HTTPS pages - To meta no-index or not to meta no-index?
-
I am working on a client's site at the moment and I noticed that both HTTP and HTTPS versions of certain pages are indexed by Google and both show in the SERPS when you search for the content of these pages.
I just wanted to get various opinions on whether HTTPS pages should have a meta no-index tag through an htaccess rule or whether they should be left as is.
-
Hi Jamie,
If you don’t need the http version accessible and want to force the https you could simply redirect all traffic to the secure site with a 301, transferring all your pagerank to the main site.
If you need both versions of the site accessible, for instance if you only needed https for logged in users, and you only want one version to appear in SERPs the best thing would be to use a canonical tag to consolidate all that SEO juice into the version you wish to rank.
If there’s only a few secure pages with links to other non-secure pages then meta robots noindex,follow would work well, since the SEO juice will flow through those noindexed page and into the rest of your site, but if the whole site is duplicated on both versions this could be a big mistake.
No-indexing an entire https version would be a bad move even if you were using noindex,follow since your internal linking will be to the secure pages. Even though pagerank will be passed through those pages it will eventually come to a dead end or leave through an external links. With the canonical tag, any links pointing to your secure version will pass their SEO juice to the non-secure site, rather than be lost in the noindexed site where it has nowhere to go.
Have a little read of this interview with Matt Cutts a few years back for further clarification, it’s got a good quote about how PR flows through noindexed, followed pages: http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts.shtml
Matt Cutts: A NoIndex page can accumulate PageRank, because the links are still followed outwards from a NoIndex page.
Eric Enge: So, it can accumulate and pass PageRank.
Matt Cutts: Right, and it will still accumulate PageRank, but it won't be showing in our Index. So, I wouldn't make a NoIndex page that itself is a dead end. You can make a NoIndex page that has links to lots of other pages.
So it’ll be different depending on your circumstances but if you’re in doubt, the canonical tag is your best bet as you’re only consolidating those pages in googles eyes. If those pages perform well and you noindex them without sending that PR somewhere useful you could be throwing away all that benefit.
Hope that helps,
Tom
-
Why not rel=
canonical
them?
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
-
Does redirecting a duplicate page NOT in Google‘s index pass link juice? (External links not showing in search console)
Hello! We have a powerful page that has been selected by Google as a duplicate page of another page on the site. The duplicate is not indexed by Google, and the referring domains pointing towards that page aren’t recognized by Google in the search console (when looking at the links report). My question is - if we 301 redirect the duplicate page towards the one that Google has selected as canonical, will the link juice be passed to the new page? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Lewald10 -
Page with metatag noindex is STILL being indexed?!
Hi Mozers, There are over 200 pages from our site that have a meta tag "noindex" but are STILL being indexed. What else can I do to remove them from the Index?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yaelslater0 -
Difficulty with Indexing Pages - Desperate for Help!
I have a website with product pages that use the same URL, but load different data based on what's passed to them with GET. I am using a Wordpress website, but all of the page information is retrieved from a database using PHP and displayed with PHP. Somehow these pages are not being indexed by Google. I have done the following: 1. Created a site map pointing to each page. 2. Defined URL parameters in Search Console for these type of pages. 3. Created a product schema using schema.org, and tested it without errors. I have requested re-indexing repeatedly and these pages and images on the pages are still not being indexed! Does anybody have any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jacleaves0 -
Changing Canonical Tags on Indexed Pages that are Ranking Well
Hi Guys, I recently rolled out a domain wide canonical tag change. Previously the website had canonical tags without the www, however the website was setup to redirect to www on page load. I noticed that the site competitors were all using www and as far as I understand www versus non www, it's based on preference. In order to keep things consistent, I changed the canonical tag to include the www. Will the site drop in rankings? Especially if the pages are starting to rank quite well. Any feedback is appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | QuickToImpress0 -
Does it matter if the meta description and meta keywords come before the title tag in the
The way our site was built, engineers put the title tag blow the meta desc. and meta keywords. I asked to have it changed based on the best practice of putting the most important content first, but apparently doing this will cause a major ripple effect in the way the site was engineered. Will we lose out on full SEO benefit with this structure? Should I stand down? <title></p></title>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vacatia_SEO0 -
Index or not index Categories
We are using Yoast Seo plugin. On the main menu we have only categories which has consist of posts and one page. We have category with villas, category with villa hotels etc. Initially we set to index and include in the sitemap posts and excluded categories, but I guess it was not correct. Would be a better way to index and include categories in the sitemap and exclude the posts in order to avoid the duplicate? It somehow does not make sense for me, If the posts are excluded and the categories included, will not then be the categories empty for google? I guess I will get crazy of this. Somebody has perhaps more experiences with this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rebeca10 -
Why is a page with a noindex code being indexed?
I was looking through the pages indexed by Google (with site:www.mywebsite.com) and one of the results was a page with "noindex, follow" in the code that seems to be a page generated by blog searches. Any ideas why it seems to be indexed or how to de-index it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
Is there an optimal ratio of external links to a page vs internal links originating at that page ?
I understand that multiple links fro a site dilute link juice. I also understand that external links to a specific page with relevant anchortext helps ranking. I wonder if there is an ideal ratioof tgese two items
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Apluswhs0