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
-
How bad is a trailing slash?
I am working in Magento 2 which has all sorts of difficulties. My product page is example.com/testproduct the canonical is the same. But in the sitemap it is example.com/testproduct/ In a perfect world I would get rid of the trailing slash but can't because of this issue- https://magento.stackexchange.com/questions/205337/unique-constraint-violation-found-when-remove-suffix-html-magento-2-2-0 The trailing slash will 301 redirect properly. Is it an issue having the sitemap urls different with the trailing slash?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tylerj0 -
Review of our site
Hi Moz-Fans 🙂 I'm doing SEO for about a year now and have a new site to which I do not know where to improve any further. The main keyword is "Webdesign Freiburg" and the site is werkzeug - kasten . com Anyone want to have a look into and tell me what might bring us from page 2 to page 1 on google? Thanks a lot Marc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RWW0 -
Paid Links on Credible Sites
Hi people. I'm wondering, what would be the effects of having a paid link on a credible site. The site would feature a brand page about my site and link to it. The site has a good domain authority and they are credible with quality content. Ultimately though the link would be paid. Would Google treat this negatively? Or would they pick up on it at all? Thanks, Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kevinliao0 -
Development site is live (and has indexed) alongside live site - what's the best course of action?
Hello Mozzers, I am undertaking a site audit and have just noticed that the developer has left the development site up and it has indexed. They 301d from pages on old site to equivalent pages on new site but seem to have allowed the development site to index, and they haven't switched off the development site. So would the best option be to redirect the development site pages to the homepage of the new site (there is no PR on dev site and there are no links incoming to dev site, so nothing much to lose...)? Or should I request equivalent to equivalent page redirection? Alternatively I can simply ask for the dev site to be switched off and the URLs removed via WMT, I guess... Thanks in advance for your help! 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart1 -
Sites banned from Google?
How do you find out sites banned from Google? I know how to find out sites no longer cached, or is it the same thing once deindexed? As always aprpeciate your advice everyone.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Do I have to tell WBT site moved to a subdirectory on another internal site?
I am moving content from one site to another and redirecting the DNS from www.oldsite.com to www.newsite.com/old-site. I have put the 301 in place but I wanted to make sure I have to also tell Webmaster Tools to change the old site to the new domain? We still want the old domain name to answer and redirect to www.newsite.com/old-site. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GeorgeLaRochelle0 -
What is a good content for google?
When we start to study SEO and how google see our webpage, one important point is to have good content. But, for beginners like me, we get lost on this. Is not so black and white: what for you is a good content? the text amount matters? there is any trick that all good content websites need to have?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Naghirniac0 -
Any Good Ideas on Promoting a Contest?
Does anyone have any good advice on how to promote a contest? Has anyone hosted a contest and had a lot of good luck that could offer some pointers on how to get the word out? The contest consists of people uploading a 60 second or less WildBlue commercial video that they have created. The video with the most votes will win the competition, and we are giving the winner a $50 cash prize. So far I have been Tweeting about it, and I have sent out a press release. Any other advice will be appreciated. The link to the contest page is http://www.mybluedish.com/lp/contest/ if you want to take a look at it. Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MyNet0