Can noindexed pages accrue page authority?
-
My company's site has a large set of pages (tens of thousands) that have very thin or no content. They typically target a single low-competition keyword (and typically rank very well), but the pages have a very high bounce rate and are definitely hurting our domain's overall rankings via Panda (quality ranking).
I'm planning on recommending we noindexed these pages temporarily, and reindex each page as resources are able to fill in content.
My question is whether an individual page will be able to accrue any page authority for that target term while noindexed. We DO want to rank for all those terms, just not until we have the content to back it up. However, we're in a pretty competitive space up against domains that have been around a lot longer and have higher domain authorities. Like I said, these pages rank well right now, even with thin content. The worry is if we noindex them while we slowly build out content, will our competitors get the edge on those terms (with their subpar but continually available content)? Do you think Google will give us any credit for having had the page all along, just not always indexed?
-
Yes, Google will give you credit for adding value to pages. You must have them crawled as a Googlebot immediately after no indexing is removed.
Your no indexing will pass page rank of thin content could save you potentially from a penalty however if you have a better page redirected to that page using a 301.
You will not receive the existing traffic if your ranking for that keyword at all if you noindex it. Well, you'll lose a lot of it until it's fixed.
You will have more trouble ranking for that keyword if you remove the page from Google's index. However, if you feel your content is that thin I would recommend no indexing them if you are going to fix them. And you must be willing to fix them extremely soon. How are you going to rank for a term Organically if you no index it you will hurt it that is not currently getting traffic?
A NoIndex tag is an instruction to the search engines that you don’t want a page to be kept within their search results. You should use this when you believe you have a page that search engines might consider being of poor quality.
What does a noindex tag do?
- It is a directive, not a suggestion. I.e., Google will obey it, and not index the page.
- The page can still be crawled by Google.
- The page can still accumulate PageRank.
- The page can still pass PageRank via any links on the page.
(PageRank, in reality_, there are a lot of other signals that are potentially passed through any link. Better to say “signals passed” than “PageRank passed.”)_
Crawl frequency of a noindex page will decline over time.
Crawl frequency refers to how often Google returns to a page to check whether the page still exists, has any changes, and has accumulated or lost signals.
Typically crawl frequency will decline for any page that Google cannot index, for whatever reason. Google will try to recrawl a few times to check if the noindex, error, or whatever was blocking the crawl, is gone or fixed.
If the noindex instruction remains, Google will slowly start to lengthen the time to the next attempt to crawl the page, eventually reducing to a check about every two-to-three months to see if the no index tag is still there.
The no index page will be excluded from Google's search index, So it will not help you rank for that term unless you have other pages that are cannibalizing it and trying to rank for that term as well. If so 301 redirect the poor content page to the right content page.
Your question on page rank and no index yes page rank can accrue Google will still read the page. They will derive some information from the hypertext inside the URLs.
Before you remove content
The following are some guidelines you can use:
- Make an educated (non-biased) judgement: Is your content’s quality “worse” than this content?
- Do you cover the topic in enough length and sufficiently in-depth?
- Which aspects of this content is your page not covering completely?
- Which “user intent” queries is your content not answering?
- How can you make your content better?
- Can you use any great imagery or diagrams to supplement your content?
- Are there any YouTube or other videos which can add value to your content.
Iterate and do the above for all of the pages which are outranking yours. The first few are going to be the hardest — it’s likely that the rest will follow a similar pattern.
There are no short cuts. You’ll have to review all the pages which are outranking you to ensure you leave no gaps.
Update Your Content To Fully Answer The User Search Query
Once you’ve seen what you are up against, you need to update your content.
To put it simply, your content needs to be better than the competition. It also needs to fully answer the user search intent which we have identified previously.
Make it the BEST content out there.
Given that you’ve already analyzed your competitors’ content, you should have a pretty good idea of what your content is missing.
Supplement your existing content with that additional content, but
- Don’t rewrite it completely. You’ll likely lose the precious content that Google was ranking you for.
- Don’t write a new post with the hope that this will rank better. It’s a much longer and harder journey than pushing up your already existing content.
- Of course, don’t change the URL.
As discovered in this case study 468% traffic increase case study, Google will reward you for your efforts.
Use the judgment calls from your competitive research to plan what needs to be added or updated.
Enhance it with any missing content
While looking at the organic keywords which you are ranking for you might come across user search intent keywords for which you have no content.
Let’s say, for example; your content discusses enabling Joomla SEF URLs.
If in your research you find that you are ranking for “disabling Joomla SEF URLs,” make sure that your refreshed content answers that query also.
These queries are pure gold — make sure you are answering them
You can see a larger version of the photos below here
Reference
- http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/duplicate-content-problems/#thin-content-classifier
- https://www.stonetemple.com/gary-illyes-what-is-noindex-and-what-does-it-do/
- https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/
** when rebuilding**
- https://mza.bundledseo.com/learn/seo
- https://ahrefs.com/blog/link-building/
- https://mza.bundledseo.com/beginners-guide-to-link-building
- http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/what-is-pagerank/
this is similar because it addresses turning off pages and turning them back on
I hope this helps,
Tom
-
From a Google perspective if you noindex a page sooner or later it will be removed from the index and hence you will lose your search term.
