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.
Follow or nofollow to subdomain
-
Hi,
I run a hotel booking site and the booking engine is setup on a subdomain.
The subdomain is disabled from being indexed in robots.txtShould the links from the main domain have a nofollow to the subdomain? What are you thoughts?
Thanks!
-
Yeah, internally, "nofollow" still dilutes PageRank, so it doesn't really have a big impact. Practically speaking, I don't think there would be much difference. The links have a customer-facing purposes, I assume, and you just don't want the end result indexed. That should be fine. The only advantage to nofollow might be that it would waste a little less crawl bandwidth (instead of bots visiting the page and then seeing it's blocked, they wouldn't bother). I've tried it both ways in the past (after Google changed the PR-sculpting rules), and could never really measure much difference.
-
Thanks for your reply.
An article I read recently suggested that using nofollow on links on the same website may not be a good idea as "if the website doesn't trust its own pages by having a nofollow, then why would Google want to put trust in it." Does this make sense? Would a subdomain be considered as a completely different site?
My other concern is using nofollow extensively may raise a flag to Google as a site that is heavily seo optimized or tries to manipulate its linking strategy.
Any more thoughts? The website is done 100% for users. All I am looking for is the best practice to follow to maximize the seo efforts in this area.
-
"diluting your authority by having dofollow links" I thought it was not possible to link sclupt in this way, I'm I missing something?
My understanding is that all no follow does is not pass authority and does not help retain authority ( basicly it just throws it out the window the authority it would have passed to that link)
-
There is no point diluting your authority by having dofollow links to the subdomain if it isn't going to rank, so by all means "nofollow" the 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
-
Footer no follow links
Just interested to know when putting links at the foot of the site some people use no-follow tags. I'm thinking about internal pages and social networks. Is this still necessary or is it an old-fashioned idea?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Should I run my Shopify store on a subdomain or buy a new domain for it?
I'm planning to set up a subdomain for my Shopify store but I'm not sure if this is the right approach. Should I purchase a separate domain for it? I'm running Wordpress on my website and want to keep it that way. I want to use Shopify for the ecommerce side. I want to link the store from the top nav and of course I'll use CTA's in a variety of ways to point to merchandise and other things on the store side. Thanks for any help you can offer.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ims20160 -
Using "nofollow" internally can help with crawl budget?
Hello everyone. I was reading this article on semrush.com, published the last year, and I'd like to know your thoughts about it: https://www.semrush.com/blog/does-google-crawl-relnofollow-at-all/ Is that really the case? I thought that Google crawls and "follows" nofollowed tagged links even though doesn't pass any PR to the destination link. If instead Google really doesn't crawl internal links tagged as "nofollow", can that really help with crawl budget?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Complimentary sub-brand; subdomain, subfolder, something else?
Hello forum! I have a question about subdomains vs. subfolders for a new sub-brand for a company. The company is looking at creating a sub-brand delivering a different service to the parent company. It is complimentary in a sense, but it would need a very different marketing strategy. It is not trying to 'hide' its parent brand at all, but instead would leverage the parent brand as added social proof. I've read that creating a subdomain essentially means starting from scratch in terms of SEO, and that a subfolder would better leverage the domain authority the TLD has accrued. However, creating a subfolder does not really gel with me, as it would not in my opinion provide a good experience for visitors. I.e. it's like running a website that sells electronics and having a subfolder marketing IT support services. Yes, there is some synergy-- but it can also lead to visitor confusion. I'd love your opinions on this! Carlo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | carlod0 -
Getting a Sitemap for a Subdomain into Webmaster Tools
We have a subdomain that is a Wordpress blog, and it takes days, sometimes weeks for most posts to be indexed. We are using the Yoast plugin for SEO, which creates the sitemap.xml file. The problem is that the sitemap.xml file is located at blog.gallerydirect.com/sitemap.xml, and Webmaster Tools will only allow the insertion of the sitemap as a directory under the gallerydirect.com account. Right now, we have the sitemap listed in the robots.txt file, but I really don't know if Google is finding and parsing the sitemap. As far as I can tell, I have three options, and I'd like to get thoughts on which of the three options is the best choice (that is, unless there's an option I haven't thought of): 1. Create a separate Webmaster Tools account for the blog 2. Copy the blog's sitemap.xml file from blog.gallerydirect.com/sitemap.xml to the main web server and list it as something like gallerydirect.com/blogsitemap.xml, then notify Webmaster Tools of the new sitemap on the galllerydirect.com account 3. Do an .htaccess redirect on the blog server, such as RewriteRule ^sitemap.xml http://gallerydirect.com/blogsitemap_index.xml Then notify Webmaster Tools of the new blog sitemap in the gallerydirect.com account. Suggestions on what would be the best approach to be sure that Google is finding and indexing the blog ASAP?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbaylor0 -
Accidently added a nofollow, noindex tag and then...
Hey guys, My first post here and ironically highlights a ridiculously stupid mistake! Ok, here's the deal... I started building links to one of my new page on a fairly good, old site (DA = >35). Before starting to build links, I added fresh new content, and while doing that, I accidentally added a "nofollow" and "noindex" tag to the page! Guess what, google DID de-index the page ! So the questions is (and YES, I did change the meta tags): Will google re-index the page with some good linking? Will it treat the page as a new, fresh page even though it was present for over a year? I had already started link building to that page, and now technically the links are pointing to a page that does not exist in the index, so once it does get re-indexed, will Google FLAG it as having too many links? Would I be ranking it as a new page? Will its previous ranking (for very few keywords) will come back? Thanks and Regards, Amod
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bonusjonathan0 -
Franchise sites on subdomains
I've been asked by a client to optimise a a webpage for a location i.e. London. Turns out that the location is actually a franchise of the main company. When the company launch a new franchise, so far they have simply added a new page to the main site, for example: mysite.co.uk/sub-folder/london They have so far done this for 10 or so franchises and task someone with optimising that page for their main keyword + location. I think I know the answer to this, but would like to get a back up / additional info on it in terms of ranking / seo benefits. I am going to suggest the idea of using a subdomain for each location, example: london.mysite.co.uk Would this be the correct approach. If you think yes, why? Many thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webrevolve0 -
Should I nofollow the main navigation on certain pages?
We have several large Ecommerce sites with hundreds of links on each page. I have been trying to think of ways to focus our internal linking to increase certain pages relevancy. My thought was to put nofollow in the main navigation (since there are hundreds of links there controlled by dropdowns) and only follow the links on each page for the products we are selling and promoting (15-20 links). I would still be using a sitemap that includes the links. Is this a terrible idea? if a link is nofollowed in the main navigation does that still count as the one mention for google if it points to the same page that a normal link points too that is in the content of the page? since all of the main navigation is the same on every page of the website would it be good to only put nofollow on the subpages/subsections and leave the home page navigation alone (that would allow the spiders to crawl all of those links on the home page but not crawl those same links on the subsections where I could then focus the linking).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bigtimeseo0