Add or not add "nofollow" to duplicate internal links?
-
Hello everyone.
I have searched on these forums for an answer to my concerns, and despite I found many discussions and questions about applying or not applying "nofollow" to internal links, I couldn't find an answer specific to my particular scenarios.
Here is my first scenario: I have an e-commerce site selling digital sheet music, and on my category pages our products are shown typically with the following format:
-
PRODUCT TITLE link that takes to product page
-
Short description text
-
"more info" link that takes to the same product page again
As you may notice, the "more info" link takes at the very same page of the PRODUCT TITLE link. So, my question is: is there any benefit to "nofollow" the "more info" link to tell SEs to "ignore" that link? Or should I leave the way it is and let the SE figure it out? My biggest concern by leaving the "nofollow" out is that the "more info" generic and repetitive anchor text could dilute or "compete" with the keyword content of the PRODUCT TITLE anchor text.... but maybe that doesn't really matter!
Here a typical category page from my site;
http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/Indici/Guitar.html
My second scenario: on our product pages, we have several different links that take to the very same "preview page" of the product we sell. Each link has a different anchor text, and some other links are just images, all taking to the same page. Here are the anchor texts or ALT text of such same links:
"Download Free Sample" (text link)
"Cover of the [product title]" (ALT image text)
"Look inside this title" (ALT image text)
"[product title] PDF file" (ALT image text)
"This item contains one high quality PDF sheet music file ready to download and print." (ALT image text)
"PDF" (text link)
"[product title] PDF file" (ALT image text)
So, I have 7 links on the same product page taking the user to the same "product preview page" which is, by the way, canonicalized to the "main" product page we are talking about.
Here is an example of product page on my site:
http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/score/Moonlight.html
My instinct is to tell SEs to take into account just the links with the "[product title] PDF file" anchor text, and then add a "nofollow" to the other links... but may that hurting in some way? Is that irrelevant? Doesn't matter? How should I move? Just ignore this issue and let the SEs figure it out?
Any thoughts are very welcome!
Thank you in advance.
-
-
Thank you guys,
I got it. I will remove all the internal nofollows from my site!
-
Paddy is right not to nofollow internal links (Actually Matt Cutts just addressed this a day or two ago in a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86GHCVRReJs
And Elias is absolutely right about the first link.
Sage advice gentlemen.
-
I agree with Paddy, don't use nofollow on internal links.
Google follows the first link to a page and ignores subsequent links according to a matt cutts web master video.
My advice would be to make sure that the first link in the page (code view) is the a rich link i.e. the name of the product rather than a 'more info' link.
-
As you said this has come up many times and my answer is always the same, NEVER use No-follow on internal links... ever. No-follow just throws page authority out the window. I haven't seen a good argument for using no-follow on internal links (bar on pages like "create account" that you don't want to index, but I think no-index on the pages themselves is a better option)
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
-
"Avoid Too Many Internal Links" when you have a mega menu
Using the on-page grader and whilst further investigating internal linking, I'm concerned that as the ecommerce website has a very link heavy mega menu the rule of 100 may be impeding on the contextual links we're creating. Clearly we don't want to no-follow our entire menu. Should we consider no-indexing the third-level- for example short sleeve shirts here... Clothing > Shirts > Short Sleeve Shirts What about other pages we're don't care to index anyway such as the 'login page' the 'cart' the search button? Any thoughts appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ant-Scarborough0 -
"No Information Available" Error for Homepage in Google
Hi Everyone, Been racking my brain around this one. Not sure why it is happening. Basically Google is showing the "www" version of the homepage, when 99% of the site is "non-www". It also says "No Information Available". I have tried submitting it through GSC, but it is telling me it is blocked through the Robots.txt file. I don't see anything in there that would block it. Any ideas? shorturl.at/bkpyG I would like to get it to change to the regular "non-www" and actually be able to show information.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vetofunk0 -
Duplicate Content That Isn't Duplicated
In Moz, I am receiving multiple messages saying that there is duplicate page content on my website. For example, these pages are being highlighted as duplicated: https://www.ohpopsi.com/photo-wallpaper/made-to-measure/pop-art-graffiti/farm-with-barn-and-animals-wall-mural-3824 and https://www.ohpopsi.com/photo-wallpaper/made-to-measure/animals-wildlife/little-elephants-garden-seamless-pattern-wall-mural-3614. As you can see, both pages are different products, therefore I can't apply a 301 redirect or canonical tag. What do you suggest?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | e3creative0 -
Do internal links from non-indexed pages matter?
Hi everybody! Here's my question. After a site migration, a client has seen a big drop in rankings. We're trying to narrow down the issue. It seems that they have lost around 15,000 links following the switch, but these came from pages that were blocked in the robots.txt file. I was wondering if there was any research that has been done on the impact of internal links from no-indexed pages. Would be great to hear your thoughts! Sam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO0 -
Does the order matter for a rel="alternate" tag
Hi! We just launched our new mobile site and I am trying to get the rel="alternate" tags put on the desktop site. The specs had the tags formatted like this: They ended up like this: My developer is telling me the order does not matter. Can anyone confirm? Does the order matter? Thank You!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shop.nordstrom0 -
Should party services directory switch to nofollow links? What are the implications?
Hello Mozzers, I'm looking at a niche party services directory (b2c). However, they're not using nofollow tags on backlinks from their paid entries (free entries only get phone numbers and not backlinks). If they suddenly switch all the paid-for backlinks in their directory to nofollow, might that have some kind of negative impact. Switching sounds like the best way forward, but I want to avoid any unintended consequences. Thanks in advance, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
If a website trades internationally and simply translates its online content from English to French, German, etc how can we ensure no duplicate content penalisations and still maintain SEO performance in each territory?
Most of the international sites are as below: example.com example.de example.fr But some countries are on unique domains such example123.rsa
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Dave_Schulhof0 -
Is this link follow or nofollow? Does it pass linkjuice?
I have been seeing conflicting opinions about how Google would treat links using 'onclick'. For the example provided below: Would Google follow this link and pass the appropriate linking metrics(it is internal and points to a deeper level in our visnav)? =-=-=-=-=-=-= <div id='<a class="attribute-value">navBoxContainer</a>' class="<a class="attribute-value">textClass</a>"> <div id="<a class="attribute-value">boxTitle</a>" onclick="<a class="attribute-value">location.href='bla</a>h.example.com"> <div class="<a class="attribute-value">boxTitleContent</a>" title="<a class="attribute-value">Text Here</a>"><a href<a class="attribute-value">Text Here</a>"><a ="blah.exam.cpleom">Text Herea>div> ``` =-=-=-=-=-=-= An simple yes/no would be alright, but any detail/explination you could provide would be helpful and very much appreciated. Thank you all for your time and responses.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TLM0