Nofollow in site archutecture. Good or bad in 2013?
-
We have been using nofollow links to create a silo architecture. is this a good idea or should we stay away from using this on our site. Its an eCommerce site with about 3000+ pages so not sure of the best architecture.
ideas and suggestions on best practice welcome!
-
That does answer your question, but you still have the issue of so many links on every page. In my experience you don't need to stick to the "guideline" of 100 links per page, especially on an eCommerce site with multiple sub-categories all linked to from the navigation.
However, there are many ways around this. For example, you can link to main category pages and sub-category pages from the top nav, and only show the further tertiary categories and drilldown / faceted links in the sidebar for that category if you are on of the pages within that category. Make sense? This puts some of your product pages one click further away from the home page, but that is fine. I tend to cringe when I see totally FLAT architecture on an eCommerce site that big anyway.
Use of breadcrumbs, related product links, footer links, sitemaps and good top-level and sidebar navigation will ensure your entire site gets crawled easily and pagerank distributed properly without having thousands of links in the header navigation.
Good luck!
-
I think that's answered my question with a resounding no!
Thanks.
-
Bad, bad, bad. Not me, that Matt Cutts guy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bVOOB_Q0MZY -
It was all about link juice flow.
We were also trying to optimize for the user navigation but this created lots of links in the nav. I can't work out how to help user nav without creating loads of links on page.
we have unique but thin content on the site as we are eCommerce. We are working on this but it is taking a lot of time and effort to fill up the site with good quality content.
could the use of nofollow be hurting our rankings?
-
I wouldn't use nofollow links for this purpose. The links are still going to dilute the pagerank you'd be sending on to other URLs being linked to elsewhere on the page, and if Google sees one link "nofollow" on a page they are thought to ignore subsequent, followable links to the same URL elsewhere on the page. A nofollow tag on a link isn't going to keep the page from being indexed in other ways either.
If you don't want the pages indexed there are other, better ways to achieve that, including robots meta tags and robots.txt disallows.
If you just want to optimize how pagerank flows throughout the site it would be better to focus on how and where you link to. For instance, do you really need all 100 footer links to every category from every category, or can you just link to other pages within that parent category? I would build a silo by removing links rather than nofollowing them.
Regarding the amount of pages and best architecture, it depends on the quality of those pages and whether you want them indexed. Example: If they are all unique pages with exclusive content that you want to rank Vs. a problem with duplicate content, thin content, indexable search pages, etc...
-
it was for content siloing for keywords but I'm starting to question the advice i was given on the subject.
-
I'd probably look at sculpting using the sitemap - internally restricting flow can been seen as a little odd unless its for say documents, checkout or a login area type thing. what isn't clear is what it your objective in performing this task. Because even if you nofollow to that page others externally could and the equation alters a little - if you don't want a page found maybe look at robots.txt too
-
no its not for external links its for the menu system and for internal link flow. just not sure if its a good idea. my site is www.centralsaddlery.co.uk if you want to see what I'm doing
-
it depends what you are putting as a no follow, do you mean for just external links?
not passing link juice as a silo can cause issues as search engines tend to favour all round "good egg" websites who are part of their community ... aka both receive and give 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
-
Updating 2013 Site Built with Custom Theme, Modify Existing Theme, Create New Custom Theme, Or Use Child Theme?
Our website was designed in 2013 using a custom theme. Some of the plugins are built from scratch. Ranking in our industry is hyper competitive. We are seeking a better interface and also to improve ranking. I have read that custom themes use lighter code and can rank better. Does this apply to a custom theme from 2013? Will we have an SEO advantage using a custom theme? If so, will that advantage be significant? We are using a discontinued plugin called "Firestorm" to display real estate listings. That plugin has been customized. Can we use that plugin on a new "custom" theme? How about on a "child" theme? In terms of the cost of future maintenance, will a "custom" theme require much more intervention (manual installation of updates) moving forward? Which of the following options is best: 1. Adapt our existing custom theme
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
2. Create a new custom theme
3. Create a child theme Thanks,
Alan0 -
Internal Links - Dofollow or Nofollow and why?
