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.
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.
-
I understand I might be a little late, but I had experienced this issue first hand with a Magento site. Once I added a wildcard exclusion in the robots.txt file my impressions and click improved noticeably.
-
HI,
That is quite a few pages!
If the main issue is crawling related then robots.txt is probably the best way to go, I think the meta tags will still allow the pages to be crawled (they have to be for the tag to be read). Check out the comments in this and this post for wildcard matching in robots.txt which should do what you need. If the pages are indexed then it might be wise to leave a bit of time so that the noindex tags are picked up and then implement the crawl blocking in the robots.txt (and test in GWT to make sure you are not accidentally blocking more then you think). In this case I think you could still leave out the nofollow meta tag but this might just be personal opinion now - I'm not sure if in practice it would make much difference once you have no indexed and blocked crawling!
-
Hi Lynn,
Thank you for your valuable input on the matter. Yes, using meta tags in the header. We are currently submitting filter pages that we want indexed through the site map, so google bot should be able to reach these pages. Also, we are displaying noindex, nofollow tags only on filter pages which have a combination of more than two filters selected as we do not need to go any deeper than that.
I understand your point of using noindex, follow instead of noindex, nofollow to prevent unexpected crawl issues. But on the contrary, don't you think we could conserve crawling bandwidth using noindex, nofollow tags on filter pages that serve no purpose being crawled and probably wont be externally linked to either?
We currently have around 7 filters, some with many values. This can create combinations of more than 500,000 filter pages...
Thanks
-
Hi,
I assume you mean in a meta header tag for these pages? As a general rule I would avoid using nofollow and simply noindex the pages in question. If you are implementing this with a meta tag then the pages will be reached from the layered navigation links anyway so they would then be a dead end for both PR and the crawler - with the potential to cause unexpected crawl problems rather than optimising it.
As long as you are addressing as best you can any duplicate content issues caused by the layered navigation (check out this post for a good rundown on the various solutions) then I would leave the noindex in place and let the crawler follow the links as normal.
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
-
The main navigation is using JS, will this have a negative impact on SEO?
Hi mozzers, We just redesigned our homepage and discovered that our main nav is using JS and when disabling JS, no main nav links was showing up. Is this still considered bad practice for SEO? https://cl.ly/14ccf2509478 thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ty19861 -
Using the same image across the site?
Hi just wondering i'm using the same image across 20 pages which are optimized for SEO purposes. I was wondering is there issues with this from SEO standpoint? Will Google devalue the page because the same image is being used? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seowork2140 -
Can subdomains avoid spam penalizations?
Hello everyone, I have a basic question for which I couldn't find a definitive answer for. Let's say I have my main website with URL: www.mywebsite.com And I have a related affiliates website with URL: affiliates.mywebsite.com Which includes completely different content from the main website. Also, both domains have two different IP addresses. Are those considered two completely separate domains by Google? Can bad links pointing to affiliates.mywebsite.com affect www.mywebsite.com in any way? Thanks in advance for any answer to my inquiry!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Competitor Title, can I use the same???
there are some pages, my competitor is ranking well and also, we have done page optimization it is 100% for page title keywords as im going to use the same title of the competitor? Will this affect me? Pls suggest wht should I do..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rahim1190 -
How does the use of Dynamic meta tags effect SEO?
I'm evaluating a new client site which was built buy another design firm. My question is they are dynamically creating meta tags and I'm concerned that it is hurting their SEO. When I view the page source this is what I see. <meta name="<a class="attribute-value">keywords</a>" id="<a class="attribute-value">keywordsGoHere</a>" content="" /> <meta name="<a class="attribute-value">description</a>" id="<a class="attribute-value">descriptionGoesHere</a>" content="" /> <title id="<a class="attribute-value">titleGoesHere</a>">title> To me it looks like the tags are not being added to the page, however the title is showing when you view it in a browser and if use a spider view tool, it sees the title. I'm guess it is being called from a DB. So I'm a little concerned though that the search engines are not really seeing the title and description. I'm not worried about the keywords tag. Can anyone shed some light on how this might work? Why it might not being showing the text for the description in the page code and if that will hurt SEO? Thanks for the help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BbeS0 -
Meta Keywords: Should we use them or not?
I am working through our site and see that meta keywords are being used heavily and unnecessarily. Each of our info pages will have 2 or 3 keyword phrases built into them. Should we just duplicate the keyword phrases into the meta keyword field, should put in additional keywords beyond or not use it at all? Thoughts and opinions appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus1 -
How long is it safe to use a 302 redirect?
Hi All, Lets assume there is site A and site B, both sites are live on the internet today as standalone businesses, but they sell very similar products. Site B has built up some link equity and will eventually become the domain for site A due to an organisational re-brand. For the time being however site A will remain, but site B needs to disappear temporarily, but not lose the link equity which has been built up against it. My current thinking is to 302 redirect site B to site A such that users and search bots accessing site B will be redirected to site A whilst leaving the link equity that exists against site B fully intact and allowing us to continue to grow it should we wish to. The question is, does anybody have a view on how long it is safe to use a 302 temporary redirect for? i.e., is 8-10 months to long. Thanks, Ben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BenRush0 -
Should I Use City Name in URL?
Having a website designed for a car dealership and deciding what attributes to use in the URL. Should I include the city name in the URL? Or does that help for SEO purposes? Other ideas of what to research or try are appreciated too. Thanks 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kylesuss0