google knows, those URLs aren't really on your site
Note that you'll need to make the changes on the 'affected' site, not the site which is the 'source' of the masked pages / data. If you make the changes there, that site will have all the Google traffic killed as well (and they'll probably want to punch you!)
I recommend that you lead with hard signals and directives which stop Google indexing the pages on the 'affected' site (which is receiving the masked URLs / content and doesn't want them to rank). Once the pages fall out of Google's index, then you swoop in behind and put the robots.txt stuff in to stop them ever coming back
-
Depends on the CMS you use. Many CMS's can click a quick button to not index in Google search.
If that isnt an option, do it through a robots.txt file in webmaster tools.
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
-
Redirect multiple domains to 1 domain or not?
Hi there, I have client who has multiple domains that already have some PA and DA. Problem is that most websites have the same content and rank better on different keywords.
Technical SEO | | Leaf-a-mark
I want to redirect all the websites to 1 domain because it’s easier to manage and it removes any duplicate content. Question is if I redirect domain x to domain y do the rankings of domain x increase on domain y? Or is it better to keep domain x separately to generate more referral traffic to domain y? Thanks in advance! Cheers0 -
We switched the domain from www.blog.domain.com to domain.com/blog.
We switched the domain from www.blog.domain.com to domain.com/blog. This was done with the purpose of gaining backlinks to our main website as well along with to our blog. This set us very low in organic traffic and not to mention, lost the backlinks. For anything, they are being redirected to 301 code. Kindly suggest changes to bring back all the traffic.
Technical SEO | | arun.negi0 -
Schema for Banks and SEO
I'm researching Schema opportunities for a bank, but besides the shema markup available today (like bankorcreditunion) and developments with FIBO, I can find no answer as to the effect of tagging interest rates and such in terms of SERP/CTR performance or visibility. Does anyone have a case study to share or some insight on the matter?
Technical SEO | | Netsociety0 -
Redirect typo domains
Hi, What's the "correct" way of redirecting typo domains? DNS A record goes to the same ip address as the correct domain name Then 301 redirects for each typo domain in the .htaccess Subdomains on typo urls still redirect to www or should they redirect to the subdomain on the correct url in case the subdomain exists?
Technical SEO | | kuchenchef0 -
Is pointing multiple domains to a single website beneficial for SEO or not?
A client has purchased many domains with keywords in each. They want to have us point each domain to their site for better SEO. Is this a good or bad thing to do?
Technical SEO | | thinkcreativegroup0 -
How to increase your Domain Authority
Hi Guys, Can someone please provide some pointers on how to best increase your Domain Authority?? Thanks Gareth
Technical SEO | | GAZ090 -
Domains
My questions is what to do with old domains we own from a past business. Is it advantages to direct them to the new domain/company or is that going to cause a problem for the new company. They are not in the same industry.
Technical SEO | | KeylimeSocial0 -
SEO Benefit from Redirecting New Exact Match Domains?
Hi, All! This is a question asked in the old Q & A section, but the answer was a little ambiguous and it was about 3 years ago, so I decided to repost and let the knowledgeable SEO public answer... From David LaFerney: It’s clear that it’s much easier to get high rankings for a term if your domain is an exact match for the query. If you own several such domains that are very related such as – investmentrealestate.com, positivecashflow.com, and rentalproperty.com – would you be able to benefit from those by 301ing them to a single site, or would you have to maintain separate sites to help capture those targeted phrases? In a nutshell – SEO wise, is it worth owning multiple domains to exactly match valuable search phrases? Or do you lose the exact match benefit when you redirect?>> To clarify: redirecting an old domain with lots of history and links to a new exact match domain seems to contain SEO benefit. (You get links+exact match domain, approximately.) But the other way around? Redirecting a new exact match domain to an older domain with links? Does that do anything for the ranking of the old domain for the exact match keyword? Or absolutely nothing? (My impression has been that it's nothing, but the question came up for a client and I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something.) Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | debi_zyx0