Noindex,follow is a waste of link juice?
-
On my wordpress shopping cart plugin, I have three pages /account, /checkout and /terms on which I have added “noindex,follow” attribute. But I think I may be wasting link juice on these pages as they are not to be indexed anyway, so is there any point giving them any link juice? I can add “noindex,nofollow” on to the page itself. However, the actual text/anchor link to these pages on the site header will remain “follow” as I have no means of amending that right now. So this presents the following two scenarios – No juice flows from homepage to these 3 pages (GOOD) – This would be perfect then, as the pages themselves have nofollow attribute. Juice flows from homepage to these pages (BAD) - This may mean that the juice flows from homepage anchor text links to these 3 pages BUT then STOPS there as they have “nofollow” attribute on that page. This will be a bigger problem and if this is the case and I cant stop the juice from flowing in, then ill rather let it flow out to other pages. Hope you understand my question, any input is very much appreciated. Thanks
-
If you no index a page, link juice will flow to that page still. if you no follow it, it will still flow but will not flow out of it again.
you should always add noindex,follow if you want the link juice to return to your index pages. Even then some link juice will be lost that stays on that noindex page
I tried also could not find it. but here is a quote from Matt Cutts "Eric Enge: Can a NoIndex page accumulate PageRank?
Matt Cutts: A NoIndex page can accumulate PageRank, because the links are still followed outwards from a NoIndex page.
Eric Enge: So, it can accumulate and pass PageRank.
Matt Cutts: Right, and it will still accumulate PageRank, but it won't be showing in our Index. So, I wouldn't make a NoIndex page that itself is a dead end. You can make a NoIndex page that has links to lots of other pages.
For example you might want to have a master Sitemap page and for whatever reason NoIndex that, but then have links to all your sub Sitemaps.
Eric Enge: Another example is if you have pages on a site with content that from a user point of view you recognize that it's valuable to have the page, but you feel that is too duplicative of content on another page on the site
That page might still get links, but you don't want it in the Index and you want the crawler to follow the paths into the rest of the site.
Matt Cutts: That's right. Another good example is, maybe you have a login page, and everybody ends up linking to that login page. That provides very little content value, so you could NoIndex that page, but then the outgoing links would still have PageRank.
Now, if you want to you can also add a NoFollow metatag, and that will say don't show this page at all in Google's Index, and don't follow any outgoing links, and no PageRank flows from that page. We really think of these things as trying to provide as many opportunities as possible to sculpt where you want your PageRank to flow, or where you want Googlebot to spend more time and attention."
http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts.shtml
-
I just wanted to share I completely agree with EGOL and the understanding he shared. I skipped responding to this question because I didn't want to respond with all the explanation of the disclaimers, where EGOL tackled the question anyway and offered great details in both the original reply and follow up.
-
Great answer, and in this specific case, i have "noindex, follow" attribute on my pages too that i do not want to be indexed.
Regarding competitors - I study them, onsite and link profiles, specially the successful ones to learn from it. Most of the SEO strategies ive learned have been by reading forums / blogs etc. Quite often people have conflicting views there. So i try to find real life examples of stuff that is quite likely working for a successful site, try to see a pattern in there, and where i spot one, i try to implement that on my sites.
You on the other hand - have experience and proven philosophies :), something i am dying to acquire.
Thanks
-
Here is a philosophy that I have... (I am not trying to be a wise guy... just sayin'....)
I don't pay a lot of attention to the methods used by my competitors. Instead I decide what I think will work best for me and then do it.
Right now I have pages on my site that I don't want in the search engines index. So I have code on them as follows....
name="robots" content="noindex, follow" />
I believe that code keeps them out of the index but allows pagerank to flow through them to other pages. I offer that here so that anyone can tell me if it is wrong.
I welcome anyone who can set me straight or anyone who can suggest a better method.
However, I am not going to look at my competitors and try to figure out what they are doing because there is a very good chance that they don't know what they are doing. (I think your competitors don't know what they are doing.)
I have absolutely no problem with doing things differently from my competitors. In fact I think that mimicking them is the best way to finish behind them.
-
EGOL, thank you so much for your input, i really value your opinion. However, i have a follow up question, and i maybe muddled up with things here, but here it is -
Many of my successful competitors in various niches have added rel=nofollow to certain internal pages.
For example -
1. On homepage of this wordpress site, the anchor text link to wp tag pages have rel=nofollow. The tag pages themselves are "noindex,follow".
2. Also all links in the header are rel=nofollow. The only follow links are post pages, and post pages are being used for navigation.
Any page that has a rel=nofollow anchor text is "noindex,follow" itself. Nowhere a "noindex" has been added to a wholepage, its only on certain anchor text links.
Is that slightly different from making the whole page nofollow? because here only pages are being stopped from getting any link juice.
