Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the response and such detailed answer. One thing I would like to know is, we are clear that the pagerank or authority will be divided for the number of internal pages. Will it be the same case with external links too as you mentioned? I agree that some authority will be added to the external page we are linking....does that really means we are loosing some? I have seen here from other SEOs that we are not going to loose any pagerank with external linking.

Thanks

Hi all,

We have some external links on our footer menu. I'm just trying to figure out whether these take away pagerank. What if they are follow or nofollow? How fair to have DMCA badge with link at footer? Will this hurts?

Thanks

Hi John,

Thanks for the response. I agree with you about using "rel=canonical". But there are too many pages to manually add these tags. Is there any other way to implement this?

Thanks

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for the response. I agree with you. But do you have any idea why it turns soft 404?

Hi GR,

I agree with too many nofollow outgoing spammy links. But how about having so much spammy content in-terms of text, keywords and hyperlinks?

Thanks

Hi all,

All SaaS companies have this log-in page as their top visited page in their websites and some times it helps and also hurts them. I've gone through some big SaaS companies websites and they handle the log-in page differently like on sub domain, on website page, some will directly link to their instance login without a page, etc...I wonder what is the best practice to host the log-in to make sure the more visits to log-in page don't hurt us but give us some boost.

Thanks

Hi all,

We have changed hundreds and thousands of page and page URLs for last 10 years in our website. So, now we are going to redirect most of the old pages/links to the current related pages. This will increase the number of redirects we set in our website database to thousands. Will this put any extra weight on crawler and any risks involved for employing too many redirects.

Thanks

Hi Moz community,

Seems like Bing already confirmed that they are using link-less mentions for the ranking graph and some SEO experts believe if Google also employing the same in their Algo....Can anybody please confirm and share your thoughts on this?

Thanks

Hi all,

Our duplicate website which is used for testing new optimisations got indexed and we dropped in rankings. But I am not sure whether this is exact reason as it happened earlier too where I don't find much drop in rankings. Also I got replies in the past that it'll not really impact original website but duplicate website. I think this rule applies to the third party websites. But if our own domain has exact duplicate content; will Google knows that we own the website from any other way we are associated like IP addresses and servers, etc..to find the duplicate website is hosted by us? I wonder how Google treats duplicate content from third party domains and own domains.

Thanks

Hi all,

We have started link reclamation process as we failed to redirect our old website links to newly created pages. Unfortunately most of the backlinks are pointing to a page which already has lots of backlinks. Just wondering if I can redirect the old pages to the other pages than the actual related page they must be pointing to make sure only one page doesn't take away all the backlinks. And what happens if Google find that backlink is pointing to a different page than the actual page?

Thanks

Hi Moz community

If we Google "site:website.com"; it'll list the cached pages from the website. And we used to check them on required date range like how and which pages got indexed. But date range is not working now and the results are missing the pages which got indexed at the selected date range. Any idea why Google does this? Any alternatives to find the recently indexed pages?

Thanks

Hi all,

We use robots file and meta robots tags for blocking website or website pages to block bots from crawling. Mostly robots.txt will be used for website and expect all the pages to not getting indexed. But there is a condition here that any page from website can be indexed by Google even the site is blocked from robots.txt; because crawler may find the page link somewhere on internet as stated here at last paragraph. I wonder if this really the case where some webpages have got indexed.

And even we use meta tags at page level; do we need to block from robots.txt file? Can we use both techniques at a time?

Thanks

Hi all,

This is the scenario:

Our website is newwebsite.com. Our old website is oldwebsite.com which has been redirected to newwebsite.com (years back). But one of the old website's sub domain has a lot of back links to our current website like: seo.oldwebsite.com to newwebsite.com. Will this scenario hurts with any wrong linking?

Thanks

Hi all,

If we redirect an old page to some new page, we know that content relevancy between source page and this new page matters at Google. I just wonder if Google is looking at the content relevancy of old page (from cache) and new page too.

Thanks

Hi Moz community,

We have our backlinks mostly pointed to our homepage. We are trying to rank better and not having minimum number of backlinks to our internal pages is one of the things I worry about. Backlinks to homepage alone help in ranking internal pages or backlinks to internal pages help in ranking homepage? Or both required?

