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.
Follow or nofollow to subdomain
-
Hi,
I run a hotel booking site and the booking engine is setup on a subdomain.
The subdomain is disabled from being indexed in robots.txtShould the links from the main domain have a nofollow to the subdomain? What are you thoughts?
Thanks!
-
Yeah, internally, "nofollow" still dilutes PageRank, so it doesn't really have a big impact. Practically speaking, I don't think there would be much difference. The links have a customer-facing purposes, I assume, and you just don't want the end result indexed. That should be fine. The only advantage to nofollow might be that it would waste a little less crawl bandwidth (instead of bots visiting the page and then seeing it's blocked, they wouldn't bother). I've tried it both ways in the past (after Google changed the PR-sculpting rules), and could never really measure much difference.
-
Thanks for your reply.
An article I read recently suggested that using nofollow on links on the same website may not be a good idea as "if the website doesn't trust its own pages by having a nofollow, then why would Google want to put trust in it." Does this make sense? Would a subdomain be considered as a completely different site?
My other concern is using nofollow extensively may raise a flag to Google as a site that is heavily seo optimized or tries to manipulate its linking strategy.
Any more thoughts? The website is done 100% for users. All I am looking for is the best practice to follow to maximize the seo efforts in this area.
-
"diluting your authority by having dofollow links" I thought it was not possible to link sclupt in this way, I'm I missing something?
My understanding is that all no follow does is not pass authority and does not help retain authority ( basicly it just throws it out the window the authority it would have passed to that link)
-
There is no point diluting your authority by having dofollow links to the subdomain if it isn't going to rank, so by all means "nofollow" the links.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Subdomain cannibalization
Hi, I am doing the SEO for a webshop, which has a lot of linking and related websites on the same root domain. So the structure is for example: Root domain: example.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C
Shop: shop.example.com
Linking websites to shop: courses.example.com, software.example.com,... Do I have to check which keywords these linking websites are already ranking for and choose other keywords for my category and product pages on the webshop? The problem with this could be that the main keywords for the category pages on the webshop are mainly the same as for the other subdomains. The intention is that some people immediately come to the webshop instead of going first to the linking websites and then to the webshop. Thanks.0 -
301 Redirecting from domain to subdomain
We're taking on a redesign of our corporate site on our main domain. We also have a number of well established, product based subdomains. There are a number of content pages that currently live on the corporate site that rank well, and bring in a great deal of traffic, though we are considering placing 301 redirects in place to point that traffic to the appropriate pages on the subdomains. If redirected correctly, can we expect the SEO value of the content pages currently living on the corporate site to transfer to the subdomains, or will we be negatively impacting our SEO by transferring this content from one domain to multiple subdomains?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris81980 -
How to handle potentially thousands (50k+) of 301 redirects following a major site replacement
We are looking for the very best way of handling potentially thousands (50k+) of 301 redirects following
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GeezerG
a major site replacement and I mean total replacement. Things you should know
Existing domain has 17 years history with Google but rankings have suffered over the past year and yes we know why. (and the bitch is we paid a good sized SEO company for that ineffective and destructive work)
The URL structure of the new site is completely different and SEO friendly URL's rule. This means that there will be many thousands of historical URL's (mainly dynamic ones) that will attract 404 errors as they will not exist anymore. Most are product profile pages and the God Google has indexed them all. There are also many links to them out there.
The new site is fully SEO optimised and is passing all tests so far - however there is a way to go yet. So here are my thoughts on the possible ways of meeting our need,
1: Create 301 redirects for each an every page in the .htaccess file that would be one huge .htaccess file 50,000 lines plus - I am worried about effect on site speed.
2: Create 301 redirects for each and every unused folder, and wildcard the file names, this would be a single redirect for each file in each folder to a single redirect page
so the 404 issue is overcome but the user doesn't open the precise page they are after.
3: Write some code to create a hard copy 301 index.php file for each and every folder that is to be replaced.
4: Write code to create a hard copy 301 .php file for each and every page that is to be replaced.
5: We could just let the pages all die and list them with Google to advise of their death.
6: We could have the redirect managed by a database rather than .htaccess or single redirect files. Probably the most challenging thing will be to load the data in the first place, but I assume this could be done programatically - especially if the new URL can be inferred from the old. Many be I am missing another, simpler approach - please discuss0 -
Are HTML Sitemaps Still Effective With "Noindex, Follow"?
A site we're working on has hundreds of thousands of inventory pages that are generally "orphaned" pages. To reach them, you need to do a lot of faceting on the search results page. They appear in our XML sitemaps as well, but I'd still consider these orphan pages. To assist with crawling and indexation, we'd like to create HTML sitemaps to link to these pages. Due to the nature (and categorization) of these products, this would mean we'll be creating thousands of individual HTML sitemap pages, which we're hesitant to put into the index. Would the sitemaps still be effective if we add a noindex, follow meta tag? Does this indicate lower quality content in some way, or will it make no difference in how search engines will handle the links therein?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mothner0 -
The Great Subdomain vs. Subfolder Debate, what is the best answer?
Recently one of my clients was hesitant to move their new store locator pages to a subdomain. They have some SEO knowledge and cited the whiteboard Friday article at https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday. While it is very possible that Rand Fiskin has a valid point I felt hesitant to let this be the final verdict. John Mueller from Google Webmaster Central claims that Google is indifferent towards subdomains vs subfolders. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h1t5fs5VcI#t=50 Also this SEO disagreed with Rand Fiskin’s post about using sub folders instead of sub domains. He claims that Rand Fiskin ran only 3 experiments over 2 years, while he has tested multiple subdomain vs subfolder experiments over 10 years and observed no difference. http://www.seo-theory.com/2015/02/06/subdomains-vs-subfolders-what-are-the-facts-on-rankings/ Here is another post from the Website Magazine. They too believe that there is no SEO benefits of a subdomain vs subfolder infrastructure. Proper SEO and infrastructure is what is most important. http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2015/03/10/seo-inquiry-subdomains-subdirectories.aspx Again Rand might be right, but I rather provide a recommendation to my client based on an authoritative source such as a Google engineer like John Mueller. Does anybody else have any thoughts and/or insight about this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB3 -
Can using nofollow on magento layered navigation hurt?
Howdy Mozzers! We would like to use no follow, no index on our magento layered navigation pages after any two filters are selected. (We are using single filter pages as landing page, so we would liked them indexed) Is it ok to use nofollow, noindex on these filter pages? Are there disadvantages of using nofollow on internal pages? Matt mentioned refraining from using nofollow internally https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SAPUx4Beh8 But we would like to conserve crawling bandwidth and PR flow on potentially 100's of thousands of irrelevant/duplicate filter pages.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MozAddict0 -
How Google treat internal links with rel="nofollow"?
Today, I was reading about NoFollow on Wikipedia. Following statement is over my head and not able to understand with proper manner. "Google states that their engine takes "nofollow" literally and does not "follow" the link at all. However, experiments conducted by SEOs show conflicting results. These studies reveal that Google does follow the link, but does not index the linked-to page, unless it was in Google's index already for other reasons (such as other, non-nofollow links that point to the page)." It's all about indexing and ranking for specific keywords for hyperlink text during external links. I aware about that section. It may not generate in relevant result during any keyword on Google web search. But, what about internal links? I have defined rel="nofollow" attribute on too many internal links. I have archive blog post of Randfish with same subject. I read following question over there. Q. Does Google recommend the use of nofollow internally as a positive method for controlling the flow of internal link love? [In 2007] A: Yes – webmasters can feel free to use nofollow internally to help tell Googlebot which pages they want to receive link juice from other pages
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit
_
(Matt's precise words were: The nofollow attribute is just a mechanism that gives webmasters the ability to modify PageRank flow at link-level granularity. Plenty of other mechanisms would also work (e.g. a link through a page that is robot.txt'ed out), but nofollow on individual links is simpler for some folks to use. There's no stigma to using nofollow, even on your own internal links; for Google, nofollow'ed links are dropped out of our link graph; we don't even use such links for discovery. By the way, the nofollow meta tag does that same thing, but at a page level.) Matt has given excellent answer on following question. [In 2011] Q: Should internal links use rel="nofollow"? A:Matt said: "I don't know how to make it more concrete than that." I use nofollow for each internal link that points to an internal page that has the meta name="robots" content="noindex" tag. Why should I waste Googlebot's ressources and those of my server if in the end the target must not be indexed? As far as I can say and since years, this does not cause any problems at all. For internal page anchors (links with the hash mark in front like "#top", the answer is "no", of course. I am still using nofollow attributes on my website. So, what is current trend? Will it require to use nofollow attribute for internal pages?0 -
Migrating online store to subdomain using shopify and effects on seo and energy down the road for seo
I'm looking for some clarity... Looking at using Shopify for an existing online store that we have to migrate. Setting up the store with shopify means we will be using a subdomain such as shop.mywebsite.com instead of mywebsite.com/shop. The following are points to consider when responding The client currently has an online store, however it's a proprietary shopping store and CMS that has since gone defunct and they need to migrate to an alternative in order to survive online against new CMS systems that allow the site and its content to be better optimized. There is a lot of existing SEO done on the current site that we don't want to loose PR on. There is roughly 2000 products Client has a fixed budget, dealing with checkout issues, custom work and various other "bugs" seems to be easier controlled with Shopify...thus budget can be used more on content/strategy and migration We want to run the main site in Wordpress and are wanting to use Shopify since it supports a gateway, has great features and seems like it would allow us to get more bang for the buck and can focus more on the main site and content strategy and drive traffic to the subdomain store if needed Or main concern is the effort of migrating 2000+ products to shopify and the traffic and PR it gives the current site will have a negative effect on the main domain itself. Should we really be considering this path? The domain is diveidc.com One main benefit to the subdomain is the ability to clearly segment products from the service portion of the site in the analytics and focus 2 clear strategies and track it in a very defined manner. We're really on the fence with this...any thoughts are welcome.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MAGNUMCreative0
