Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
"Noindex, follow" for thin pages?
-
Hey there Mozzers,
I have a question regarding Thin pages. Unfortunately, we have Thin pages, almost empty to be honest. I have the idea to ask the dev team to do "noindex, follow" on these pages. What do you think?
Has someone faced this situation before?
Will appreciate your input!
-
+1 to EGOL and Ginaluca. We need more information about that pages.
In any case, if we are talking about thin content, but if is quality content and it's not duplicated content or oriented-for-SEO content, I would not use noindex for it.
If we ar talking about empty pages or almost empty pages maybe is better to use noindex, or maybe is better to delete and redirect with 301 this pages.
I would reduce the internal linking, and maybe put those internal links lower or in places with less visibility. Just that.
Greetings!
-
EGOL was right asking more information also for one precise reason: in some website a "thin page" maybe the best thing the same website can offer to a visitor because that page answers exactly to what the user needs from it.
That is why so often the Googlers say that thin content per se it's not a problem.
It's a problem if it is due to some technical issue or because of bad on-page SEO (i.e.: a page with a photo and no caption and written description of the photo).
So, to better answer your question, we need to know more about the nature of those thin pages you are talking about.
p.d.: using "noindex, follow" is not anymore suggested by Googlers. In fact, few months ago, John Mueller declared that if Google sees a page with a noindex,follow for a long time, then it will start considering the "follow" as a nofollow", so the original reason of its use won't be satisfied.
-
If you want good responses to this question, then post more about these pages (current content, how many, current traffic, current rankings, recent problems, purpose of pages, etc.) and more about your site (current content, how many, current traffic, current rankings, recent problems, etc.).
Questions with little information are often ignored by people who might know a lot about the subject because they don't want to guess, they don't want to think about and write about all possible cases, put their effort into a question when the poster didn't put much of his own effort into explaining.
Also, who are you? Owner? Employee? SEO? Are you the guy who put these pages up and didn't put any content on them? The guy who paid for the skinny content that is currently up there and needs to have input on yanking them down or paying for proper content?
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
-
Ranking penalty for "accordion" content -- hidden prior to user interaction
Will content inside an "accordion" module be ranked as non-hidden content? Is there an official guide by google and other search engines addressing this? Example of accordion element: https://v4-alpha.getbootstrap.com/components/collapse/#accordion-example Will all elements in the example above be seen + treated equally by search engines?
Technical SEO | | houlihanlokey1 -
SEO advice on ecommerce url structure where categories contain "/c/"
Hi! We use Hybris as plattform and I would like input on which url to choose. We must keep "/c/" before the actual category. c stands for category. I.e. this current url format will be shortened and cleaned:
Technical SEO | | hampgunn
https://www.granngarden.se/Sortiment/Husdjur/Hund/Hundfoder-%26-Hundmat/c/hundfoder To either: a.
https://www.granngarden.se/husdjur/hund/hundfoder/c/hundfoder b.
https://www.granngarden.se/husdjur/hund/c/hundfoder (hundfoder means dogfood) The question is whether we should keep the duplicated category name (hundfoder) before the "/c/" or not. Will there be SEO disadvantages by removing the duplicate "hundfoder" before the "/c/"? I prefer the shorter version ofc, but do not want to jeopardize any SEO rankings or send confusing signals to search engines or customers due to the "/c/" breaking up the url breadcrumb. What do you guys say and prefer from the above alternatives? Thanks /Hampus0 -
Home Page Ranking Instead of Service Pages
Hi everyone! I've noticed that many of our clients have pages addressing specific queries related to specific services on their websites, but that the Home Page is increasingly showing as the "ranking" page. For example, a plastic surgeon we work with has a page specifically talking about his breast augmentation procedure for Miami, FL but instead of THAT page showing in the search results, Google is using his home page. Noticing this across the board. Any insights? Should we still be optimizing these specific service pages? Should I be spending time trying to make sure Google ranks the page specifically addressing that query because it SHOULD perform better? Thanks for the help. Confused SEO :/, Ricky Shockley
Technical SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
What is the best way to find missing alt tags on my site (site wide - not page by page)?
I am looking to find all the missing alt tags on my site at once. I have a FF extension that use to do it page by page, but my site is huge and that will take forever. Thanks!!
Technical SEO | | franchisesolutions1 -
Determining When to Break a Page Into Multiple Pages?
Suppose you have a page on your site that is a couple thousand words long. How would you determine when to split the page into two and are there any SEO advantages to doing this like being more focused on a specific topic. I noticed the Beginner's Guide to SEO is split into several pages, although it would concentrate the link juice if it was all on one page. Suppose you have a lot of comments. Is it better to move comments to a second page at a certain point? Sometimes the comments are not super focused on the topic of the page compared to the main text.
Technical SEO | | ProjectLabs1 -
"nofollow pages" or "duplicate content"?
We have a huge site with lots of geographical-pages in this structure: domain.com/country/resort/hotel domain.com/country/resort/hotel/facts domain.com/country/resort/hotel/images domain.com/country/resort/hotel/excursions domain.com/country/resort/hotel/maps domain.com/country/resort/hotel/car-rental Problem is that the text on ie. /excursions is often exactly the same on .../alcudia/hotel-sea-club/excursion and .../alcudia/hotel-beach-club/excursion The two hotels offer the same excursions, and the intro text on the pages are the exact same throughout the entire site. This is also a problem on the /images and /car-rental pages. I think in most cases the only difference on these pages is the Title, description and H1. These pages do not attract a lot of visits through search-engines. But to avoid them being flagged as duplicate content (we have more than 4000 of these pages - /excursions, /maps, /car-rental, /images), do i add a nofollow-tag to these, do i block them in robots.txt or should i just leave them and live with them being flagged as duplicate content? Im waiting for our web-team to add a function to insert a geographical-name in the text, so i could add ie #HOTELNAME# in the text and thereby avoiding the duplicate text. Right now we have intros like: When you visit the hotel ... instead of: When you visit Alcudia Sea Club But untill the web-team has fixed these GEO-tags, what should i do? What would you do and why?
Technical SEO | | alsvik0 -
Rel="external"
Hi all, I got a link and its off a site and marked up with rel="external". Is this a followed or nofollowed link? Does it pass link juice? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Sharer0 -
What's the difference between a category page and a content page
Hello, Little confused on this matter. From a website architectural and content stand point, what is the difference between a category page and a content page? So lets say I was going to build a website around tea. My home page would be about tea. My category pages would be: White Tea, Black Tea, Oolong Team and British Tea correct? ( I Would write content for each of these topics on their respective category pages correct?) Then suppose I wrote articles on organic white tea, white tea recipes, how to brew white team etc...( Are these content pages?) Do I think link FROM my category page ( White Tea) to my ( Content pages ie; Organic White Tea, white tea receipes etc) or do I link from my content page to my category page? I hope this makes sense. Thanks, Bill
Technical SEO | | wparlaman0