The difference between an noindex and nofollow?
-
What is really the difference between an noindex and nofollow and why/when do you want to use them? Built my first wordpress site and the blog "posts" that make up my home page confuse me....as far as passing link juice to my home url...not sure what I am asking here! How do I use nofollow/noindex or is the issue I should be looking at is 301/canonical. Or neither?
-
Hi Courtney
No you do not just want the home page to get the "link juice" you want the whole site to be visible to the search engines, or at least all the pages and posts that you want people to be able to read for free.
Remember that every word you write on your blog has the chance to send more people to your site, so the more pages you can get Google to index and rank the more chance you have of getting traffic.
I hope this helps
Sean
-
Thanks! Helpful and to the point? Can you do the same for 301 and canonilical? I have watched blog videos, read, etc....what is the simple answer? you are awesome! Thanks...but what about wordpress treating each post on my home page like it's own URL...I just want the home page to get the "link juice" right?
-
Noindex = You are telling Google not to index that page. This is usually not a good thing if you want the content to be found in search engines. If it is a specific page, image or what-not that you don't want indexed by Google use NoIndex. If you want it to be able to be found, don't use it.
Nofollow is used in links. It is telling a search engine that you don't want it to follow the link you are posting. When a link has nofollow attached pagerank or anchor text isn't transferred.
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
-
Is this nofollow tag written wrong?
I'm doing a link audit and came across this nofollow tag: [http://www.jampaper.com/Envelopes](<a class=)">www.jampaper.com/Envelopes Does it matter that the nofollow tag is at the front? Shouldn't it after the URL?
Technical SEO | | jampaper0 -
Best way to implement noindex tags on archived blogs
Hi, I have approximately 100 old blogs that I believe are of interest to web browsers that I'd potentially like to noindex due to the fact that they may be viewed poorly by Google, but I'd like to keep on our website. A lot of the content in the blogs is similar to one another (as we blog about the same topics quite often), which is why I believe it may be in our interests to noindex older blogs that we have newer content for on more recent blogs. Firstly does that sound like a good idea? Secondly, can I use Google Tag Manager to implement noindex tags on specific blog pages? It's a hassle to get the webmaster to add in the code, and I've found no mention of whether you can implement such tags on Tag Manager on the usual SEO blogs. Or is there a better way to implement noindex tags en masse? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | TheCarnage0 -
Meta-robots Nofollow
I don't understand Meta-robots Nofollow. Wordpress has my homepage set to this according to SEOMoz tool. Is this really bad?
Technical SEO | | hopkinspat1 -
Nofollow links appear to be still included in SEOMOZ crawl and Google
I have added the nofollow tag to links throughout my site to hide duplicate content from Google but these pages are still being shown in my SEOMOZ crawl. I also fetched an example page with the Googlebot within Webmaster tools and it showed all nofollow links. An example is http://www.adventurepeaks.com/news All News tags have nofollow but each tag is appearing in my SEOMOZ crawl report as duplicate content. Any suggestions on whether this is a problem or if i have applied the tag incorrectly? Many thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | adventure340 -
NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW - Any SEO benefit to these pages?
Hi I could use some advice on a site architecture decision. I am developing something akin to an affiliate scheme for my business. However it is not quite as simple as an affliate setup because the products sold through "affiliates" will be slightly different, as a result I intend to run the site from a subdomain of my main domain. I am intending to NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW the subdomained site because it will contain huge amounts of duplication from my main site (it is really a subset of the main site with some slightly different functionality in places). I don't really want or need this subdomain site indexed, hence my decision to NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW it. However given I will, hopefully, be having lots of people link into the subdomain I am hoping to come up with some sort of arrangement that will mean that my main domain derives some sort of benefit from the linking. They are, after all, votes for my business so they feel like "good links". I am assuming here that a direct link into my NOFOLLOW,NOINDEX subdomain is going to provide ZERO benefit to my main domain. Happy to be corrected! The best I can come up with is to have a "landing page" on my main domain which links into parts of my main domain and then provides a link through to the subdomain site. However this feels like a bad experience from the user's point of view (i.e. land on a page and then have to click to get to the real action) and feels a bit spammy, i.e. I don't really have a good reason for this page other than linking! Equally I could NOINDEX,FOLLOW the homepage of the affiliate site and link back to the main domain from there. However this also feels a bit spammy and would be far less beneficial, I guess, because the subdomain homepage would have many more outgoing links than I envisaged for my "landing page" idea above. Also, it also looks a bit spammy (i.e. why follow the homepage and nofollow everything else?)! The trouble, I guess, is that whatever I do feels a bit spammy. I suppose this is because IT IS spammy! 🙂 Has anyone got any good ideas how I could setup an arrangement like I described above and derive benefit to my main domain without it looking (or being) spammy? I just hate to think of all of those links being wasted (in an SEO sense). Thanks Gary
Technical SEO | | gtrotter6660 -
Page Analysis Difference Between Root and Subdomain
I have a site where the canonical version is the subdomain www, with a permanent redirect to ensure this is so. When I do a page analysis from the MozBar for the domain I see that www and *.domain are both displayed, with numbers from *.domain being shown by default in the mozbar. Does MozBar show *.domain numbers by default, and do I correctly understand that the (higher) www numbers displayed in page analysis for www are valid and a result of my canonical strategy?
Technical SEO | | waynekolenchuk0 -
Secondary Menu - nofollow or other strategy?
We have a "secondary main menu" on a site that displays some popular pages of the site. They are in the main navigation of the site as subpages but we wanted to highlight them on every page of the site through this secondary menu. so this secondary menu is the same on every page of the site. So we have the main menu on the top of the site, subpages on the left and this secondary menu below the subpages (in a blue box so they stand out). Is this secondary menu confusing for the structure of the site or negative at all (in relation to robots, not UX)? Should we nofollow these links in the secondary menu? thanks for replies!
Technical SEO | | Motava0 -
Switching to another CMS with different permalink structure, how not to lose organic traffic and Google rankings? Urgent Please!
One of my customers is in online jewellery sales business and they are going to change their CMS; the problem is there is no co-relation between URL permalink structure of the current CMS and the new one. What should we do so that we don’t lose our current organic traffic (also Google rankings) coming from indexed URLs in Google due to permalink structure change ? Typical example: Current URL: http://www.abc.com/pirlanta-nedir,AR-3.html The new URL is going to look like this: http://www.abc.com/tek-tas-pirlanta-ar-4.html
Technical SEO | | merkal20050