"No Index, No Follow" or No Index, Follow" for URLs with Thin Content?
-
Greetings MOZ community:
If I have a site with about 200 thin content pages that I want Google to remove from their index, should I set them to "No Index, No Follow" or to "No Index, Follow"?
My SEO firm has advised me to set them to "No Index, Follow" but on a recent MOZ help forum post someone suggested "No Index, No Follow". The MOZ poster said that telling Google the content was should not be indexed but the links should be followed was inconstant and could get me into trouble. This make a lot of sense.
What is proper form?
As background, I think I have recently been hit with a Panda 4.0 penalty for thin content. I have several hundred URLs with less than 50 words and want them de-indexed. My site is a commercial real estate site and the listings apparently have too little content.
Thanks, Alan
-
Personally I think its madness to "no follow" any internal links. When you "no follow" you are throwing link juice out the window, the days of sculpting links ( the practice of "no following" some links on a page so more juice flows though other "follow" links) are long gone, yet is still see it being attempted all over the place.
-
I can agree on this one, in most cases there are still relevant links or main navigation on the page. So that's why it's valuable to have bots follow these links.
-
I personally would follow them There is no issue in having a page with thin content followed, it will not hurt anything.
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
-
"No Information Available" Error for Homepage in Google
Hi Everyone, Been racking my brain around this one. Not sure why it is happening. Basically Google is showing the "www" version of the homepage, when 99% of the site is "non-www". It also says "No Information Available". I have tried submitting it through GSC, but it is telling me it is blocked through the Robots.txt file. I don't see anything in there that would block it. Any ideas? shorturl.at/bkpyG I would like to get it to change to the regular "non-www" and actually be able to show information.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vetofunk0 -
IFrames and Thin Content Worries
Hi everyone, I've read a lot about the impact of iFrames on SEO lately -- articles like http://www.visibilitymagazine.com/how-do-iframes-affect-your-seo/ for example. I understand that iFrames don't cause duplicate content or cloaked content issues, but what about thin content concerns? Here's my scenario: Our partner marketing team would like to use an iframe to pull content detailing how Partner A and my company collaborate from a portal the partners have access to. This would allow the partners to help manage their presence on our site directly. The end result would be that Partner A's portal content would be added to Partner A's page on our website via an iFrame. This would happen about across at least 100 URLs. Currently we have traditional partner pages, with unique HTML content. There's a little standalone value for queries involving the bigger partners' names + use case terms, but only in less than 10% of cases. So I'm concerned about those pages, but I'm more worried about the domain overall. My main concern is that in the eyes of Google I'd be stripping a lot of content off the domain all at once, and then replacing it with these shell pages containing nothing (in terms of SEO) but meta, a headline, navigation links, and an iFrame. If that's the case, would Google view those URLs as having thin content? And could that potentially impact the whole domain negatively? Or would Google understand that the page doesn't have content because of the iFrames and give us a pass? Thoughts? Thanks, Andrew
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SafeNet_Interactive_Marketing0 -
Is there a way to no index no follow sections on a page to avoid duplicative text issues?
I'm working on an event-related site where every blog post starts with an introductory header about the event and then a Call To Action at the end which gives info about the Registration Deadline. I'm wondering if there is something we can and should do to avoid duplicative content penalties. Should these go in a widget or is there some way to No Index, No Follow a section of text? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Spiral_Marketing0 -
Which URLs were indexed 2 years ago?
Hi, I hope anyone can help me with this issue. Our french domain experienced a huge drop of indexed URLs in 2012. More than 50k URLs were indexed, after the drop less than 10k were counted. I would like to check what happened here and which URLs were thrown out of the index. So I was thinking about a comparison between todays data and the data of 2012. Unfortunately we don't have any data on the indexed pages in 2012 beside the number of indexed pages. Is there any way to check, which URLs were indexed 2 years ago?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sandra_h0 -
What are the ranking factors for "Google News"? How can we compete?
We have a few sport news websites that are picked up by Google News. Once in a blue moon, one of our articles ranks for a great keyword and shows in one of the 3 listings that Google News has in SERPS. Any tips on how we can we optimise more of our articles to compete in these 3 positions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | betnl0 -
Brackets vs Encoded URLs: The "Same" in Google's eyes, or dup content?
Hello, This is the first time I've asked a question here, but I would really appreciate the advice of the community - thank you, thank you! Scenario: Internal linking is pointing to two different versions of a URL, one with brackets [] and the other version with the brackets encoded as %5B%5D Version 1: http://www.site.com/test?hello**[]=all&howdy[]=all&ciao[]=all
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mirabile
Version 2: http://www.site.com/test?hello%5B%5D**=all&howdy**%5B%5D**=all&ciao**%5B%5D**=all Question: Will search engines view these as duplicate content? Technically there is a difference in characters, but it's only because one version encodes the brackets, and the other does not (See: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_urlencode.asp) We are asking the developer to encode ALL URLs because this seems cleaner but they are telling us that Google will see zero difference. We aren't sure if this is true, since engines can get so _hung up on even one single difference in character. _ We don't want to unnecessarily fracture the internal link structure of the site, so again - any feedback is welcome, thank you. 🙂0 -
How important is a good "follow" / "no-follow" link ratio for SEO?
Is it very important to make sure most of the links pointing at your site are "follow" links? Is it problematic to post legitimate comments on blogs that include a link back to relevant content or posts on your site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Copying my Facebook content to website considered duplicate content?
I write career advice on Facebook on a daily basis. On my homepage users can see the most recent 4-5 feeds (using FB social media plugin). I am thinking to create a page on my website where visitors can see all my previous FB feeds. Would this be considered duplicate content if I copy paste the info, but if I use a Facebook social media plugin then it is not considered duplicate content? I am working on increasing content on my website and feel incorporating FB feeds would make sense. thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen0