Noindex
-
I have been reading a lot of conflicting information on the Link Juice ramifications of using "NoIndex". Can I get some advice for the following situation?
1. I have pages that I do not want indexed on my site. They are lead conversion pages. Just about every page on my site has links to them. If I just apply a standard link, those pages will get a ton of Link Juice that I'd like to allocate to other pages.
2. If I use "nofollow", the pages won't rank, but the link juice evaporates. I get that. I won't use "nofollow"
3. I have read that "noindex, follow" will block the pages in the SERPs, but will pass Link Juice to them. I don't think that I want this either. If I "dead end" the lead form with no navigation or links, will the juice be locked up on the page?
4. I assume that I should block the pages in robots.txt
In order to keep the pages out of the SERPs, and conserve Link Juice, what should I do? Can someone please give me a step by step process with the reasoning for what I should do here?
-
I have a private/login site where all pages are noindex, nofollow. Can I still monitor external site links with Google Analytics?
-
Yes, there is a way to keep them out of the SERPs and restrict them from getting link juice: using noindex + nofollow, but bare in mind you'll be loosing that link juice and impairing it's flow throughout your site, besides indicating Google that you don't "trust" those pages.
A workaround would be consolidating those links.
-
So what you are saying is that there is no way to keep the pages out of the serps and restrict them from getting link juice?
This is nuts. My conversion pages will be getting huge amounts of link juice - there are links to them on every page.
I'm not happy about this. Any workarounds?
-
Using robots.txt won't ensure that your pages are kept out of the SERPs, since any external link to those pages could get them indexed. If you need to make sure, the best way should be the noindex meta tag.
Now, in order not to loose your linkjuice, you should make sure to use "noindex, follow" in your meta, that way you're still preventing the pages from being indexed but you are allowing the juice flow through them.
If you want to pass the less possible juice to those pages, you should try to link them as little as possible or consolidate those links in fewer pages throughout your site.
Here's some useful information on the subject:
Google Says: Yes, You Can Still Sculpt PageRank. No You Can't Do It With Nofollow
Link Consolidation: The New PageRank Sculpting
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
-
Is domain authority lost if you create a 301 redirect but mark it as noindex, nofollow?
Hi everyone, Our company sells products in various divisions. While we've been selling Product A and Product B under our original brand, we've recently created a new division with a new domain to focus on a Product B. The new domain has virtually no domain authority (3) while the original domain has some (37). We want customers to arrive on the new domain when they search for key search terms related to Product B instead of the pages that previously existed on our main website. If we create 301 redirects for the pages and content on the main site and add noindex, nofollow tags, will we lose the domain authority that we have from our original domain because the pages now have the noindex, nofollow tags? I read a few blog posts from Moz that said there isn't any domain authority lost with 301 redirects but I'm not sure if that is true if the pages are noindex, nonofollow. Do you follow? 🙂 Apologies for the lengthy post. Love this community and the great Moz team. Thanks, Joe
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jgoehring-troy0 -
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 -
Why are "noindex" pages access denied errors in GWT and should I worry about it?
GWT calls pages that have "noindex, follow" tags "access denied errors." How is it an "error" to say, "hey, don't include these in your index, but go ahead and crawl them." These pages are thin content/duplicate content/overly templated pages I inherited and the noindex, follow tags are an effort to not crap up Google's view of this site. The reason I ask is that GWT's detection of a rash of these access restricted errors coincides with a drop in organic traffic. Of course, coincidence is not necessarily cause. Should I worry about it and do something or not? Thanks... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Should I noindex the site search page? It is generating 4% of my organic traffic.
I read about some recommendations to noindex the URL of the site search.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
Checked in analytics that site search URL generated about 4% of my total organic search traffic (<2% of sales). My reasoning is that site search may generate duplicated content issues and may prevent the more relevant product or category pages from showing up instead. Would you noindex this page or not? Any thoughts?0 -
Meta NOINDEX and links into the pages?
If I have internal links pointing to pages that are META NO INDEX, will Google still index them? Or does that only apply to pages that are linked to from an external domain? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
Why do my https pages index while noindexed?
I have some tag pages on one of my sites that I meta noindexed. This worked for the http version, which they are canonical'd to but now the https:// version is indexing. The https version is both noindexed and has a canonical to the http version, but they still show up! I even have wordpress set up to redirect all https: to http! For some reason these pages are STILL showing in the SERPS though. Any experience or advice would be greatly appreciated. Example page: https://www.michaelpadway.com/tag/insurance-coverage/ Thanks all!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarloSchneider0 -
De-indexing search results noindex, follow or noindex, nofollow
If search results were not originally blocked with robots.txt, and need to be de-indexed, is it better to use noindex, nofollow or noindex, follow?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Noindex term for pages
I have a client who has a virtuemart site and all of the "ask a question on this product" had been indexed on google. I have managed to get a noindex meta tag into the ask a question page, will these be dropped from the index next time they are crawled and google sees the noindex?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webseoservices0