Understanding No Follow
-
We manage a couple of sites with 100s of pages...
Most of the sites have content that is not helpful as landing pages but obviously has relevent content related to our desired search terms.
Some of links go off site to another domain.
I am trying to understand the issue of "link juice" and if I gain it or lose it by putting "nofollow" designation on some of the page links.
Specifically, do I increase the value of my pages if I put no follow tags on lower tier links off of these pages.
Here is a page in question - http://www.vahmarketing.com/product/ductless-hoods
Is there a best practice or SEO rule for using "no follow"?
Thanks,
Bob Nance
-
Hi Bob,
I think you are asking about PageRank Sculpting. There was talk awhile ago about this no longer being practical and that the juice was lost due to changes in the algo. I think SEOmoz ran some tests on this that were inconclusive... so generally I think opinion is still PageRank Sculpting is dead.
Maybe look up some stuff on faceted navigation to deal with the issues you may be having with the site.
Hope this helps.
G
-
Hello Bob,
The nofollow keeps your site from passing link juice through the link. We have this option for situations where we either don't want the link juice to flow to the other site, or we don't know who the other site is (ex. comment links). This does not mean that the link will not be followed by the search engine.
If it is a shady site, I would use a nofollow, but I would also question why I am linking to it. It does not hurt your site to have follow links unless they are questionable. I have seen many sites with decent PR that have link pages with 100's of links on them.
In your example I don't see where you are linking to other domains. Are they your other domains? Are they companies that don't need anything. I have not had an instance where linking to a good company has hurt anything.
Is there a best practice?
If it's a good link, let the juice flow, if not, question why you are linking to it.
Linking to a site that is considered an authority or brand in the niche will align your site with that site and could help you in the long run. Birds of a feather.
There are other ways to link to sites without using the a href such as by incorporating javascript, but in a situation like yours I would not even think about it.
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
-
Any SEO-wizards out there who can tell me why Google isn't following the canonicals on some pages?
Hi, I am banging my head against the wall regarding the website of a costumer: In "duplicate title tags" in GSC I can see that Google is indexing a whole bunch parametres of many of the url's on the page. When I check the rel=canonical tag, everything seems correct. My costumer is the biggest sports retailer in Norway. Their webshop has approximately 20 000 products. Yet they have more than 400 000 pages indexed by Google. So why is Google indexing pages like this? What is missing in this canonical?https://www.gsport.no/herre/klaer/bukse-shorts?type-bukser-334=regnbukser&order=price&dir=descWhy isn't Google just cutting off the ?type-bukser-334=regnbukser&order=price&dir=desc part of the url?Can it be the canonical-tag itself, or could the problem be somewhere in the CMS? Looking forward to your answers Sigurd
Technical SEO | | Inevo0 -
404 Errors for Form Generated Pages - No index, no follow or 301 redirect
Hi there I wonder if someone can help me out and provide the best solution for a problem with form generated pages. I have blocked the search results pages from being indexed by using the 'no index' tag, and I wondered if I should take this approach for the following pages. I have seen a huge increase in 404 errors since the new site structure and forms being filled in. This is because every time a form is filled in, this generates a new page, which only Google Search Console is reporting as a 404. Whilst some 404's can be explained and resolved, I wondered what is best to prevent Google from crawling these pages, like this: mydomain.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/TopCategoriesDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=90&catalogId=1008&homePage=Y Implement 301 redirect using rules, which will mean that all these pages will redirect to the homepage. Whilst in theory this will protect any linked to pages, it does not resolve this issue of why GSC is recording as 404's in the first place. Also could come across to Google as 100,000+ redirected links, which might look spammy. Place No index tag on these pages too, so they will not get picked up, in the same way the search result pages are not being indexed. Block in robots - this will prevent any 'result' pages being crawled, which will improve the crawl time currently being taken up. However, I'm not entirely sure if the block will be possible? I would need to block anything after the domain/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/TopCategoriesDisplay?. Hopefully this is possible? The no index tag will take time to set up, as needs to be scheduled in with development team, but the robots.txt will be an quicker fix as this can be done in GSC. I really appreciate any feedback on this one. Many thanks
Technical SEO | | Ric_McHale0 -
Help Understanding GWT Message
Brief background: A few months ago, our firm exchanged blog posts with another law firm in Pennsylvania with followed links. Though we did exchange links, the posts weren't spammy. They wrote "A Floridian's Guide To A Car Accident In Pennyslvania" and we wrote one for Pennsylvanians in Florida. (The reason for this is that Personal Injury law varies drastically from state-to-state, and Florida has a ton of people who move back and forth). My question: His firm got a message from google saying our link to him violated googles' guidelines. I went and removed the link, BUT I didn't get any message saying his link to our site was a violation. Shouldn't we both have gotten messages? Perhaps, mine is "in the mail" so to speak, but I would think both would go out at the same time, so I'm wondering if there is another possible reason? Thanks, Ruben
Technical SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
URL Understanding -
Hello everyone! Can anyone help me understanding this url? Product.asp?PID=1236 cheers
Technical SEO | | PremioOscar0 -
Should I noindex, follow categories?
Hey Everyone, A simple question (hopefully). Should I check or uncheck the noindex, follow setting for categories on our site? We've got about 5-6 but they aren't anything that people should know or would help in SEO. For example, one category is "featured content" and another is "what's happening." Checking them dictate where a post goes on the site. I'm pretty sure it should be checked, but I wanted to check with the experts first 🙂 http://d.pr/i/jtrc
Technical SEO | | ttb0 -
Would nofollowing the footer throw an unnatural blance between followed and nofollowed links?
I have been getting errors for too many on-page links. All the major navigation pages are found in links within the navigation tabs and are identical to the footer links. So my question is, would nofollowing the footer look unnatural and throw off the balance between followed and nofollowed links on the site and negatively effect SEO?
Technical SEO | | smilingbunny0 -
How to do a no follow on site search
We have a site search that is causing a huge amount of errors as the SEOmoz crawler is showing these as duplicate content. Our first thought was to do a no-follow on the site-search directory, but we realized that the site search is /site-search.aspx and URl strings appear at the end for hundreds of pages. How dow we/how can we no-follow an undetermined amount of URL strings?
Technical SEO | | Apptixweb0 -
Www vs non www and understanding opensite
Hi Guys, New guy here with some questions regarding the difference between www and non www. I am helping with a site at the moment and gradually working my way through bits and learning all the time. I was watching one of the seomoz videos and it brought my attention back to www vs non www. I understand that google will treat these as two seperate sites but wanted to check what the stats are telling me. I was under the impression that www.mydummysite.com was getting most links etc as this is what I have always used. However when I used Opensite explorer it told me something different as follows: www.mydummysite.com 32/100 29/100 5 16 mydummysite.com 32/100 29/100 2 1,500 Am i correct in saying that i should be adding a redirect from www.mydummysite.com to mydummysite.com ???? I am thinking that this is telling me that I am potentially missing out on 1,500 links to my site but it could mean I am missing out on just 16. Eitherway I guess its something I should fix right? Do I just redirect that page or would all pages beneith it such as mydummysite.com/news also need redirect??? Can i use Canonical Rel links for this now? Thanks for taking the time to read and reply! 🙂
Technical SEO | | wedmonds0