Will blank category pages automatically get updated
-
Hello,
We've got old category pages that are blank like
domain/shoes.html (blank white page not in menu anymore)
domain/newshoesurl.html (working URL with link in menu)
Will the blank pages be automatically deindexed and updated by Google?
-
Thanks Mike,
I just checked using the seobook.com tool, they're 404s
No, no link equity is lost by not 301ing them.
GWT shows no crawl errors.
-
What HTTP status response codes are they returning? If they're a 200 but providing a poor user experience then eventually they'll be deindexed or at least ranking so poorly that no one will run across them, if they 404 or 410 then they'll be deindexed eventually, and if they 500 then you likely need to fix some other things on your site. Also, are you losing any link equity by not 301ing them?
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
-
Backlink Indexing - will this technique hurt or help?
So I came across this idea on YouTube: Indexing your backlinks. I understand its not enough to just have google crawl your pages - you want them indexed. So, if you create backlinks on say a blog or social profile, will it benefit you to have them submitted to other popular blogs, news / pr sites, video channels - of which may be unrelated - for the sole purpose of getting them not just crawled but indexed? There are SEO companies that I have seen that claim they do exactly that (publish your backlinks all over the web - making backlinks for backlinks) but in reality is this a good thing or a bad thing? Could this help rankings or hurt them?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | momentum_technology_services0 -
Is this a black-hat strategy? If so, what category does this fall under?
I am working with a major beauty client who owns an exact-match domain name related to their product that brings in a ton of traffic. They offer great content on this website that is inherently valuable. The catch is that the call-to-action brings users back to the main company site (a different URL). So if they want to "buy the product" or "learn more," they are taken to a different domain (the main company domain). There are 47 links to the main site on the EMD site. There are some slight mentions of the main brand on the EMD site, but it's hardly noticeable. It mostly appears to be a standalone site not affiliated with a major brand. My gut tells me this is black-hat but I can't find a fitting description of this strategy online, and why they shouldn't be doing this. Is this considered a doorway page / doorway site? Is this considered a link scheme? What would you call this strategy? Or is this actually not even black hat?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | FPD_NYC0 -
How does Google handle product detail page links hiden in a <noscript>tag?</noscript>
Hello, During my research of our website I uncovered that our visible links to our product detail pages (PDP) from grid/list view category-nav/search pages are <nofollowed>and being sent through a click tracking redirect with the (PDP) appended as a URL query string. But included with each PDP link is a <noscript>tag containing the actual PDP link. When I confronted our 3rd party e-commerce category-nav/search provider about this approach here is the response I recieved:</p> <p style="padding-left: 30px;">The purpose of these links is to firstly allow us to reliably log the click and then secondly redirect the visitor to the target PDP.<br /> In addition to the visible links there is also an "invisible link" inside the no script tag. The noscript tag prevents showing of the a tag by normal browsers but is found and executed by bots during crawling of the page.<br /> Here a link to a blog post where an SEO proved this year that the noscript tag is not ignored by bots: <a href="http://www.theseotailor.com.au/blog/hiding-keywords-noscript-seo-experiment/" target="_blank">http://www.theseotailor.com.au/blog/hiding-keywords-noscript-seo-experiment/<br /> </a> <br /> So the visible links are not obfuscating the PDP URL they have it encoded as it otherwise cannot be passed along as a URL query string. The plain PDP URL is part of the noscript tag ensuring discover-ability of PDPs by bots.</p> <p>Does anyone have anything in addition to this one blog post, to substantiate the claim that hiding our links in a <noscript> tag are in fact within the SEO Best Practice standards set by Google, Bing, etc...? </p> <p>Do you think that this method skirts the fine line of grey hat tactics? Will google/bing eventually penalize us for this?</p> <p>Does anyone have a better suggestion on how our 3rd party provider could track those clicks without using a URL redirect & hiding the actual PDP link?</p> <p>All insights are welcome...Thanks!</p> <p>Jordan K.</p></noscript></nofollowed>
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | eImprovement-SEO0 -
Creating pages as exact match URL's - good or over-optimization indicator?
We all know that exact match domains are not getting the same results in the SERP's with the algo changes Google's been pushing through. Does anyone have any experience or know if that also applies to having an exact match URL page (not domain). Example:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | lidush
keyword: cars that start with A Which way to go is better when creating your pages on a non-exact domain match site: www.sample.com/cars-that-start-with-a/ that has "cars that start with A" as the or www.sample.com/starts-with-a/ again has "cars that start with A" as the Keep in mind that you'll add more pages that start the exact same way as you want to cover all the letters in the alphabet. So: www.sample.com/cars-that-start-with-a/
www.sample.com/cars-that-start-with-b/
www.sample.com/cars-that-start-with-C/ or www.sample.com/starts-with-a/
www.sample.com/starts-with-b/
www.sample.com/starts-with-c/ Hope someone here at the MOZ community can help out. Thanks so much0 -
Duplicate content for product pages
Say you have two separate pages, each featuring a different product. They have so many common features, that their content is virtually duplicated when you get to the bullets to break it all down. To avoid a penalty, is it advised to paraphrase? It seems to me it would benefit the user to see it all laid out the same, apples to apples. Thanks. I've considered combining the products on one page, but will be examining the data to see if there's a lost benefit to not having separate pages. Ditto for just not indexing the one that I suspect may not have much traction (requesting data to see).
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SSFCU0 -
Page 1 Ranking - Disappeared!
Hi All We launched our client's website http://rollerbannerscheap.co.uk in January this year. We have been building links making sure we are not over optmising anchor text and only following ethical SEO tactics. Our client's site eventually hit page 1 for it's main key word 'Roller Banner' 1 week ago, the site received impressions/clicks from the SERPS and has started to gain traffic from that particular keyword. I have checked today, and I cannot our client's website URL within the first 10 pages of Google, nevermind on page 1. Our client is currently undercutting competitiors on price, which we stated (the price) in the meta tag. Is it possible other SEOs could de-rank our website? If not, what would be a likely explaination for this occurance? Would just like to add, I recently build a link with anchor text 'Roller Banner Website, but one of my older links uses anchor text 'Roller Banners Cheap Website' - They're not exact match, but could this affect our ranking? Awaiting help Lewis
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SO_UK0 -
Getting a link from an internal page with PR 2 of a domain with PR 5 is how much effective?
My website got a link from an internal page with PR rank of 2 but the domain has the PR rank 5. For example - A domain www.example.com with PR rank 5 and internal page www.example.com/extra/1 PR rank 2. I got a link from the internal page, will I benefit from main domain Page rank 5? Thanks, Sameer
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | KaylaKerr0 -
Index page de-indexed / banned ?
Yesterday google removed our index page from the results. Today they also removed language subdomains (fr.domain.com).. Index page, subdomains are not indexed anymore. Any suggestions? -- No messages in GWT. No malware. Backlink diversification was started in May. Never penguilized or pandalized. Last week had the record of all times of daily UV. Other pages still indexed and driving traffic, left around 40% of total. Never used any black SEO tool. 95% of backlinks are related; sidebar, footer links No changes made of index page for couple months.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bele0