To Follow or Not To Follow...... ?
-
So, Im working in house with a large company. They have a number of sites which are in need of content up dates etc. In looking around, I noticed
meta name = 'robots'content='noindex,nofollow'
The IT person here who has influence as to what is or is not done; says it should stay that way.
It is my understanding and please correct me if I am wrong..... we generally would like pages followed and indexed.
I'm pretty sure by optimizing on page and making this change it could help the site.....
Thanks for your consideration!!!!
-
I hear ya.
Thank you!
-
Its a simple fix, just have to go up the chain of command w/out ruffling feathers..... I am the new guy.
Thank you.
-
Well it's not really destroyed, that implies a penalty. This is completely reversible.
Just remove the roxots.txt and noindex blocks and the site will come back.
-
Congratulations.
You have a client who has successfully destroyed their own ranking in google.
Aleutianadventures.com - Index of
<cite>www.aleutianadventures.com/</cite>A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt – learn more.
-
-
That means the site is entirely blocked. Are you sure the main pages are not being allowed to be indexed? Do a site: search in Google.com to see what is indexed.I would really be surprised if the entire site was intentionally blocked.
If there are main pages indexed he might have intentionally blocked out a large group of low content pages as a response to combating panda. But even in that case they should probably noindex,follow it.
Share the URL and we can take a look.
-
Thank you for the responses... kinda what I thought...
-
My thoughts exactly thank you sir!
-
Mike Davis's answer pretty much hits it on the head. If every page is marked NoIndex,NoFollow then no one will ever find your site unless you specifically direct them to it or they know it exists already... which means you're missing out on a large potential customer base from organic traffic that won't ever be able to find you.
Hell, even those content updates won't matter because the search engines aren't going to care about it (since you told them not to index it) and won't be able to see newer content deeper into the site (since you told it not to follow anything on the page).
-
It really depends on what they want. If your client does not want the search engines to index their site (for whatever reason) than that is correct. I am at a loss as to why they would do that. Tell the "IT" guy that no search engine will lists you guys with this tag on every page. I understand some pages should not be indexed, but an entire site seems counter intuitive. Why would someone want a website if they don't want to be found? It sounds like someone who thinks they know something when they obviously do not.
Tell them to switch all their tags to:
-
all pages
-
Just a bit of clarification needed... what pages are marked "noindex, nofollow"? Sometimes NoIndex,NoFollow or NoIndex,Follow can be useful for certain pages.
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
-
Do Search Engines Try To Follow Phone Number Links
Any SEO thoughts on using rel="nofollow" when inserting a link to a phone number? To make a phone number click to call we use (555) 555-1234 Wondering if search engines are trying to follow that link or if this is standard and not to worry. Any thoughts on if I should add rel="nofollow" to these or does it not matter? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Lions-Pro0 -
Using Canonical & INDEX, FOLLOW meta tag
I am sort of new to this, and working with an overseas development team on an eCommerce site. I am curious if the Canonical tag will supersede the tag, or if it is best to remove this tag entirely for duplicate product pages?
On-Page Optimization | | BretDarby1 -
Is it convinient to use No-Index, Follow to my Paginated Pages?
I have a website http://www.naukrigulf.com and it has a lot of Paginated pages on its SERP and most of paginated pages are getting indexed in Google SERP. Is it beneficial to use No-Index, Follow to keep the link equity to main (first page), although we have already used rel=next and rel=prev. If Answer is "yes" is their any harm by using no-index, follow with rel=next, rel=prev.
On-Page Optimization | | vivekrathore0 -
Google ranking is HORRIBLE. Following SEOMoz suggestions and just can't climb.
First of all, the URL is stores.dhsequipment.com. In January, this online store switched from Homestead to Big Commerce. Since the store updated, we decided now is the time to update our product descriptions, URL's, title tags and meta descriptions. (For the first time, we had the ability to customize our URL's.) Product Description: I went through 2,500 products and updated the product description. I added an H1 & H2 to each description, and included pertinent information such as part numbers. Each product also received a new page title, meta description (which is usually the first line of the product description, don't know if this is bad or not) and a new URL, (which did redirect). Once I would complete a section, I would submit a new sitemap to Webmaster Tools. After a month and nothing happening, I started using SEOMoz which helped me rebuild some of my more important pages, such as the home page and main category pages such as: http://stores.dhsequipmentparts.com/stihl-ts420-parts/
On-Page Optimization | | pearldesign
http://stores.dhsequipmentparts.com/stihl-ts700-parts-stihl-ts800-parts/ I fetched these pages in Webmaster Tools after completion. However, it's been several weeks since and I'm still on page 4 or 5 in the SERPs. Just a little history on the store; this store has been in operation for more than 6 years. Previously, we ranked on page one for 75%+ of our products. My belief is because our URL's had history, probably more so than our competitors. I'm not sure what I should do. Business is super slow and we can't afford to wait much longer.0 -
Ratio follow/nofollow outbound links
Dear all, So far, I couldn't find any satisfying answer to my problem - I hope you might be able to help: Due to the fact that our website consists of user-generated content, we've got many many outbound links to other sites. Until now, it was possible to assign a follow-attribute to these links. In the ages of "pandas" however, we realised we had to limit this possibility as well as the amount of outbound follow links already published. My question now is whether there is some kind of rule of thumb as to what ratio of outbound follow and nofollow links is advisable. I'd appreciate any ideas or comments. Thanks a lot!
On-Page Optimization | | Mulle0 -
Best Practice: Should We Always Make No-Follow for External Links from Blogs?
Hi Mozers, I have few questions: 1. If I am allowing advertising on my blog and people advertising by placing Ads, Contextual links in Posts, Should I make them No-Follow? If Yes, then I might lose a good amount of income coming from Advertising. What is the best practice without loosing Organic rankings. 2. If I make all the External Links No-Follow (simple wordpress plugin can do), then I may not have anyone to advertise on my blog. What is the advantage that I am going to get? 3. Keeping the Do-Follow on all external links, how it will effect my blog? when there is no spam and all quality content on the blog. Thank you
On-Page Optimization | | mutantspy0 -
Follow or nofollow the social links?
I recently seen a site that has delibrately no followed the links to there social sites. The company's Google Plus, Facebook and twitter icons all no followed? I would have thought you would want google to know about these profiles? Whats everyone elses take on this?? shivun
On-Page Optimization | | seohive-2227200 -
Internal Followed Links and Total Internal Links as 1
It is showing Internal Followed Links and Total Internal Links as 1 in OpenSiteExplorer Tool http://www.expresscasket.com/ http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/comparisons?site=www.expresscasket.com Not able to understand and identify the problem and fix it. But when i check in google webmasters tool, it is showing lots of internal links. Does it differ those internal links and your trace of internal links
On-Page Optimization | | expresscasket0