Should I noindex my categories?
-
Hello! I have created a directory website with a pretty active blog. I probably messed this up, but I pretty much have categories (for my blog) and custom taxonomy (for different categories of services) that are very similar. For example I have the blog category "anxiety therapists" and the custom taxonomy "anxiety".
1- is this a problem for google? Can it tell the difference between archive pages in these different categories even though the names are similar?
2- should I noindex my blog categories since the main purpose of my site is to help people find therapists ie my custom taxonomy?
-
Kind of exiting though. Everytime google picks up on a couple of URLs my rankings shoot up. Its exciting to see ^_^
-
That was part of my apprehension about deindexing my blog categories. They are ranking right now.....but I also pulled a dumb move and set all of my listing categories as noindex in Yoast a couple of months ago. Fixed this a month ago but still waiting on google to pick up on it. That's part of why I'm not sure about all of this. Not sure if things will change when google starts noticing my listing categories.
-
"insead of having "/anxiety" and also "/anxiety-counseling" on the same level, why not have "/conditions/anxiety" and also "/practitioners/anxiety" as well? That way the URLs are different but there's also a hierarchical structure which helps Google to work out which is which"
I've currently got it set up so that blog posts are
/category/anxiety
and listings are under
/listing-category/anxietyWould you say this is sufficient to indicate to google that these two are different?
-
If you have get organic traffic on categories you can index them. İf you dont get any traffic with categories on Serp dont use.
-
It's unlikely that if two pages are both very useful for a query, that Google would de-list one purely because it's from the same domain. If neither page is very high value in terms of content or popularity, what you are suggesting can happen. But instead of taking the 'easy' way out and de-indexing one, your end goal should be to make every page as useful as possible!
You will rarely ever benefit in the SERPs by doing a 'quick easy thing' which adds no value to your site, pages or the wider web. Always ask how you could be informing, educating or entertaining the web in a fresh new way which hasn't previously been done. If you're doing what has been done before, you need to do it at least 3-4x better to steal that audience and exceed the historic popularity of other information sources
If your categories really all are on the same level you might want to address that by having architectural (URL) layers to distinguish the categories. Whenever you say to yourself "I can't do better", that is a big problem as not all of your competitors will share that some mindset. Do you want to be the one who gets ahead? Then you need to push on!
insead of having "/anxiety" and also "/anxiety-counseling" on the same level, why not have "/conditions/anxiety" and also "/practitioners/anxiety" as well? That way the URLs are different but there's also a hierarchical structure which helps Google to work out which is which
I think you're right that your blogs may contain content that is more relevant to the queries which you have specified. That being said, de-indexing them doesn't magically make your commercial pages more relevant. It's not necessarily going to make your commercial pages rank better, or at all. As such - maybe doing heavier CRO on the non-commercial pages would be the most advisable solution!
If you ever find yourself thinking "aha I can do this quick clever thing to make Google do what I want instead of putting their users first" it's almost certainly the wrong tactic
-
Awesome! thank you for your response ^_^. I'm not so concerned about getting one to rank over the other as much as I'm concerned that having one will cause the other not to rank at all or be significantly dampened.
2 problems lol
-
I really couldn't come up with a good category structure, so I have 30-40 categories all on the same level. Its a therapist directory so all of the categories in question are pretty much diagnoses/therapeutic issues. I don't think I could create any better hierarchy....is that really bad?
-
I did something weird :-p. my blog categories are pretty much duplicates of my custom taxonomy but with "therapy" or "counseling" tagged on the end....I think it would be better to have my custom taxonomy set up this way because its about therapists and counselors, whereas my blog is about the subject in question....but my theme is set up in a way that would have made that look bad, resulting in long lists like this:
anxiety counseling
depression counseling
couples counseling
etc.
Do you think this is a problem? Should I go through all of the coding work to change it or would something like this make little difference to google? Ie if someone searches for anxiety therapy would the blog archive "anxiety therapy" be more likely to come up than the archive of actual therapists who work with anxiety called "anxiety" because the names suggest the blogs are more relevant to the search query?
-
-
This is an interesting question and I can see why, with many modern agencies focusing on 'keyword cannibalisation' you would consider this action. What you have to realise is that Google still largely sees the web as a mass of interconnected pages. If your blog categories supply decent enough content to rank for those related terms, there's no guarantee that if you turn them off - Google will make the same evaluation of your business-aimed (service-level) categories instead
That being the case, I'd actually let time and data lead the way. In Google Analytics you will probably find that some service-level categories gain more traffic, whilst for some categories their contextual blog iterations bring in more
You might consider learning more about CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation). In my opinion, there's rarely a time where turning traffic off is beneficial. But could those blog category URLs be re-designed to point users more easily (and more often) to their commercial counterparts? Probably
I do tend to no-index 'tag' URLs as they are messy and non-hierarchical, they can fudge up your equity flow from A to B. But actual categories with a hierarchical structure? Those are pages which you do want to rank
You might also consider whether there's some clever way to just have one category which lists posts and also commercial offerings on a given thematic basis. Really, architectural unification should be your end goal!
Remember: there's absolutely no guarantee that de-listing one category type would cause the other to rank. They're very different pages with contextually different content. Keep an eye on both and strategize to one day, eventually bring them together. That's what I would do!
