Bloking pages in roborts.txt that are under a redirected subdomain
-
Hi Everyone,
I have a lot of Marketo landing pages that I don't want to show in SERP. Adding the noindex meta tag for each page will be too much, I have thousands of pages.
Blocking it in roborts.txt could have been an option, BUT, the subdomain homepage is redirected to my main domain (with a 302) so I may confuse search engines ( should they follow the redirect or should they block)
marketo.mydomain.com is redirected to www.mydomain.com
disallow: / (I think this will be confusing with the redirect)
I don't have folders, all pages are under the subdomain, so I can't block folders in Robots.txt also
Would anyone had this scenario or any suggestions?
I appreciate your thoughts here.
Thank you
Rachel
-
Thank you so much for you answer!
the home page in the subdomain is redirected but none of the actual pages in the subdomain are, and because there are so many of them, it would be easier to block them in robots.txt, even if there is small change that Google will still index them. But because the home page is redirected, I don't want to confuse Google with a Disallow: /
Could I do Disallow: / and then Allow: /homepage.html
-
Under usual circumstances, Google won't index redirecting addresses which it considers to be a shallow form of 'doorway' page (Google doesn't like to rank those). If I am reading your post right, no pages on the redirected sub-domain can be visited as they all now redirect. Google should start dropping those old URLs from its index automatically. It's important to note that you should be using 301s to eventually de-index the old URLs. If you're using 302s then you're telling Google that the old pages are only being redirected temporarily and they will return (which could mess with indexation)
If I am reading your post wrong and some pages are still live on the old subdomain and are not redirecting, and you want Google to redirect most addresses but some are staying (for whatever reason) and you still want to de-index those specific ones, Meta no-index (sorry) really is your best bet! Robots.txt tells Google not to crawl a page but it doesn't tell Google not to index a URL if external metrics (inbound links) are strong enough. Both are 'directives' and Google is forced to obey neither
I think from what you are saying, I'd just leave the redirects and let Google do its work. Make sure they're 301s, though. You're right that Robots.txt might end up confusing things. Robots.txt can also sometimes 'kill' the SEO authority of a page. If you did that for all the redirecting pages, no equity would flow through your 301s (hazardous)
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
-
How to Choose destination page for a 301 redirect?
I am doing some SEO for a wedding chapel in Vegas. There are some old packages that no longer exist and the bounce rate for the page is high so I am planning to 301 the page. How to best determine the best 301 destination? I have a few options. As an example the page was optimized for garden weddings. The page itself does not place well in the SERPS for garden weddings in Las Vegas, but our outdoor wedding packages in Las Vegas page places in the top 10. So that page is in an option. However, there is a different location that has a garden setting. Is that a better choice? Some content might match better than others, but any page I choose would be relevant content. Thank you so much 🙂
Technical SEO | | leslieevarts0 -
Indexed pages
Just started a site audit and trying to determine the number of pages on a client site and whether there are more pages being indexed than actually exist. I've used four tools and got four very different answers... Google Search Console: 237 indexed pages Google search using site command: 468 results MOZ site crawl: 1013 unique URLs Screaming Frog: 183 page titles, 187 URIs (note this is a free licence, but should cut off at 500) Can anyone shed any light on why they differ so much? And where lies the truth?
Technical SEO | | muzzmoz1 -
Contact Page
I'm currently designing a new website for my wife, who just started her own wedding/engagement photography business. I'm trying to build it as SEO friendly as possible, but she brought up an idea that she likes that I've never tried before. Typically on all the websites I've ever built, I've had a dedicated contact page that has the typical contact form. Because that contact form on a wedding photographers website is almost as important as selling a product on an e-commerce site, she brought up the possibility of putting the contact form in the footer site-wide (minus maybe the homepage) rather than having a dedicated contact page. And in the navigation, where you have links such as "Home", "Portfolio", "About", "Prices", "Contact", etc. the "Contact" navigation item would transfer the user to the bottom of the page they are on rather than a new page. Any thoughts on which way would be better for a case like this, and any positives/negatives for doing it each way? One thought I had is that if it's in the footer rather than it's own page, it would lose it's search-ability as it's technically duplicate content on each page. But then again, that's what a footer is. Thanks, Mickey
Technical SEO | | shannmg10 -
To Subdomain or Not Subdomain?
I have a client that has a construction company that services a regional area. They now developed a PRODUCT that they want to promote that would have a national reach. We are redesigning the site, with new branding and all. How do I treat the website URL structure? Is the product it's own domain because of the target market? Or should I make a subdomain because we want to tie the companies together in some fashion. Every article I read confuses me more on how to handle this. Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | cschwartzel0 -
To avoid errors in our Moz crawl, we removed subdomains from our host. (First we tried 301 redirects, also listed as errors.) Now we have backlinks all over the web that are broken. How bad is this, from a pagerank standpoint?
Our MOZ crawl kept telling us we had duplicate page content even though our subdomains were redirected to our main site. (Pages from Wineracks.vigilantinc.com were 301 redirected to vigilantinc.com/wineracks.) Now, to solve that problem, we have removed the wineracks.vigilantinc.com subdomain. The error report is better, but now we have broken backlinks - thousands of them. Is this hurting us worse than the duplicate content problem?
Technical SEO | | KristyFord0 -
New EMD update effected my mom's legit author page? From page 1 in SERP to nowhere for her name
I think my mom's site, MargaretTerry.com was hit by this update for her name "Margaret Terry". Went from bouncing around the first page on google.com and .ca all the time to nowhere on the index. The results are now very strange, a mix of Youtube, linked in, and small book stores that she has done events at recently to promote her first book. I was checking after some of my SEO buddys were freaking out about their EMD's getting hit on Sunday. She is an aspiring author with a book coming out this month. There is obviously no ads or spam content on the site... I have never done SEO for it either except a bit of on page I guess. It sucks that people might be grabbing her book soon and when they Google her name nothing shows up. This couldn't have really happened at a worse time. Not to mention the hours spent building the site to her liking, free of charge of course 🙂 Is there anyone I can contact there to help me out? Shouldn't and EMD that is someones name still rank when you search their name?
Technical SEO | | Operatic0 -
No. of links on a page
Is it true that If there is a huge number of links from the source page then each link will provide very little value in terms of passing link juice ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Redirect and ranking
Wehave 2 websites for the same keyword Website 1 is indexed on place 2 but we do not like that name any longer it does not fit our long term marketing Website 2 is indexed on place 5 and this domain fits better What will happen if we redirect website 1 to website 2? Fall down to postion 5 Fall down to position 5 and after a certain period we get back at position 2 or 3 thanx in advance for your reply
Technical SEO | | turnon0