NOINDEX,FOLLOW on product pages
-
Hi
Can I have people's thoughts on something please. We sell wedding stationery and whilst we can generate lots of good content describing a particular range of stationery we can't relistically differentiate at a product level. So imagine we have three ranges
Range 1 - A Bird
Range 2 - A Heart
Range 3 - A Flower
Within each of these ranges we would have invitations, menus, place cards, magnets etc. The ranges vary quite alot so we can write good textual keyword rich descriptions that attract traffic (i.e. one about the bird, one about the heart and one about the flower). However the individual products within a range just reflect the design for the range as a whole (as all items in a range match). Therefore we can't just copy the content down to the product level and if we just describe the generic attributes of the products they will alll be very similar. We have over 1,000 "products" easily so I am conscious of creating too much duplication over the site in case Mr Panda comes to call.
So I was thinking that I "might" NOINDEX, FOLLOW the product pages to avoid this duplication and put lots of effort into making my category pages much better and content rich. The site would be smaller in the index BUT I do not really expect to generate traffic from the product pages because they are not branded items and any searches looking for particular features of our stationery would be picked up, much more effectively, by the category pages.
Any thoughts on this one?
Gary
-
Thanks for helping me bounce the ideas around. Always valuable comments from SeoMozzers! Have a good day!
-
Yes that's a very good idea. It is much stronger a signal in it's execution than the noindex/follow method given my concerns.
-
OK, thanks for your detailed response.
I am wondering whether I might just have a dynamically generated URL for the "product level" pages, i.e. page.php?id=1, page.php?id=2 etc and then have a canonical tag that is the same across them all. I could then limit the product pages to those that are genuinely different in some way. That way, I can avoid the noindex,follow issue, have very few duplicate product pages and avoid Panda related issues. Sound sensible?
Gary
-
The issue with a high volume of noindex,follow pages is understanding intent, and potentially having the message be confused. "We have x pages with noindex, follow - meaning "we don't think these pages are important enough to index, but the links on them are". Except if those links exist elsewhere, on enough indexed pages, what's the point being made?
Is it an attempt to artificially boost the signals for those pages that are linked by saying "look at all these extra links we have pointing to these other pages"? That's the concern especially since the implementation of over-optimization factors in algorithms. While it may not be Google's intent to devalue a site due to innocent behavior, their ability algorithmically to understand is limited.
Over the past year and a half I've seen more and more situations where Google's many layers of algorithmic decisions have resulted in client sites suffering because of a lack of human review that can determine "this was not an intentional attempt to over-optimize". I've seen it with internal linking, I've seen it when use of noindex/follow conflicts with canonical signals, and I've seen it where either of those conflicts with robots.txt instructions.
While no single case is guaranteed to be problematic (due to hundreds of factors being evaluated across multiple algorithms), at the same time, as a professional audit consultant I am not comfortable enough to then leave out the consideration where no single case is guaranteed to be safe either. Thus, my opinion of "best practices" is to "avoid potentially significant problems".
-
Alan Thanks for this. Can I check I understand your comments. Are u suggesting that a large number of noindex, follow pages causes google to lose interest in following the links from those pages? Do u know this to be the case through an empirical study? I like your suggestion of integrating the product purchase onto the category pages. I agree that would be ideal but the products themselves have alot of options and some are designed online so it could end up quite complex. Food for thought though as it would be a good solution SEO wise. I'm just a little concerned on a user ability front. Gary
-
One alternate method would be to integrate the products onto their individual "range" pages, with purchase capability and options right there. You'd need to ensure the overwhelming majority of those pages is still unique, however it would avoid potential confusion that comes from "noindex,follow" being used on a massive scale, which can itself be problematic. (Google needs to understand WHY there are so many nonidex pages, and what unique links exist on those pages that you want the crawler to follow them for).
-
Sounds like it makes sense and that you have thought it out. If the category pages are conversion friendly, sounds like it can be done. But if there is a way you can get the product pages to have unique content I would personally prefer the product pages to rank. By doing what you are suggesting you're putting the point of purchase a click further away, which isn't the end of the world.
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 content, although page has "noindex"
Hello, I had an issue with some pages being listed as duplicate content in my weekly Moz report. I've since discussed it with my web dev team and we decided to stop the pages from being crawled. The web dev team added this coding to the pages <meta name='robots' content='max-image-preview:large, noindex dofollow' />, but the Moz report is still reporting the pages as duplicate content. Note from the developer "So as far as I can see we've added robots to prevent the issue but maybe there is some subtle change that's needed here. You could check in Google Search Console to see how its seeing this content or you could ask Moz why they are still reporting this and see if we've missed something?" Any help much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | rj_dale0 -
Our protected pages 302 redirect to a login page if not a member. Is that a problem for SEO?
We have a membership site that has links out in our unprotected pages. If a non-member clicks on these links it sends a 302 redirect to the login / join page. Is this an issue for SEO? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | rimix1 -
URL Structure for Product Pages
Hi Moz Community. I'm in need of some URL structure advice for product pages. We currently have ~4,000+ products and I'm trying to determine whether I need a new URL structure from the previous site owners. There are two current product URL structures that exist in our website: 1.http://www.example.com/bracelets/gold-bracelets/1-1-10-ct-diamond-tw-slip-on-bangle-14k-pink-gold-gh-i1-i2/ (old URL structure)
Technical SEO | | IceIcebaby
2. http://www.example.com/gemstone-bracelet-prd-bcy-121189/ (new URL structure) The problem is that half of our products are still in the old structure (no one moved them forward), but at the same time I'm not sure if the new structure is optimized as much as possible. Every single gemstone bracelet, or whatever product will have the same url structure, only being unique with the product number at the end. Would it be better to change everything over to more product specific URLS. I.e. example.com/topaz-gemstone-dangle-bracelet. Thanks for your help!
-Reed0 -
Duplicate Page Title
Hi I just got back from first crawl report and there were plenty of errors. I know this has been asked before but I am newbie here so bear with me. I captured the video. Any ideas on how to address the issue? ktXKDxRttK
Technical SEO | | mcardenal0 -
No_index of parent page
Hi, sorry its a Friday question... Page A: www.example.com/house/ Page B: www.example.com/house/kitchen Can I 'no_index' page A without it effecting page B being indexed? Views? Many thanks!
Technical SEO | | Richard5551 -
Campaign shows 5,000 warnings from shared database feed, made pages no-follow and no-index, are we OK now?
One of our campaigns shows 5,000 warnings for dup content, meta descriptions, and urls. This is from a xml database feed that is shared throughout the industry. We made the pages no-follow and no-index, but on Moz crawl still get the warnings. No warnings on Webmaster tools. Should we ignore these warnings and are we OK now, or is there more work to do?
Technical SEO | | geilt0 -
Wordpress duplicate pages
I am using Wordpress and getting duplicate content Crawler error for following two pages http://edustars.yourstory.in/tag/edupristine/ http://edustars.yourstory.in/tag/education-startups/ These two are tags which take you to the same page. All the other tags/categories which take you to the same page or have same title are also throwing errors, how do i fix it?
Technical SEO | | bhanu22170 -
Page rank 2 for home page, 3 for service pages
Hey guys, I have noticed with one of our new sites, the home page is showing page rank two, whereas 2 of the internal service pages are showing as 3. I have checked with both open site explorer and yahoo back links and there are by far more links to the home page. All quality and relevant directory submissions and blog comments. The site is only 4 months old, I wonder if anyone can shed any light on the fact 2 of the lesser linked pages are showing higher PR? Thanks 🙂
Technical SEO | | Nextman0