Hey there Mozzers, I am a question about internal links. If I am writing a article about something and want to link to another one of my articles inside my blog, do i have to make that link nofollow or dofollow? If possible tell me why also. Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Angelos_Savvaidis0 -
Why is my m-dot site outranking my main site in SERPs?
My client has a WP site and a Duda mobile site that we inherited. For some reason their m-dot site is ranking on P1 of Google for their top KWs instead of the main site which is much more robust. The main site might rank beyond page 5 when the generic home page for their m-dot site appears on P1. Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Etna0 -
Moving career site to new URL from main site. Will it hurt SEO for main page?
For one of our clients we are building a career site and putting it under a different URL and hosting service (mainly due to security concerns of hosting it under the same host and domain). almost 100% of the incoming traffic to their current career section (which it is in a sub-folder) receives traffic for branded keywords (brand + job/career/employment), that is, there are no job position specific keywords. The client is now worried that after moving the site, the inbound traffic to the main site will be severely affected as well as the SERP results. My questions are, will the non-career related SERPs be affected? I don't see how will they be but I could be wrong If no, how could we reassure her that the SEO to the main site wont be affected? are there any case studies of a similar case (splitting part of the website under a new URL and hosting service?) Thank you for your help. PS: this is my first post so please forgive me if this has been asked before. I could not find a good response.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rflores0 -
My site is always in the top 4 on google, and sometimes goes to #2\. But the site at #1 is always at #1 .. how can i beat them?
So i'm sure this is a very generic question.. of course everyone wants to be #1. We are an ecommerce web site. We have all sorts of products, user ratings, and are loved by our customers. We sell over 3 million a year. So let me give you some data.. First of all one of the sites that keeps taking the #2 or #3 spot is amazons category for what we sell.. (i'm not sure if I should say who we are here.. as I don't want the #1 spot to realize we are trying to take them over!) Amazon of course has a domain authority of 100. But they never take the #1 spot. The other site that takes the #2 and #3 spot is not even selling anything. Happens to be a technical term's with the same name wikipedia page! (i wish google would figure out people aren't looking for that!) Anyways.. every day we bouce back and forth between #4 and #2.. but #1 never changes.. Here are the stats of us verse #1 from moz: #1: Page Authority: 56.8, Root Domains Linking to page: 158, Domain Authority: 54.6: root domains linking to the root domain 1.42k my site: Page Authority: 60.6, Root domains linking to the page: 562, Domain Authority: 52.8: root domains linking to the root domain: 1.03k So they beat us in domain authority SLIGHTLY and in root domains linking to the root domain. So SEO masters.. what do I do to fix this? Get better backlinks? But how.... I can't just email GQ and ask them to write about us can I? I'm open to all things.. Maybe i'm not using moz data correctly.. We should at least be #2. We get #2 every other day.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 88mph0 -
App "Review" Website with DA of 58 - Good or Bad Link?
Hi, We have a web app. All our competitors are on http://www.appappeal.com. We can suggest ourselves here http://www.appappeal.com/contact/suggest. If we get reviewed and the link is a follow link is this a good thing or a bad thing. They call themselves a directory and you can pay to get a "priority" review. Should we avoid or is it a good link as the DA is 58?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Studio330 -
Suppliers linking to website - good or bad practice?
Hi, was just wondering about suppliers linking to website - copywriters, web developers, etc. - could these be seen as purchased links by Google. Is it best to specify that suppliers shouldn't link through?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Migrating a site
Hello, I have what a I think it's a noob question.. I have a medium size website and need to put it into maintenance for the next 2 months, and afterwards activate a completly new site. My client asked me to do this, cause the same people whoe run the constant flow of information on the site, are the ones who are going to develop the new site, so he wants to just close it out So... what are the steps for doing this with minimum impact on any SEO advances made this past months?.. How do I tell the search engines, Hey, just under maintenance for a while....then... i'm back in the game but this is my new structure. and the old one should go here
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daniel.alvarez0