If you have no particular need to remove the pages, create new pages with the new content (Google will like that anyway), almost certainly you will find that some of those pages will outrank the thin content pages by definition in time.
In due course you could then 301 the old link which in theory will pass on most of the authority to the new page.
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
-
Prioritise a page in Google/why is a well-optimised page not ranking
Hello I'm new to Moz Forums and was wondering if anyone out there could help with a query. My client has an ecommerce site selling a range of pet products, most of which have multiple items in the range for difference size animals i.e. [Product name] for small dog
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LauraSorrelle
[Product name] for medium dog
[Product name] for large dog
[Product name] for extra large dog I've got some really great rankings (top 3) for many keyword searches such as
'[product name] for dogs'
'[product name]' But these rankings are for individual product pages, meaning the user is taken to a small dog product page when they might have a large dog or visa versa. I felt it would be better for the users (and for conversions and bounce rates), if there was a group page which showed all products in the range which I could target keywords '[product name]', '[product name] for dogs'. The page would link through the the individual product pages. I created some group pages in autumn last year to trial this and, although they are well-optimised (score of 98 on Moz's optimisation tool), they are not ranking well. They are indexed, but way down the SERPs. The same group page format has been used for the PPC campaign and the difference to the retention/conversion of visitors is significant. Why are my group pages not ranking? Is it because my client's site already has good rankings for the target term and Google does not want to show another page of the site and muddy results?
Is there a way to prioritise the group page in Google's eyes? Or bring it to Google's attention? Any suggestions/advice welcome. Thanks in advance Laura0 -
Can anyone tell me why this page has content wider than screen?
I am getting that error on my product pages. This link is in the errors http://www.wolfautomation.com/drive-accessory-safety-sto-module-i500 but when I look at it on mobile it is fine.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tylerj0 -
"No index" page still shows in search results and paginated pages shows page 2 in results
I have "no index, follow" on some pages, which I set 2 weeks ago. Today I see one of these pages showing in Google Search Results. I am using rel=next prev on pages, yet Page 2 of a string of pages showed up in results before Page 1. What could be the issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Can the experts out here can review our site for improved performance and suggestions
Hi - we have started off with Auto Site based in India - 15 months back The site is - www.mycarhelpline.com - generating close to 2500 visits / daily basis. we aim to scale to new heights to touch atleast 10,000 visits / daily basis in coming 12 months Can we request your review to recommend for :- Link Building Site review Loading time Improvements / suggestion to take it up - (leaving aside dynamic url's) . Though may seem as SEO Audit and review - but any recommendations or suggestion will be highly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
Why are new pages not being indexed, and old pages (now in robots.txt) remain in the index?
I currently have a site that was recently restructured, causing much of its content to be reposted, creating new URL's for each page. To avoid duplicates, all of the existing pages were added to the robots file. That said, it has now been over a week - I know Google has recrawled the site - and when I search for term X, it is stil the old page that is ranking, with the new one nowhere to be seen. I'm assuming it's a cached version, but why are so many of the old pages still appearing in the index? Furthermore, all "tags" pages (it's a Q&A site, like this one) were also added to the robots a few months ago, yet I think they are all still appearing in the index. Anyone got any ideas about why this is happening, and how I can get my new pages indexed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | corp08030 -
No equivalent page to re-direct to for highly trafficked pages, what should we do?
We have several old pages on our site that we want to get rid of, but we don't want to 404 them since they have decent traffic numbers. Would it be fine to set up a 301 re-direct from all of these pages to our home page? I know the best option is to find an equivalent page to re-direct to, but there isn't a great equivalent.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Does having multiple links to the same page influence the Link juice this page is able to pass
Say you have a page and it has 4 outgoing links to the same internal page. In the original Pagerank algo if these links were links to an page outside your own domain, this would mean that the linkjuice this page is able to pass would be devided by 4. The thing is i'm not sure if this is also the case when the outgoing link, is linking to a page on your own domain. I would say that outgoing links (whatever the destination) will use some of your link juice, so it would be better to have 1 outgoing link instead of 4 to the same destination, the the destination will profit more form that link. What are you're thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TjeerdvZ0 -
Nobody Can Answer This? What Can Google Tell About Videos?
I uploaded a video to youtube one time and then went to upload it again, but saved differently with different tags. Youtube rejected the second upload as being the same as the first. Really, it was the same... just a different file with different tags. Now, I was thinking about making and uploading some similar but not identical videos for embedding on some web pages. Was thinking I'd make the voice overs different, but the images mostly the same montage. Do you think Youtube/Google will see it as the same video? I kind of assume that it didn't fly when I first tried it some time ago because youtube was looking at the audio in the way it can make a transcription. Do you think if the audi,o, file name, tags were different, it wouldn't matter if the video was the same? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010