Thanks

Hi all,

We failed to redirect the links of our old website versions to new website pages for years and we are planning to now redirect all those old links to new in the process of link reclamation. This activity may increase the back links suddenly or steadily. If there is sudden increase in backlinks, will it hurts us? What's Google's stand?

Thanks

Hi Moz community,

Backlinks being a major ranking factor, do they must be very recent or fresh to make a ranking difference compared to the backlinks which are years old? We know usually fresh content ranks well, but I wonder how much the fresh/recent backlinks impact in rankings. Do the years old backlinks from related and reputed website have same impact on rankings?

Thanks

Hi all,

The suggestion to use meta robots tag rather than robots.txt file is to make sure the pages do not get indexed if their hyperlinks are available anywhere on the internet. I don't understand how the pages will be indexed if the entire site is blocked? Even though there are page links are available, will Google really index those pages? One of our site got blocked from robots file but internal links are available on internet for years which are not been indexed. So technically robots.txt file is quite enough right? Please clarify and guide me if I'm wrong.

Thanks

Hi all,

We can see very old links or anonymous links of website suddenly listing under soft 404 or 404 in GSW. As per Google, some of them are some script generated ignorable links. Other are actually the ones which were deleted but not redirected. I wonder how Google get these years old links even though there are no source links available for these. These must be fixed even though they are not linked anywhere from our internal or external pages?

Thanks

Hi all,

We have our forum and is filled with spammy content and external nofollow links. I am just wondering if we can make all these links as plain text from hyperlinks (if we can); it's technically deleting all the external links. Will this impact negatively or positively anyhow as per Google? Please share your ideas.

Thanks

Hi all,

Our forum have so many discussions and topics where our users leave their websites and oter URLs which will be marked "nofollow" by default. Beside spammy websites, is that Okay to have so many "nofollow" outgoing links?

Thanks

Hi all,

I would like to know how sub domains will be collaborated with domain or main website in terms of authority, backlinks, link juice, etc...Link juice will be passed to sub domains from domain or vice versa? If there are large number of pages in sub domain, will that going to impact the ranking of main domain? Backlinks of sub domain are going to be a deciding factor for website ranking too?

Thanks

Hi Moz community,

We can see many websites with a reputation will have more number of visitors landing with these two types of traffic mostly (>90%): organic traffic of brand queries and direct traffic.

Will these visits help and impact the ranking of these websites for the keywords/topics they been employing?

Ex: Moz will have many such visitors. Will this really impact the ranking of Moz for non-brand queries they try to rank for, like "SEO Software". If so, will this have a huge impact or it's just a minor ranking factor. Because we have this with our website and we don't see such boost in rankings compared to our competitors with less direct traffic; where as I been looking at some SEO articles that direct traffic is one of the most important ranking factors.

Thanks

Hi Linda,

So, if we noindex the popular page of our website, what difference it is going to make at Google beside that page not showing up in SERP.

Actually I have replied to the related thread to your post below: https://moz.com/community/q/log-in-page-ranking-instead-of-homepage-due-to-high-traffic-on-login-page-how-to-avoid

Please suggest.

Thanks

Hi Linda,

Yes, I agree with you that we may not lose the traffic but again, most of the website visitors are going to end up at log-in page which might be a strong indicator to Google that most visitors are just interested about our log-in and this may dilute our ranking efforts of ranking other pages of the website including homepage.

Thanks

Hi GR,

Most of our website visitors intention is to get into log-in page as most of them are our customers. There are large number of people who will get into log-in page from website rather than directly. So, even if we noindex the login page, the people who are searching directly for our log-in page or who are clicking on the log-in page from the Google sitelinks after searching from our brand will not able to find; they may end manually with one more extra step of visiting the website first. Again the indicator is that most of the website page visitors are going to log-in page. How that works?

Thanks

Hi Matijn,

Thanks for the response. Actually our login page is the most visited page on our website and it's taking over other pages by beating homepage on rankings. So just wondering how about removing it from search index. So most of the visitors are going to come to our website but will end up on deindexed login page. How it works. Please suggest.

