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.
My nofollow link is showing as a 302\. Is this OK?
-
My nofollow link is showing as a 302. Is this OK? Not looking to pass any juice along but don't want to be penalized either.
Thanks Buhrly
-
(1) an internal link between two pages on your website, (2) an external link from your website to another website
So in these two situations if a nofollow was needed would you use a 302 redirect?
-
Good point Alan on the paid links. Adding the nofollow would be following Google guidelines and there is risk in not following this.
-
sure, it would be defeating the purpose. But here's the thing. You either follow Google guidelines for paid links, or you risk the penalty they impose. It's a risk/reward issue. So you need to choose.
Since I only recommend SEO best practices that involve the least amount of risk, I recommend that you don't accept paid links in the first place. but if you do, put nofollow in them.
As for sculpting links, I've personally never advocated spending time trying to sculpt. You could spend hundreds of hours trying different arrangements and not ever know if you've made a positive difference, or if something else in the hundreds of search factors changed that day.
-
OK Alan you are saying that if you put a link on your site that it would be a standard link but if another site paid you for a link that you would use a nofollow? Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of what they would be looking for if they paid for a link from your site. Not trying to be difficult just trying to understand. The 302 was set by the owner/developer of the site. In the case of internal linking linking lets say your page has way over a hundred internal links and you want to thin them out and sculpt the ranking of the pages. What would you use.
Thanks Buhrly
-
Ok - no actually. 302 redirects should only be set up by the owner of the site that maintains the page.
If you want to put links on YOUR site pointing to someone else's, make it a regular link but with the "nofollow" attribute if they're paid links. If you're just linking to other sites because the link connects their related content to yours and you want to offer that additional information, don't do the "nofollow" or redirects.
Your own links within your site pointing to your own pages should be regular links, no redirects, no use of the "nofollow" attribute.
-
The nofollow was put in on a out going external link from the site i am working on shows up as a 302. Is this the best way to approach a nofollow for external links? And would this be the best way for internal links within the site also?
-
Good point Theo - we definitely need more info here. I had assumed it was a case where Jeremy was just talking about a link he's got to another site - a regular link to a regular page, but where the site owner has somehow gotten a 302 going on that page.
-
Not necessarily entirely 'their issue', because if Jeremy is linking with a 302 redirect without wanting to do so, this issue might occur on more places across his website.
To expand on the question by Alan: is this (1) an internal link between two pages on your website, (2) an external link from your website to another website or (3) a link from another website to your website?
-
Do you mean a link you have on your site pointing to someone else's site? If so, that's their issue and should not negatively affect your site or rankings.
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
-
Duplicating words in the page title OK?
Im finding a site with lots of duplicated words in the title tags, I have always avoided doing this in the past, Is there any penalty for having a word repeated twice in the title, indeed is there a benefit from having it twice, IM assuming not
On-Page Optimization | | Donsimong
For example: Marketing Services in Milton Keynes | Our Services | TFA
https://www.t-f-a.co.uk/services the word service is repeated twice, in my opinion this is of no benefit at all and is better rewritten to remove the duplication1 -
Meta title not showing up correctly on SERP
We have an issue with some clients on a Wordpress CMS where title tags implemented on a Yoast SEO plugin for the Homepage are not coming up as we'd implemented them. However, the source code shows we'd implemented them correctly according to what we'd wanted.**For example, this is the title tag we implemented in the CMS:Towing Services Alberta | Jack's TowingSource code shows:Towing Services Alberta | Jack's TowingHowever, SERP results shows:**Jack's Towing | Towing Services Alberta This is not an issue with the rest of the other pages and there isn't a global template for our client's sites. It's perplexing that it's only happening on the Homepage and this is across for 3 of our clients' sites.Even more perplexing, recently we've noticed that SERP is only showing the client's business name as the title tag and this is across for 2 out of the 3 clients we'd mentioned above. Nothing has changed in the back-end.Would appreciate some insight on this issue!
On-Page Optimization | | Gavo4 -
Linking to External Site In Nav Bar
Hi, we are a celebrity site but also own a separate sports site with its own URL. We have a link to that site in our Nav bar. Are we being penalized by having that link? thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Uinterview0 -
Is a Mega Menu with over 300 links in it hurting my rankings?
