Noindex
-
I have been reading a lot of conflicting information on the Link Juice ramifications of using "NoIndex". Can I get some advice for the following situation?
1. I have pages that I do not want indexed on my site. They are lead conversion pages. Just about every page on my site has links to them. If I just apply a standard link, those pages will get a ton of Link Juice that I'd like to allocate to other pages.
2. If I use "nofollow", the pages won't rank, but the link juice evaporates. I get that. I won't use "nofollow"
3. I have read that "noindex, follow" will block the pages in the SERPs, but will pass Link Juice to them. I don't think that I want this either. If I "dead end" the lead form with no navigation or links, will the juice be locked up on the page?
4. I assume that I should block the pages in robots.txt
In order to keep the pages out of the SERPs, and conserve Link Juice, what should I do? Can someone please give me a step by step process with the reasoning for what I should do here?
-
I have a private/login site where all pages are noindex, nofollow. Can I still monitor external site links with Google Analytics?
-
Yes, there is a way to keep them out of the SERPs and restrict them from getting link juice: using noindex + nofollow, but bare in mind you'll be loosing that link juice and impairing it's flow throughout your site, besides indicating Google that you don't "trust" those pages.
A workaround would be consolidating those links.
-
So what you are saying is that there is no way to keep the pages out of the serps and restrict them from getting link juice?
This is nuts. My conversion pages will be getting huge amounts of link juice - there are links to them on every page.
I'm not happy about this. Any workarounds?
-
Using robots.txt won't ensure that your pages are kept out of the SERPs, since any external link to those pages could get them indexed. If you need to make sure, the best way should be the noindex meta tag.
Now, in order not to loose your linkjuice, you should make sure to use "noindex, follow" in your meta, that way you're still preventing the pages from being indexed but you are allowing the juice flow through them.
If you want to pass the less possible juice to those pages, you should try to link them as little as possible or consolidate those links in fewer pages throughout your site.
Here's some useful information on the subject:
Google Says: Yes, You Can Still Sculpt PageRank. No You Can't Do It With Nofollow
Link Consolidation: The New PageRank Sculpting
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
-
Should you 'noindex' Checkout Pages?
Today I was reviewing my Moz analytics and suddenly noticed 1,000 issues with pages without a meta description. I reviewed the list and learned it is 1,000 checkout pages. That's because my website has thousands of agency pages from which you can buy a product, and it reflects that difference on each version of the checkout. So, I was thinking about no-indexing (but continuing to 'follow') these checkout pages, but wondering if it has any knock-on effects I may be unaware of? Any assistance is much appreciated. Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Luke_Proctor0 -
How to get a large number of urls out of Google's Index when there are no pages to noindex tag?
Hi, I'm working with a site that has created a large group of urls (150,000) that have crept into Google's index. If these urls actually existed as pages, which they don't, I'd just noindex tag them and over time the number would drift down. The thing is, they created them through a complicated internal linking arrangement that adds affiliate code to the links and forwards them to the affiliate. GoogleBot would crawl a link that looks like it's to the client's same domain and wind up on Amazon or somewhere else with some affiiiate code. GoogleBot would then grab the original link on the clients domain and index it... even though the page served is on Amazon or somewhere else. Ergo, I don't have a page to noindex tag. I have to get this 150K block of cruft out of Google's index, but without actual pages to noindex tag, it's a bit of a puzzler. Any ideas? Thanks! Best... Michael P.S., All 150K urls seem to share the same url pattern... exmpledomain.com/item/... so /item/ is common to all of them, if that helps.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Should I use noindex or robots to remove pages from the Google index?
I have a Magento site and just realized we have about 800 review pages indexed. The /review directory is disallowed in robots.txt but the pages are still indexed. From my understanding robots means it will not crawl the pages BUT if the pages are still indexed if they are linked from somewhere else. I can add the noindex tag to the review pages but they wont be crawled. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-do-not-use-noindex-in-robots-txt-20873.html Should I remove the robots.txt and add the noindex? Or just add the noindex to what I already have?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tylerj0 -
Should I Keep adding 301s or use a noindex,follow/canonical or a 404 in this situation?
Hi Mozzers, I feel I am facing a double edge sword situation. I am in the process of migrating 4 domains into one. I am in the process of creating URL redirect mapping The pages I am having the most issues are the event pages that are past due but carry some value as they generally have one external followed link. www.example.com/event-2008 301 redirect to www.newdomain.com/event-2016 www.example.com/event-2007 301 redirect to www.newdomain.com/event-2016 www.example.com/event-2006 301 redirect to www.newdomain.com/event-2016 Again these old events aren't necessarily important in terms of link equity but do carry some and at the same time keep adding multiple 301s pointing to the same page may not be a good ideas as it will increase the page speed load time which will affect the new site's performance. If i add a 404 I will lose the bit of equity in those. No index,follow may work since it won't index the old domain nor the page itself but still not 100% sure about it. I am not sure how a canonical would work since it would keep the old domain live. At this point I am not sure which direction I should follow? Thanks for your answers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Should I use meta noindex and robots.txt disallow?
Hi, we have an alternate "list view" version of every one of our search results pages The list view has its own URL, indicated by a URL parameter I'm concerned about wasting our crawl budget on all these list view pages, which effectively doubles the amount of pages that need crawling When they were first launched, I had the noindex meta tag be placed on all list view pages, but I'm concerned that they are still being crawled Should I therefore go ahead and also apply a robots.txt disallow on that parameter to ensure that no crawling occurs? Or, will Googlebot/Bingbot also stop crawling that page over time? I assume that noindex still means "crawl"... Thanks 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ntcma0 -
"noindex, follow" or "robots.txt" for thin content pages
Does anyone have any testing evidence what is better to use for pages with thin content, yet important pages to keep on a website? I am referring to content shared across multiple websites (such as e-commerce, real estate etc). Imagine a website with 300 high quality pages indexed and 5,000 thin product type pages, which are pages that would not generate relevant search traffic. Question goes: Does the interlinking value achieved by "noindex, follow" outweigh the negative of Google having to crawl all those "noindex" pages? With robots.txt one has Google's crawling focus on just the important pages that are indexed and that may give ranking a boost. Any experiments with insight to this would be great. I do get the story about "make the pages unique", "get customer reviews and comments" etc....but the above question is the important question here.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Noindex search pages?
Is it best to noindex search results pages, exclude them using robots.txt, or both?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YairSpolter0 -
Noindex xml RSS feed
Hey, How can I tell search engines not to index my xml RSS feed? The RSS feed is created by Yoast on WordPress. Thanks, Luke.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NoisyLittleMonkey0