Thanks

Hi Moz team,

I have noticed that one of our old domain has high spam score of 9. This has been redirected to our domain around 2 years back. I can see that old domain doesn't have any back links. Then how come the spam score have been calculated for this? If there is any metric for this, we just wanna remove redirecting this spammy old domain to our domain. Please clarify.

Thanks

Hi all,

As most of the users are visiting our website for log-in, we are planning to deindex login page. As they cannpt find it on SERP, they gonna visit our website and login; I just wonder what happens when most of the visitors just end up at homepage by browsing into an "noindex" page. Obviously it increases bounce rate and exit rate as they just gonna disappear. Is this going to push down us in rankings? What are the other concerns to check about?

Thanks

Hi all,

Does the number/percentage of new visitors (from different IPs and countries) impact the Google rankings? If there are more number of new visitors, will Google favours the website in rankings considering the fact that new visitors are better than returning/same visitors?

Thanks

Hi Gaston,

Thanks for the reply. Yes, we need it in the Google as many of our users are landing on that page from SERP only. If we add the tag as you mentioned, it'll be out of SERP right?

We don't want the traffic of log-in page as it's hitting the actual traffic and ranking of website. Do you think our ranking will be improved with this or we will be more dropped by loosing the traffic of log-in page?

Thanks

Hi all,

Our log-in page is ranking in SERP instead of homepage and some times both pages rank for the primary keyword we targeted. We have even dropped. I am looking for a solution for this. Three points here to consider is:

1. Our log-in page is the most visited page and landing page on the website.
2. Even there is the primary keyword in this page or not; same scenario continues
3. Log-in page is the first link bots touch when they crawling any page of our website as log-in page is linked on top navigation menu

If we move login page to sub-domain, will it works? I am worrying that we loose so much traffic to our website which will be taken away from log-in page sub domain

Please guide with your valuable suggestions.

Thanks

Thanks for the answers and suggestions. I have more questions raised in my mind and I put them in the below different thread very clearly. Please reply there.

https://moz.com/community/q/what-happens-when-we-canonical-and-point-to-a-page-which-has-been-redirected-to-another-page-google-response

Hi all,

I would like to know the different scenarios Google going to respond when we use canonical and redirect for duplicate pages.

Let's say A to B are duplicate pages with 95% same content and C Doesn't have same content but context wise similar and priority page we expect to rank for.

1. What happens if we canonical from A to B and set redirect from B to C?

2. What if both A and B are pointed to C with canonical?

3. What if A or B deleted and other one is canonical to C?

Note: We can noindex or 301 redirect as they have their own visitors. This is more about showing most relevant content to the audience and avoid duplicate content in search results.

Thanks

HI,

Thanks for the immediate response. I agree with your analysis and conclusion. What if the duplicate page we are leaving is redirected to the page we are pointing?

I meant "1 will be pointed to 3 instead of 2" and "2 will be redirected 3"

How this works?

Thanks

Hi all,

We have 3 pages for same topics. We decided to use rel canonical and remove old pages from search to avoid duplicate content. Out of these 3 pages....1 and 2 type of pages have more similar content where 3 type don't have. Generally we must use rel canonical between 1 and 2. But I am wondering what happens if I canonical between 1 and 3 while 2 has more similar content? Will Google respects it or penalise as we left the most similar page and used other page for canonical.

Thanks

Hi all,

I need clarification on this. We are adding new pages where H2 is followed by few bold bullet point headings with plain text description under each bullet point. I am just wondering whether we can given these bold bullet points as H3 tags as just leave as text. In the below example, can "**Good for website" **and "**Good for visitors" **be H3 tags or not?

Benefits of SEO (H2)

Good for website: Followed for best practices to show in search results

Good for visitors: Will give better user experience.

Number of H3 tags followed by a H2 is fine? In fact header tags followed by any header tag if Okay without plain text in-between?

