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 wont 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
-
Ecommerce web design read more toggle vs menu link on home page and product pages
Hello, We have an Ecommerce store. We have a lot of content on the home page and product pages and we are going back and forth between which one to use between a toggle "Read More" "Show Less" toggle for each section and a anchor linked menu. We have long product pages We're thinking a read more toggle is more appropriate for category descriptions so that they can go at the top of the category and not take up space. But the read more toggle with lots of content scrolls the page down and doesn't scroll it back up when you hit "show less" We're leaning towards a linked menu for the home pages and product pages for this reason, but an accordion type set of toggles would look nicer. What do you recommend, and how have you set up your read more toggles if they have lots of info so that they are not confusing? Are there other options? ' Not looking for code (I can do that) I'm looking for ideas on the cleanest home page, category pages, and product pages when they have tons and tons of textual content. Wanting to trim it up and make it look compact and neat! Thanks!
Web Design | | BobGW0 -
Https pages indexed but all web pages are http - please can you offer some help?
Dear Moz Community, Please could you see what you think and offer some definite steps or advice.. I contacted the host provider and his initial thought was that WordPress was causing the https problem ?: eg when an https version of a page is called, things like videos and media don't always show up. A SSL certificate that is attached to a website, can allow pages to load over https. The host said that there is no active configured SSL it's just waiting as part of the hosting package just in case, but I found that the SSL certificate is still showing up during a crawl.It's important to eliminate the https problem before external backlinks link to any of the unwanted https pages that are currently indexed. Luckily I haven't started any intense backlinking work yet, and any links I have posted in search land have all been http version.I checked a few more url's to see if it’s necessary to create a permanent redirect from https to http. For example, I tried requesting domain.co.uk using the https:// and the https:// page loaded instead of redirecting automatically to http prefix version. I know that if I am automatically redirected to the http:// version of the page, then that is the way it should be. Search engines and visitors will stay on the http version of the site and not get lost anywhere in https. This also helps to eliminate duplicate content and to preserve link juice. What are your thoughts regarding that?As I understand it, most server configurations should redirect by default when https isn’t configured, and from my experience I’ve seen cases where pages requested via https return the default server page, a 404 error, or duplicate content. So I'm confused as to where to take this.One suggestion would be to disable all https since there is no need to have any traces to SSL when the site is even crawled ?. I don't want to enable https in the htaccess only to then create a https to http rewrite rule; https shouldn't even be a crawlable function of the site at all.RewriteEngine OnRewriteCond %{HTTPS} offor to disable the SSL completely for now until it becomes a necessity for the website.I would really welcome your thoughts as I'm really stuck as to what to do for the best, short term and long term.Kind Regards
Web Design | | SEOguy10 -
Content thin for new home page been told to change it? any suggestions?
Hi guys, I'm newbie.... I have been told that my home page is content thin, and if I want to rank really well in the search i need to have more relevant content on my homepage - the site is only new 2months and I can see we are now at 39th place in the search, if i make changes to the home page design and add more content will this effect this current ranking?
Web Design | | edward-may0 -
Funnel tracking with one page check-out?
Hi Guys, I'm creating a new website with a one page checkout that follows the following steps:
Web Design | | Jerune
1. Check availability
2. Select product
2. Select additional product & Add features
3. Provide personal information
4. Order & Pay I'm researching if it is possible to track all these steps (and even steps within the steps) with Google Analytics in order to analyse checkout abandonment. The problem is only that my one-page checkout has only one URL (I want to keep it that way) and therefore can not be differentiated on URL in the Analytics funnel. To continue to the next step also the same button (in a floating cart) in used to advance. The buttons to select/choose something within one step are all different. Do you guys know how I can set this up and how detailed I can make this? For example, is it also possible to test at which field visitors leave when for example filling in their personal information? Would be great if you can help me out!0 -
Main page redirect affecting search results?
Question.... A recent change was made to our page www.BGU.edu by a marketing person. So now when you type in www.BGU.edu it actually redirects to a different page www.BGU.edu/inquiry This is a really bad idea isn't it? I do not know enough about SEO to know a lot, and just joined SEOmoz but do I need to tell the admin to change it back?
Web Design | | nongard10 -
Why do site links appear under one keyword and not another? Any ideas?
Hi everyone, I have a client whose website is doing the strangest thing. When I search the branded keyword (the company name), Google doesn't show any site links under the result. However, when I search for the company name plus Inc., I do get site links. Now, the website is ranking first in both searches, so that's not the issue. And, as near as I can tell, the site only contains one or two uses of the company name plus the word "inc." Most of the text on the page and all of the meta data only uses the company name, and most of the links that connect to the site use only the company name as well. Even the Who Is for the site doesn't use the term "inc." And ideas what might be going on? I know Google says that the process is still automated but for the life of me I can't figure out what kind of automated process would result in these results. Thanks! Megan (Rebecca's minion)
Web Design | | RebeccaRalston0 -
Decreasing Page Load Time with Placeholder Images - Good Idea or Bad Idea?
In an effort to decease our page load time, we are looking at making a change so that all product images on any page past page 1 load with a place holder image. When the user clicks to the next page, it then loads all of the images for that page. Right now, all of the product divs are loaded into a Javascript array and loaded in chunks to the page display div. Product-heavy pages significantly increase load time as the browser loads all of the images from the product HTML before the Javascript can rewrite the display div with page-specific product HTML. In order to get around this, we are looking at loading the product HTML with a small placeholder image and then substituting the appropriate product image URLs when each page is output to the display div. From a user experience, this change will be seamless and they won't be able to tell the difference, plus they will benefit from a potentially a short wait on loading the images for the page in question. However, the source of the page will have all of the product images in a given category page all having the same image. How much of a negative impact will this have on SEO?
Web Design | | airnwater0 -
Over Optimization & Footer Links for Crediting Web Design to a Company
With the recent updates to the algorithm having to do with link networks and over optimization it has got me to thinking about the footer links we add to each site that we build and do web design for linking back to ours. I could certainly see how Google could make the assumption that these are all on the same server, pointing back to one main site, and penalize us for that. Should we no=follow these links? They may say something like, "Website Designed By: Company Name". They do provide a valuable source to some extent of traffic to the site from people interested in our designs. Any thoughts?
Web Design | | JoshGill270