I got hit pretty badly by Panda 4.0 (1/3 of my traffic lost), and I'm fairly certain it was because Google had potentially indexed over 20 million pages from a site filtering piece of software and got done for duplicate content. I have since fixed that using URL Parameters and that 20 million is down to 2.7 million now and I have submitted a clean site map, so now I wait. I have just done a site relaunch and am trying to determine if there are any other issues. I run an online store, and I have a mega menu with well over 300 links in it - makes the user experience really quick and easy to jump exactly where you want - and then I have about 30 links in the footer. I know there's a 'no more than 100 links on a page' guideline for Moz, but does anyone know if Google is smart enough to see the same header / footer navigation structure on every page of a site and know it's navigation and not water down the rest of the links, or do I need to re-think and simplify my navigation? It's one of those things that's there for a user experience and now I'm worried that I'm being penalised. The site is www dot shopnaturally dot com dot au
On-Page Optimization | | sparrowdog0 -
Web Design - Text links better than drop down menus?
Hello So with reading a blog post by Bruce Clay - http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/seo-friendly-web-design/ It reads that it Is best for seo to use text links instead of drop down menus. So I just wanted to ask you opinion.
On-Page Optimization | | Berner0 -
Navigation Links Causing Too Many Links Help?
Hello, I have read some SEOMOZ search results for this, but am still concerned that Google may see 4,500 Too Many Link warnings as a problem. This is caused primarily due to our header navigation, which is not intended to be keyword stuffing, but to provide all avenues for our breadth of content. site: crazymikesapps.com. Most answers seem to advise if there is no keyword stuffing at hand don't worry about it. Any help appreciated. thank you Mike
On-Page Optimization | | crazymikesapps0 -
Internal Linking - in content vs navigation menu
Would like to get some thoughts on whether navigation menus or in-content links are best for internal linking, from an SEO standpoint. A few thoughts to get started with: For sites with a lot of content, you can have a navigation menu linking to your higher-level pages, then in-content links to deeper pages on your site. For smaller sites, this is not an option, as the navigation menu will probably link to all your important pages. You could add in-content links, but Google only counts the first link on the page, so the in-content links would be ignored if you'd already linked yp the page in your top nav menu. I can think of several possible reasons navigation menu links could be less desirable than in content links from a Google perspective. (They are sitewide boilerplate content without context.) If you setup your navigation structure based on what is best for the user, small sites don't have much wiggle room to optimize internal link structure, as all their money pages will be linked to from the top nav menu. Do you think Google prefers in content links to navigation menu links? If so, how do you get around the fact that for many sites, all their money pages are being linked to from their main navigation menu?
On-Page Optimization | | AdamThompson0 -
Is it ok to use the H1 tag for bullet points?
Our search results page doesn't have a typical H1 tag because adding a true header would take up space unnecessarily. Therefore, we've assigned the h1 tag to be the breadcrumb. As filters are applied, the breadcrumb grows to include these filters. This breadcrumb is coded as bullet points, even though they're not the typical style of bullet points. Here's a screenshot: http://screencast.com/t/AjGC9iAYR3 For example, the breadcrumb: Home >> NYC Social Media Classes >> Adult >> Manhattan is currently coded as: | |
On-Page Optimization | | mevseo
| | * class="first"><a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="</a>/">Home |
| | * <a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="</a>/nyc/classes/social-media/age-adults/neighborhood-manhattan" class="Selected">Search results |
| | |
| | |
| | id="cat_social-media" type="checkbox" checked onclick="setCategory('social-media')" /> |
| | # style="font-size: 12px; display: inline;">NYC Social Media Classes |
| | <label <span="">for</label>="cat_social-media"> |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | <nobr>id="age_adults" type="checkbox" checked onclick="setAge('adults')" /><label <span="">for</label>="age_adults">Adults</nobr> |
| | |
| | |
| | <nobr>id="nbhd_manhattan" type="checkbox" checked onclick="setNeighborhood('manhattan')" /><label <span="">for</label>="nbhd_manhattan">Manhattan</nobr> |
| | |
| | | Right now that H1 tag just relates to 'NYC Social media classes', but we'd like to expand it to include both 'Manhattan' & 'Adults' - would that be ok? And if so, would it be better to put the tag before and after the tag?0