NOINDEX listing pages: Page 2, Page 3... etc?
-
Would it be beneficial to NOINDEX category listing pages except for the first page. For example on this site:
http://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/101/fsx-missions/
Has lots of pages such as Page 2, Page 3, Page 4... etc:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aflyawaysimulation.com+fsx+missions
Would there be any SEO benefit of NOINDEX on these pages? Of course, FOLLOW is default, so links would still be followed and juice applied.
Your thoughts and suggestions are much appreciated.
-
We've taken the approach of adding rel="canonical" to all paginated content with the link pointing to the first page of results. We keep everything indexed and followed. We also help Google identify the URL parameter created for paginated content in our Webmaster Tool settings.
This has worked well for us, but another approach would be to add rel="next" and rel="prev" to the paginated links. This is openly supported by Google to handle pagination, but might be a little tricky to setup in your CMS.
Good luck!
Andrew
-
Noindex will take out the pages from the index of search engines. This will impact your traffic if your pages are already ranked.
As long as the category pages have different content, you will be fine. No need to remove them from the index unless you have specific requirement to do so.
For some reason, if you want only the first page to be ranked then go with the pagination hints which will consolidate your link value to the first page and most likely the first page will come up in the search result.
Note: Bing didn't officially endorse this practice and may be on its way.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html
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
-
Duplicate pages and Canonicals
Hi all, Our website has more than 30 pages which are duplicates. So canonicals have been deployed to show up only 10 of these pages. Do more of these pages impact rankings? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Adding Copy on Inventory Listing Pages
Hi All, We manage a number of auto dealer websites which have their new & used inventory listed on them. There's a separate page for new, used, and CPO inventory, and on most web platforms any filtered inventory subpages are canonicalized back to one of the main inventory pages. Our question is - should we install unique copy on these to-level inventory pages? We're already installing unique meta and H1s and feel like copy could help these rank for more searches but we have a couple hesitations: Most big retailers like Amazon, Zappos, etc don't have copy on these types of pages. Putting the copy above the inventory would distract from shopping behavior, but installing it at the bottom of the page would hurt relevance. We'd appreciate anyone's insight or past experience here! Is it worth taking the time to write unique copy for these pages? Thanks everyone.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ReunionMarketing0 -
Page Authority
Hi We have a large number of pages, all sitting within various categories. I am struggling to rank a level 3 for example, or increase authority of this page. Apart from putting it in the main menu or trying to build quality links to it, are there any other methods I can try? We have so many pages I find it hard to workout what the best way to internal link these pages for authority. At the moment they're classified in their relevant categories, but these go from level 1 down to 4 - is this too many classification levels?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Lol - 3 pages of videos on SERPs
Google: "back to school supplies haul" I thought this was really epic and first time I've ever seen such a results page. No ads, no text results. Anyone else seen this? -First post on new Moz design.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | William.Lau0 -
I have removed over 2000+ pages but Google still says i have 3000+ pages indexed
Good Afternoon, I run a office equipment website called top4office.co.uk. My predecessor decided that he would make an exact copy of the content on our existing site top4office.com and place it on the top4office.co.uk domain which included over 2k of thin pages. Since coming in i have hired a copywriter who has rewritten all the important content and I have removed over 2k pages of thin pages. I have set up 301's and blocked the thin pages using robots.txt and then used Google's removal tool to remove the pages from the index which was successfully done. But, although they were removed and can now longer be found in Google, when i use site:top4office.co.uk i still have over 3k of indexed pages (Originally i had 3700). Does anyone have any ideas why this is happening and more importantly how i can fix it? Our ranking on this site is woeful in comparison to what it was in 2011. I have a deadline and was wondering how quickly, in your opinion, do you think all these changes will impact my SERPs rankings? Look forward to your responses!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | apogeecorp0 -
Sitemap contains Meta NOINDEX pages - Good or bad?
Hi, Our sitemap is created by our e-commerce software - Magento - We are probably going to make a lot of products Meta No Index for the moment, until all the content has been corrected on them - but by default, as they are enabled, they will appear in Sitemap. So, the question is: "Should pages that are Meta NOINDEX be listed in a sitemap"? Does it matter? thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
Why Is This Page Not Ranking?
Hi Mozzers, I can't rank (the page is nowhere on the Google grid that I can find) and I've not been able to move the needle at all on it. The page is http://www.lumber2.com/Western-Saddle-Pads-s/98.htm for keyword "western saddle pads." I'm inclined to think I'm cannabalizing the category with the products so I removed the word saddle from the majority of the product names on page. However, saddle pad or saddle pads is in the meta title for most if not all of the products. Do you think I'm cannabalizing with the product titles or is there something else going on? Thanks for any help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AWCthreads0 -
Canonical category pages
A couple of years ago I used to receive a lot of traffic via my category pages but now I don't receive as much, in the past year I've modified the category pages to canonical. I have 15 genres for the category pages, other than the most recent sorting there is no sorting available for the users on the cat pages, a recent image link added can over time drop off to page 2 of the category page, for example mysite.com/cat-page1.html = 100 image links per page with numbered page navigation, number of cat pages 1-23. New image link can drop off to page 2. mysite.com/dog-page1.html = 100 image links per page with numbered page navigation, number of cat pages 1-53. New image link can drop off to page 2. mysite.com/turtle-page1.html = 100 image links per page with numbered page navigation, number of cat pages 1-2. New image link can drop off to page 2. Now on the first page (eg mysite.com/cat-page1.html) I've set this up to rel= canonical = mysite.com/cat-page1.html One thing that I have noticed is the unique popup short description tooltips that I have on the image links only appears in google for the first pages of each category page, it seems to ignore the other pages. In view of this am I right in applying canonical ref or just treating it as normal pages.? thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Flapjack0