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.
Does having alot of pages with noindex and nofollow tags affect rankings?
-
We are an e-commerce marketplace at for alternative fashion and home decor. We have over 1000+ stores on the marketplace. Early this year, we switched the website from HTTP to HTTPS in March 2018 and also added noindex and nofollow tags to the store about page and store policies (mostly boilerplate content)
Our traffic dropped by 45% and we have since not recovered. We have done
I am wondering could these tags be affecting our rankings?
-
Hi Gaston
Thank you for the detailed response and suggestions. I will follow up with my findings. Point 3 and 4; - I think there is something there.
James
-
Hi James,
Great that you've checked out those items and there aren't errors.
I'd break my response into bullet points so its easier to respond
1- I'm bugged that the traffic loss occurs in the same month as the https redirection.
That completely tells me that you've either killed, redirected or noindexed some pages that drove a lot of traffic.
2- Also it could be possible that you didn't deserve that much traffic due to either being ranked on searches that you weren't relevant or Google didn't fully understand your site. That often happens when migration takes places, as Google needs to re-calculate and fully understand the new site.3- If you have still on the old HTTP search Console property, I'd check as many (and in some scalable way) keywords as possible, trying to find which have fallen out in rankings.
4- When checking those keywords, compare URLs that were ranked, there could be some changes.5- And lastly, have you made sure that there aren't any indexation and/or Crawlability issues? Check the raw number of indexable URLs and compare it with the number that Search Console shows in the index coverage report.
Best wishes.
GR -
Hi Gaston
Thank you for sharing your insights.
1. I have looked through all the pages and made sure we have not noindexed important pages
2. The migration went well; no double redirects or duplicate content.
3. I looked through Google search console - Fixed all the errors; (mostly complains about 404 error caused by products that are out of stock or from vendors who leave the website)
4. A friend said he thinks our pages are over-optimized - and hence that could be the reason; We went ahead and tweaked all the pages that were driving traffic; but change.
If you have a moment here is our website: www.rebelsmarket.com - If there is anything that standsout please let me know. I appreciate your help
James
-
Hi Joe
We have applied all the redirects carefully and tested them to make sure; we have no duplicate content
The url: www.rebelsmarket.com
Redirect to SSL: March 2018 (we started with the blog and then moved to products page)
We added; noindex and nofollow tags at the sametime;
Thank you
James
-
Hi John
Sorry, I have been tied up with travel schedule. Here is the website www.rebelsmarket.com
Thank you for your help John
-
Hi James,
Yiut issues lie elsewhere - did anything else happen during the update? My first thoughts are that the redirects were incorrectly applied.
- Whats the URL?
- When was the redirect HTTP > HTTPS installed & how?
- When was noindex and nofollow tags added?
You're a month in, so you should be able to recover. Sharing the URL would be useful if you need any further assistance.
-
Hey James - would you be comfortable sharing the URL? I can run some diagnostics on it to see what other issues could be the cause of the drop.
Thanks!
John
-
Hi James,
I'm sorry to hear that you've lost over 45% of your traffic.
Absolutely not, having a lot of noindex and nofollow pages won't affect your rankings and your SEO strength.On the other hand, a traffic drop could be related to many issues, some of them:
- Algorithm changes, there has been a lot of movement this year
- You've noindexed some of your high traffic pages
- Some part of the migration gone wrong
- And the list could be endless.
I'd start checking Search Console, there you could spot which keywords and/or URLs are those that aren't ranking that high.
It might come handy, this sort of tutorial on analyzing a traffic drop: How to Diagnose SEO Traffic Drops: 11 Questions to Answer - Moz Blog
Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR
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
-
Alternate page with proper canonical tag Status: Excluded in Google webmaster tools.
In Google Webmaster Tools, I have a coverage issue. I am getting this error message: Alternate page with proper canonical tag Status: Excluded. It gives the below blog post page as an example. Any idea how to resolve? At one time, I was using handl utm grabber, but the plugin is deactivated on my website. https://www.savacations.com/turrialba-costa-ricas-garden-city/?utm_source=deleted&utm_medium=deleted&utm_term=deleted&utm_content=deleted&utm_campaign=deleted&gclid=deleted5.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alancito0 -
Do Page Anchors Affect SEO?
Hi everyone, I've been researching for the past hour and I cannot find a definitive answer anywhere! Can someone tell me if page anchors affect SEO at all? I have a client that has 9 page anchors on one landing page on their website - which means if you were to scroll through their website, the page is really really long! I always thought that by using page anchors instead of sending users through to a dedicated landing page, ranking for those keywords makes it harder because a search spider will read all the content on that landing page and not know how to rank for individual keywords? Am I wrong? The client in particular sells furniture, so on their landing page they have page anchors that jump the user down to "tables" or "chairs" or "lighting" for example. You can then click on one of the product images listed in that section of the page anchor and go through to an individual product page. Can anyone shed any light on this? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Virginia-Girtz1 -
Adding hreflang tags - better on each page, or the site map?
Hello, I am wondering if there seems to be a preference for adding hreflang tags (from this article). My client just changed their site from gTLDs to ccTLDs, and a few sites have taken a pretty big traffic hit. One issue is definitely the amount of redirects to the page, but I am also going to work with the developer to add hreflang tags. My question is - is it better to add them to the header of each page, or the site map, or both, or something else? Any other thoughts are appreciated. Our Australia site, which was at least findable using Australia Google before this relaunch, is not showing up, even when you search the company name directly. Thanks!Lauryn
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | john_marketade0 -
Help! The website ranks fine but one of my web pages simply won't rank on Google!!!
One of our web pages will not rank on Google. The website as a whole ranks fine except just one section...We have tested and it looks fine...Google can crawl the page no problem. There are no spurious redirects in place. The content is fine. There is no duplicate page content issue. The page has a dozen product images (photos) but the load time of the page is absolutely fine. We have the submitted the page via webmaster and its fine. It gets listed but then a few hours later disappears!!! The site has not been penalised as we get good rankings with other pages. Can anyone help? Know about this problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CayenneRed890 -
Do Page Views Matter? (ranking factor?)
Hi, I actually asked it a year and a half ago (with a slight variation) but didn't get any real response and things do change over time. On my eCommerce website I have the main category pages with client side filtering and sorting. As a result, the number of page views is lower than can be expected. Do you think having more page views is still a ranking factor? and if so is it more important than user experience? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet1 -
Domain Authority: 23, Page Authority: 33, Can My Site Still Rank?
Greetings: Our New York City commercial real estate site is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. Key MOZ metric are as follows: Domain Authority: 23
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Page Authority: 33
28 Root Domains linking to the site
179 Total Links. In the last six months domain authority, page authority, domains linking to the site have declined. We have focused on removing duplicate content and low quality links which may have had a negative impact on the above metrics. Our ranking has dropped greatly in the last two months. Could it be due to the above metrics? These numbers seem pretty bad. How can I reverse without engaging in any black hat behavior that could work against me in the future? Ideas?
Thanks, Alan Rosinsky0 -
Putting "noindex" on a page that's in an iframe... what will that mean for the parent page?
If I've got a page that is being called in an iframe, on my homepage, and I don't want that called page to be indexed.... so I put a noindex tag on the called page (but not on the homepage) what might that mean for the homepage? Nothing? Will Google, Bing, Yahoo, or anyone else, potentially see that as a noindex tag on my homepage?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Philip-DiPatrizio0 -
Should I Allow Blog Tag Pages to be Indexed?
I have a wordpress blog with settings currently set so that Google does not index tag pages. Is this a best practice that avoids duplicate content or am I hurting the site by taking eligible pages out of the index?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JSOC0