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.
Noindex : Do Follow or No Follow Tags?
-
Hello,
I have a website with tags (which have the noindex tag) on each article post.
I've been told that I should noindex/nofollow these tag pages, because they are getting link juice passed to them, and since they aren't getting indexed, it's wasting link juice to those pages, when the link juice could be passed to a page that is actually getting indexed.
What are your thoughts on this?
Also, what would be the point to noindex/follow a page, if you are noindexing that page? Isn't it just wasting link juice?
What is the proper SEO way to optimize tags.
-
I think the way you have your tags set is perfect. While having a robots=noindex tag allows google to read the page and pass pagerank, there's no point listing them in search results as they actually don't offer any valuable content; they link to, but they don't have it.
That said, google goes over your tag pages passing pagerank, which ultimately get more juice to your articles. Sometimes, within a post, you can link to a tag page within the content, so users can read more about certain topics and you are passing more juice to that tag page, although not being indexed, that tag page passes pagerank back to the articles.
The noindex has nothing (almost) to do with pagerank, it could be a tremendously useful page (you can even earn links to it from external sources), but they are only valuable to users reading your content and interested in a particular "subject" you mention within the post/context.
-
The use of nofollow does not retain link juice (Google made this change years ago). Each link uses link juice; a follow link passes link juice to the other page and nofollow throws the link juice away. You should use nofollow for paid links and if you can not vouch for the other page (e.g. spam links in a blog comment). If you link to a quality site that is not a paid link, then follow is fine.
Best,
Christopher
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
-
Near Duplicate Title Tag Checker
Hi Everyone, I know there are a lot of tools like Siteliner, which can check the uniqueness of body copy, but are there any that can restrict the check to the title tags alone? Alternatively, is there an Excel or Google Sheets function that would allow me to do the same thing? Thanks, Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyRSB0 -
Changing title tags - any potential issues?
Hello all, I am planning to change the title tags throughout a site and am vaguely aware (perhaps wrongly!) that changing title tags across a site is a risk factor - can be a spam flag if changes (to a specific title tag) are implemented too regularly, for example. Would you change title tags across a site in one go, or implement changes gradually - to avoid any risk of upsetting Google. Do you have any insights/tips on the implementation of title tag changes?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart1 -
SEO Impact of External links in JS tag
We have our JS tag and iframe tag being used over by 100 leading websites. What would be the SEO impact if we added a follow link in the iframe. Would it have any negative impact ? Vivek
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kvivek050 -
Is it okay to copy and paste on page content into the meta description tag?
I have heard conflicting answers to this. I always figured that it was okay to selectively copy and paste on page content into the meta description tag.....especially if the onpage content is well written. How can it be duplicate content if it's pulling from the exact same page? Does anybody have any feedback from a credible source about this? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VanguardCommunications1 -
Wordpress Tag Pages - NoIndex?
Hi there. I am using Yoast Wordpress Plugin. I just wonder if any test have been done around the effects of Index vs Noindex for Tag Pages? ( like when tagging a word relevant to an article ) Thanks 🙂 Martin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | s_EOgi_Bear0 -
Meta NoIndex tag and Robots Disallow
Hi all, I hope you can spend some time to answer my first of a few questions 🙂 We are running a Magento site - layered/faceted navigation nightmare has created thousands of duplicate URLS! Anyway, during my process to tackle the issue, I disallowed in Robots.txt anything in the querystring that was not a p (allowed this for pagination). After checking some pages in Google, I did a site:www.mydomain.com/specificpage.html and a few duplicates came up along with the original with
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs2010
"There is no information about this page because it is blocked by robots.txt" So I had added in Meta Noindex, follow on all these duplicates also but I guess it wasnt being read because of Robots.txt. So coming to my question. Did robots.txt block access to these pages? If so, were these already in the index and after disallowing it with robots, Googlebot could not read Meta No index? Does Meta Noindex Follow on pages actually help Googlebot decide to remove these pages from index? I thought Robots would stop and prevent indexation? But I've read this:
"Noindex is a funny thing, it actually doesn’t mean “You can’t index this”, it means “You can’t show this in search results”. Robots.txt disallow means “You can’t index this” but it doesn’t mean “You can’t show it in the search results”. I'm a bit confused about how to use these in both preventing duplicate content in the first place and then helping to address dupe content once it's already in the index. Thanks! B0 -
All In One SEO PACK Configuration - Index or Noindex?
I'm finding conflicting information about the right way to configure the All in One SEO Pack wordpress plugin. Do I index or noindex for the items below? Use noindex for Categories - yes or no? Use noindex for Archives - yes or no? Use noindex for Tag Archives - yes or no?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webestate0