Thanks

Hi Linda,

Thanks for the suggestion. Below are the questions I have if we canonicalize:

1. Still there are people Google for them, how they land on these pages?

2. If we still proceed, there are many backlinks for the old pages, does that PR or link juice will be passed to new pages?

3. What if we canonicalize and link from new pages to old pages as there might be few users looking for old pages but landed on new pages.

Thanks

Hi Nigel,

Glad that you are happy to look at the website. I think you must have a look at website for better understanding. I have sent the details through PM. Please check.

Thanks a lot.

Hi Nigel,

Thanks for such detailed response. I am afraid that we may hurt ourselves after reading your answer. But we can see many websites which have got number of links from their sub domains, infact from every page of their sub domains and I don't see them penalised.

And what is wrong when we try to divert users from old content to new content? We can see this been employed by many websites when they have something to feed to their customers.

If you are sure about the risk, I would like to get your personal suggestion by looking at our website if you can.

Thank you

Hi all,

We have our product guide pages on sub domain which are years old, so have some backlinks and high ranking for the beand related queries. Now we created new guide pages on our main website and we want these new pages to rank top beating the old pages from sub domain. Again we can't deindex or rel canonical to solve the issue as there are some part of users still using the old pages. We are planning to give a link from every old page of sub domain to same new page on main domain. Will this linking increases the authority of new pages technically and helps in ranking better? Like we give a link to "Moz guide 1" page to "Moz guide 2" page to rank latter better.

Thanks

Hi all,

I just wonder if the back links for different sub domains will be counted and considered to rank the main domain better or they are just limit to sub domain pages? There are many websites which has got multiple sub domains which receive backlinks? So the backlinks to main domain and sub domain weigh same at Google?

Thanks

Hi Linda,

Beside fetch as Google, the page will be indexed if it has no internal or external links?

Hi all,

We are making some changes in our website content at some paragraphs and tags with our main keywords. I'm just wondering if this is going to make us de indexed from Google? Because we recently dropped in rankings when we added some new content; so I am worried whether there are any chances it will turn more risky when we try to make anymore changes like changing the content. There are actually many reasons a website gets de indexed from Google but we don't employ any such black hat techniques. Our website got a reputation with thousands of direct traffic and organic search. However I am curious to know what are the chances of getting de indexed as per the new trends at Google?

Thanks

Hi all,

I have noticed one page from our competitors' website which has been hardly linked from one internal page. I just would like to know if the page not linked anywhere get indexed by Google or not? Will it be found by Google?

What if a page not linked internally but go some backlinks from other websites?

Thanks

Hi Cesare,

But there are too many backlinks from different sub domains and how we are going to check thousands of links to disavow them? I think its hard to go with.

Hi all,

We have a sub domain which has less engagement for last few years. Eventually many spammy back links pointed to this sub domain. There are relevant back links too. We have deleted most of the pages which are employing spammy content or which have spammy back links. Still I'm confused whether to take this sub domain down or keep it. The confusion between "relevant backlinks might be helping our website" and "spammy backlinks are affecting to drop in rankings"?

Thanks

Hi all,

We use incognito mode or private browsing to check the Actual results which are not impacted by previous history, location (sometimes), etc. Even we browse this way, we can see the different search results. Why would this happen? What's Google's stand on this? What is the actual way to browse to get the unbiased results for certain search queries? I have experienced that Chrome will rank our own websites bit higher compared to the other browsers even in incognito mode.

Thanks

Hi all,

We have total 4 pages about same topic and similar keywords. These pages are from our main domain and sub domains too. As the pages from sub domains are years old and been receiving visits from SERP, they stick to 1st position. But we have recently created new pages on our main domain which we are expecting to rank on 1st position. I am planning to hide the sub domain pages from SERP using "Remove URLs" for some days to increase visibility to new pages from main domain. Is this the right and best practice to proceed with?

Thanks

Hi all,

Many of our partners across the globe are using the same content from our website and hosting on their websites including header tags, text, etc. So I wonder will these websites are hurting our website due to this duplicate content. Do we need to ask our partners to stop using our content? Any suggestions? What if some unofficial partners deny to remove the content? best way to handle?

Thanks