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 it good or bad to add noindex for empty pages, which will get content dynamically after some days
We have followers, following, friends, etc pages for each user who creates account on our website. so when new user sign up, he may have 0 followers, 0 following and 0 friends, but over period of time he can get those lists go up. we have different pages for followers, following and friends which are allowed for google to index. When user don't have any followers/following/friends, those pages looks empty and we get issue of duplicate content and description too short. so is it better that we add noindex for those pages temporarily and remove noindex tag when there are at least 2 or more people on those pages. What are side effects of adding noindex when there is no data on those page or benefits of it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | swapnil120 -
Keyword stuffing on category pages - eCommerce site
Hi there fellow Mozzers. I work for a wine company, and I have a theory that some of our category pages are not ranking as well as they could, due to keyword stuffing. The best example is our Champagne category page, which we are trying to rank for the keyword Champagne, currently rank 6ish. However, when I load the page into Moz, it tells me that I might be stuffing, which I am not, BUT my products might be giving both Moz and Google this impression as well. Our product names for any given Champagne is "Champagne - {name}" and the producer is "Champagne {producer name}. Now, on the category pages we have a list of Champagnes, actually 44 Which means that with the way we display them, with both name of the wine, the name of the producer AND the district. That means we have 132 mentions of the word "Champagne" + the content text that I have written. I am wondering, how good is Google at identifying that this is in fact not stuffing, but rather functionality that makes for this high density of the keyword? Is there anything I can do? I mean, we can change it so it's not listed with Champagne on all the products, but I believe it would make the usability suffer a bit, not a lot - but it's a question of balance and I would like to hear if anyone has encountered a similar problem, if it is in fact a problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nikolaj-Landrock2 -
Why is Google Ranking the Umbrella Category Page when Searching for Sub-Categories Within that Umbrella Category?
I have an e-commerce client who sells shoes. There is a main page for "Kids" shoes, and then right under it on the top-navigation bar there is a link to "Boys Shoes" and "Girls Shoes." All 3 of these links are on the same level - 1 click off the home page. (And linked to from every page on the website via the top nav bar). All 3 are perfectly optimized for their targeted term. However, when you search for "boys shoes" or "girls shoes" + the brand, the "Kids" page is the one that shows up in the #1 position. There are sitelinks beneath the listing pointing to "Girls" and "Boys." All the other results in Google are resellers of the "brand + girls" or "brand + boys" shoes. So our listing is the only one that's "brand + kids shoes." Our "boys" shoes page and "girls" shoes page don't even rank on the 1st page for "brand + boys shoes" or "brand + girls shoes." The only real difference is that "kids shoes" contains both girls and boys shoes on the page, and then "boys" obviously contains boys' shoes only, "girls" contains girls' shoes only. So in that sense there is more content on the "kids" page. So my question is - WHY is the kids page outranking the boys/girls page? How can we make the boys/girls pages be the ones that show up when people specifically search for boys/girls shoes?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FPD_NYC0 -
Redirect Search Results to Category Pages
I am planning redirect the search results to it's matching category page to avoid having two indexed pages of essentially the same content. Example http://www.example.com/search/?kw=sunglasses
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WizardOfMoz
wil be redirected to
http://www.example.com/category/sunglasses/ Is this a good idea? What are the possible negative effect if I go this route? Thanks.0 -
Need some expert help – My Client bought out competitor and now wants to completely duplicate the current site with the same stock & categories using the Competitor brand
I am the SEO consultant for a large online homewares store. This company currently ranks very well in Google. I can PM the domain name if anyone needs however i don't want to post it on this forum. The company has bought out a competitor and plan to use the same warehouse, same products, and same back-end system as the current site, so they want to completely duplicate the current website. Titles, meta descriptions, product descriptions will all be renamed/rewritten/reworded (however keep in mind there are not many ways to reword a 3 piece saucepan set) Pricing will mostly be the same (some difference though), images cannot be renamed, categories cannot be renamed... the structure of the site will be exactly the same... placement etc. (however will have different banners, logo etc.) I personally don't believe the new site will rank, because it will be too similar. Can someone please offer me a 2nd opinion... Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ryanlenton0 -
Sitemap contains Meta NOINDEX pages - Good or bad?
Hi, Our sitemap is created by our e-commerce software - Magento - We are probably going to make a lot of products Meta No Index for the moment, until all the content has been corrected on them - but by default, as they are enabled, they will appear in Sitemap. So, the question is: "Should pages that are Meta NOINDEX be listed in a sitemap"? Does it matter? thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
Will Creating a Keyword specific Page to replace the Category Section page cause any harm to my website?
I am running a word press install for my blog and recently had 3 of my main keywords set as categories. I recently decided to create a static page for the keywords instead of having the category page showing all the posts within the category, and took it off the navigation bar. I read about setting the categories to use NO index so the search engines can shine more importance on the new pages i created to really replace where the category was showing. Can this have a negative effect on my rankings? http://junkcarsforcashnjcompany.com junk car removal nj is showing the category section, So i placed the no index on it. Will the search engines refresh the data and replace it with the new page I created?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | junkcars0 -
Duplicate blog content and NOINDEX
Suppose the "Home" page of your blog at www.example.com/domain/ displays your 10 most recent posts. Each post has its own permalink page (where you have comments/discussion, etc.). This obviously means that the last 10 posts show up as duplicates on your site. Is it good practice to use NOINDEX, FOLLOW on the blog root page (blog/) so that only one copy gets indexed? Thanks, Akira
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ahirai0