Will adding 1M (legitimate/correct) internal backlinks to an orphan page trip algo penalty?
-
We have a massive long tail user generated gamification strategy that has worked really well. Because of that success we haven't really been paying enough attention to SEO and in looking around caught some glaring issues.
The section of our site that works as long tail goes from overview page > first classification > sub classification > specific long tail term page. Looks like we were relying on google to crawl/use forms to go from our overview page to the first classification BUT those resulting pages were orphaned - so www.mysite.com/product/category_1 defaulted back to the search page creating duplicate issues. www.mysite.com/product/category_1 and www.mysite.com/product/category_2 and www.mysite.com/product/category_3 all had duplicate content as they all reverted to the overview page.
It's clear we need to make an actual breadcrumb trail and proper site taxonomy/linkage. I'm wanting to do this on just this one area first, but it's a big section with over 3M indexed "specific long tail term pages".
I want to just add a simple breadcurmb trail in a sub navigation menu but doing so will literally create millions of new internal backlinks from specific term pages to their sub & parent category pages. Although we're missing the intermediary category breadcrumbs, we did have a breadcrumb coming back to the main overview page - that was tagged nofollow. So now I'm contemplating adding millions of (proper) backlinks and removing a nofollow tag from another million internal back links.
All of this seems in line with "best practices" but what I have not been able to determine is if there is a proper/better way to roll these changes out so as to not trigger an algorithm penalty.
I am also reticent about making too many changes too quickly but these are SEO 101 basics that need to be rectified. Is it a mistake to make good improvements too quickly?
Thanks!
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
-
Internal linking
Hi Guy's, Whats the best way to set internal links on your website: 1. href=: /page/
On-Page Optimization | | Happy-SEO
2. href=: https://domain.com/page/ Thanks!0 -
What is the best way to block http://www.site.com/members/...
How do i block http://www.site.com/members/....name/activity/3202 and many more like this from getting spider showing up as duplicate in moz Regards Tai
On-Page Optimization | | Taiger0 -
Noindex pages being indexed
Hi all Wondering if anyone could offer a pointer on a problem i am having please. I am developing an affiliate store and to prevent problems with duplicate content I have added name="robots" content="NOINDEX,FOLLOW" /> to all the product pages to avoid google penalties. However, Google appears to be indexing product pages. When I do a site: search I see a few hundred product pages in the engine. This is odd as the site has always had noindex on these pages. Even viewing the cache of the indexed page shows the noindex meta tag to be in place. I'm at a loss as to why these pages are being indexed and could do with removing them asap to stop any penalties on the site. Many thanks for any help.
On-Page Optimization | | carl_daedricdigital0 -
Page Not Indexed
Hi Guys I wrote and published an article last night on my site but it is yet to be indexed. This is strange as articles are usually indexed pretty quickly. Could you have a quick look and see what the problem is? http://www.rankmytri.com/tomtom-running-and-triathlon-watch/ Also all my Blog posts (in the blog section of the site) are not indexed as well (and I dont think they have been for a while) yet I dont have any messages from Google in my webmaster tools. Thoughts? Thanks in advance Ross
On-Page Optimization | | ross88guy0 -
Duplicate Home Page
Hi, I have a question around best practise on duplicate home pages. The /index.aspx page is showing up as a top referrer in my analytics. I have the rel=canonical tag implemented for the www.mysite.com on both pages. Do I need to 301 the /index.aspx to the mysite.com? I have a lot of links pointing to the /index.aspx (half of those are coming from the mysite.com). www.mysite.com/index.aspx www.mysite.com Many thanks Jon
On-Page Optimization | | JonRaubenheimer0 -
Why isn't our site being shown on the first page of Google for a query using the exact domain, when its pages are indeed indexed by Google
When I type our domain.com as a query into Google, I only see one of our pages on the homepage, and it's in 4th position. It seems though, that all pages of the site are indexed by google when I type in the query "site:domain.com". There was an issue at the site launch, where the robots.txt file was left active for around two weeks. Would this have been responsible for the fact that another domain ranks #1 when we type in our own domain? It has been around a couple of months now since the site was launched. Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | featherseo0 -
301 to Intermediate Page then Rel=Canonical from Intermediate to target page
Hi I'm working on an eCommerce site and don't have direct access to the CMS. I had requested developers to provide me a facilty to 301 via htaccess however this is working slight differently. I need guidance from experts whether it's okay or not: Old Page: example.com/old Target New Page: example.com/new After Implementing the redirect, It redirects to an intermediate page or in other words, The same target URL with a question mark added: example.com/new? (notice the question mark in the new URL) This intermediate page has a canonical tag for the exact target URL. So, if I 301 redirect example.com/old to example.com/new? (Intermediate page) and If the intermediate page example.com/new? has a canonical tag for the exact target URL (example.com/new), Will I be able to pass the link juice and authority of old page to the new page?
On-Page Optimization | | Ankkesh0 -
Adding a glosssary
WE are adding a module to our site that will add a glossary. It is going to add a link to the glossary where each word is used. Should we add no follow to those? Or is there any other implication seo wise using this?
On-Page Optimization | | Stevej240