A Not Linked Page Question
-
Hello,
I have a page for opening an account in my website, this page is not accessible from my website menu, the only way to reach this page if you have the URL, I send the URL for specific users I want them to open an account in my system.
I have two questions regarding this:
- does this harm or cause damages to my website SEO ?
- blocking this page in Robots.txt will cause any issue/will help ?
waiting for your answer.
Thanks in advance,
Joni. -
The two previous answers on this question have it right, I believe.
There's no harm in leaving the page available for Google to crawl and decide whether it wants to index/rank it or not. If it's something that has been outranking another page of yours unintentionally you can noindex it, nofollow links to it, request its removal from the index and throw the relative URL into your robots.txt. Pretty extreme if you ask me but if it's somehow ranking above a desired page that would be my move.
But to answer your question: no a single page in the index that isn't particularly useful isn't a problem. Sites have privacy policies, about pages, and other non-essential resources all the time and Google knows this. No big deal. If you had hundreds of useless pages on your site that you didn't want indexed I'd recommend noindexing the lot of them. But sounds like we're talking about a single page.
It won't ultimately hurt or help you to do any of the above unless, as I said the page is causing you issues in other ways (though it probably isnt).
Hope that helps.
Jacob @ Distilled
-
You can request removal via WMT if the URL is no index.
And as above no harm having island pages... in fact it is best practice for PPC so you get message match from ads to landing pages.
-
there is no "good" reason why you should not keep that url private - it won`t do your site any harm according to SEO aspects...
I would recommend you to set that url to "noindex" and "nofollow" BUT this might not work if Google already crawled and indexed your site / this specific URL.... as long as you don
t overdo "noindex" & "nofollow" this won
t get you into serious trouble...
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
-
Does adding new pages, new slugs, new URLS in a site affects rankings and visibility?
hi reader, i have decided to add new pages to my site. if i add new urls, i feel like i have to submit the sitemap again. my question is, does submitting sitemap again with new slugs or urls affects visibility is serps, if yes, how do i minimize the impact?
Web Design | | SIMON-CULL0 -
Dead end pages are really an issue?
Hi all, We have many pages which are help guides to our features. These pages do not have anymore outgoing links (internal / external). We haven't linked as these are already 4th level pages and specific about particular topic. So these are technically dead end pages. Do these pages really hurt us? We need to link to some other pages? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Does having too many wordpress portfolio pages with little content hurt a site's SEO?
I have a site that is for a service company, not image based like a photographer or artist. We utilize the Portfolio feature to create a gallery of floor coating finishes (images of all the flooring finish options available) but this solution has created /portfolio/file-name pages for each image. These pages have no other content besides the image. I've run SEMrush audits on this site which shows a high percentage of pages with low text/code ratio and duplicate content (a lot of the finishes have very similar names). This site has been extremely slow to improve any visibility online (more than 9 months) and I'm wondering if this is a factor by possibly having a negative effect on our site. We initially chose the portfolio option because it was the best-looking solution for our users but we can certainly change it to another format if that is better. Thanks!
Web Design | | WillGMG0 -
Is The HREF Link "Title" Tag Needed on Mobile Websites?
Hello To Those Who Are Wiser Than I, I am wondering if the href link "title" tag is needed, or serves any purpose, on mobile websites? Also, does it effect SEO in any way? I ask because generally the href link title tag provides more information to the user when they scroll their mouse over the link - but this action does not happen on mobile! Users have no mouse and thus no extra information would be displayed. I'm really wondering if it still matters for SEO purposes on mobile though. -The UnEnlightened
Web Design | | Stew2220 -
Spotted Hidden Omiod Links in Footer - What do you think is Going on Here?
Hi guys, Hoping one of you have come across this before. While taking a look at the source code for a website I've recently started working on, I spotted some 'display:none' code in the footer of the page. Here's a snapshot of the code: close XMETAhead title : 404 Page Not Found | ( 39 chrs ) [http://www.omiod.com/chrome-extensions/meta-seo-inspector/info.php?meta=description&cont=404 Page Not Found.](<a href=)" title="more about description" target="_blank" class="ad_seo_link">description : 404 Page Not Found( 170 chrs )[http://www.omiod.com/chrome-extensions/meta-seo-inspector/info.php?meta=keywords&cont=404, 404 error page,](<a href=) " title="more about keywords" target="_blank" class="ad_seo_link">keywords : 404, 404 error page ( 7 items )SCRIPT![](<a href=)http://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.google-analytics.com">www.google-analytics.com http://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js <div< a="">class="ad_seo_title">HTML5 report</div<>Doctype is not HTML5, there are no HTML5 tags, but at least no obsolete HTML tags were found. 1/5
Web Design | | ecommercebc0 -
Attachment Pages
i have hundreds/thousands of images on my site, but for some reason the images on this page - http://indigocarhire.co.uk/top-of-the-range-car-hire/ - are being flagged as attachment pages, meaning im getting errors for duplicate titles, missing metas ect why are these images and only these ones being flagged up, they have been added in exactly the same way as every other image on the site appreciate any advice Thanks
Web Design | | RGOnline0 -
Can only get a few pages indexed on by google
Hi I've touched upon this before on previous questions so apologies for repeating myself. In a nutshell out of the 60 webpages submitted to Google 11 have been indexed and out of the 140 images submitted none have indexed any ideas would be great! Here is a screen shot of what Google Webmaster is showing http://www.tidy-books.com/sitemapshow.png and here is the sitemap - > http://www.tidy-books.com/sitemap/us/sitemap.xml Thanks
Web Design | | tidybooks0 -
What seo benefit does setting up a photo gallery where each photo is a separate web page?
what seo benefit does setting up a photo gallery where each photo is a separate web page? My old SEO guy set up my photo gallery like that claiming that because each photo was a separate page, it added a big seo benefit and i never understood what he was talking about. Maybe alt text on the photo with key phrases in it pointing to my other pages to give my site a theme for google? I'm not really sure. He has since moved away and i am considering redoing the photo gallery to multiple images on one page to be more user friendly to my users. This photo gallery is 3 years old and the photos might have some page rank to them helping my site so i don't want to remove this gallery if there really is a benefit to it and it will hurt my site. I once removed four static page rank 3 pages from my site that weren't used for my site anymore and my rankings dropped 5 positions. Thoughts anyone? Thanks! Ron
Web Design | | Ron100