-
I am going to explain how I understand this. I could be wrong on some of the details because of two different reasons.... 1) I simply am wrong... or .... 2) I am correct according to what search engines have said in public but they are doing something different in practice.
When nofollow was first introduced a lot of people used it to "sculpt" the flow of pagerank. They were told at that time by some search engine employees that pagerank did not flow into nofollowed pages. That is how search engines who made public statements about it were supposed to be treating it in the beginning.
Later we learned that google (and maybe other) search engines changed their mind on how they handle nofollow and that change was to evaporate ALL pagerank that would have flowed into a nofollow link. In that situation it would be a bad idea to use nofollow because the pagerank was permanently lost.
Do they still handle nofollow links that way? I don't know.
However...... how I currently understand it is that if you designate a page as noindex / follow then pagerank flows into that page and through the links on that page. This would conserve any pass-through pagerank but would result in a loss of any pagerank that is retained in that page (or maybe it all passes through since the page is no index - I don't know).
So, if I had pages that I wanted to link to on my site but didn't want in the index I would use noindex / follow to allow the pagerank that flows into those pages to pass through to other pages on my site. But I would never be sure that it really works that way. Also, keep in mind that there are numerous search engines and there could be many different ways of treating these links - and pagerank is a substance unique to google.
If anyone understands this differently or suspect that it does not work as explained, please let us know.
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
-
Weird Site is linking to our site and links appears to be broken
I have got a lot of weird links indexed from this page: http://kzs.uere.info/files/images/dining-table-and-2-upholstered-chairs.html When clicking the link it shows 404. Also, the spam score is huge. What do you guys suggest to do with this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Miniorek
Could it be done by somebody to get our rankings down or domain penalized? Best Regards
Mike & Alex0 -
If you do 302 redirect then change to 301 redirect do you lose all link juice?
Hello everyone, I was wondering if you could help me with understanding the following story: A website has been moved from its HTTP version to a HTTPS version. The SEO manager has advised developers that they needed to do 301 redirects. However, in the end, 302 redirects have been put in place instead. Now, 301s should be put in place ASAP. The million dollar question is: has the website lost all of its link juice already given the nature of the redirects? Also, does it depend on whether Google has indexed the new 302 pages or does it depend on something else? Many thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarketingGH0 -
How to build links naturally?
Hi, I recently started a website on famous Photoshop images. These are available in the internet, but on different sources, so i gathered them all and made them available in my website. So my content is not unique but it was gathered from different sources and made available in one website. How can i get links naturally? Yes, it is a great content, but how people will know about my site so that they can reblog on their blogs? How can i make the users to reblog my content and get links naturally? Can anyone experienced help me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hari10 -
How hard would it be to take a well-linked site, completely change the subject matter & still retain link authority?
So, this would be taking a domain with a domain authority of 50 (200 root domains, 3500 total links) and, for fictitious example, going from a subject matter like "Online Deals" to "The History Of Dentistry"... just totally unrelated new subject for the old/re-purposed domain. The old content goes away entirely. The domain name itself is a super vague .com name and has no exact match to anything either way. I'm wondering, if the DNS changed to different servers, it went from 1000 pages to a blog, ownership/contacts stayed the same, the missing pages were 301'd to the homepage, how would that fare in Google for the new homepage focus and over what time frame? Assume the new terms are a reasonable match to the old domain authority and compete U.S.-wide... not local or international. Bonus points for answers from folks who have actually done this. Thanks... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Penguin Apply To Internal Linking?
Is Penguin focused primarily on backlinks or does it also assess internal linking/anchor text? We've lost about 3,000 visitors a month since the rolling updates were implemented. I'm always careful not to over-react to algo updates but enough time has passed that I think the dust has settled. I try to stay white in all I do but I think if I've over-done anything its the internal linking related products/categories with exact match. My backlink profile also has an over-abundance of affiliate links but that's kind of out of my hands isn't it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AWCthreads0 -
Link + noindex vs canonical--which is better?
In this article http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66359 google mentions if you syndicate content, you should include a link and, ideally noindex, the content, if possible. I'm wondering why google doesn't mention including a canonical instead the link + noindex? Is one better than the other? Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Easy way to get some do-follow links for a new site
I am launching a new website and when I search for "list of do-follow websites" I find lots of people posting their list. Rather than individually sign up for hundreds of sites for one link at a time, is there a tool that can automate this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StreetwiseReports0 -
Should I link my similar sites together?
Hi I currently have two sites within exactly the same market. I've just purchased a third website from someone. Should I link these sites together? (i.e. in the page header should I cross link them or point two of them to the third?) If I do this will it harm them if they are on the same C-Class IP blocks? Is using private domains and different hosting companies considered dodgey in any way? Basically I'm a big wimp and don't want to do anything potentially that might potentially hurt my rankings;)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blendfish0