Fix broken external links on noindex, follow pages no one visits?
-
Would you take the time to fix external links on your site on pages that are noindex, follow on pages that no one ever visits? The only reason to do it would be to present a tidier site to Google, but would it really care if those pages are noindex/folllow?
The thing that makes it a non-trivial amount of work is that there are hundreds of these on a large site. Do you think Google cares, if they're noindex/follow?
I know the safe answer is always fix everything, but really it has to get weighed against the likely benefit and other projects with a limited amount of time to work with.
Best... Mike
-
The fact that you tell Google bot to follow the links on these pages suggest that there is at least some link juice flowing from these pages.
If this assumption is true you should direct that link juice to pages that make you money. You could do that with a 301 redirect or by updating the pages with better (not broken) outgoing links.
If the assumption is not true and there is no or very little link juice flowing from these pages that no one ever visits, I would suggest to remove them all together.
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
-
Site Migration Question - Do I Need to Preserve Links in Main Menu to Preserve Traffic or Can I Simply Link to on Each Page?
Hi There We are currently redesigning the following site https://tinyurl.com/y37ndjpn The local pages links in the main menu do provide organic search traffic. In order to preserve this traffic, would be wise to preserve these links in the main menu? Or could we have a secondary menu list (perhaps in the header or footer), featured on every page, which links to these pages? Many Thanks In Advance for Responses
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ruislip180 -
A PDF with a good quality external link could affect the authority of that domain?
Here I go with a situation: You have an isolated PDF hosted in your domain, the PDF has none internal backlinks (neither links to another page on the domain) but has a really good external backlink from a domain with high authority. Do you think that the backlink has influence on the global domain authority and the domain rankings? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | overalia0 -
Links: Links come from bizzare pages
Hi all, My question is related to links that I saw in Google Search Console. While looking at who is linking to my site, I saw that GSC has some links that are coming from third party websites but these third party webpages are not indexed and not even put up by their owners. It looks like the owner never created these pages, these pages are not indexed (when you do a site: search in Google) but the URL of these pages loads content in the browser. Example - www.samplesite1.com/fakefolder/fakeurl what exactly is this thing? To mention more details, the third party website in question is a Wordpress website and I guess is probably hijacked. But how does one even get these types pages/URLs up and running on someone else's website and then link out to other websites. I am concerned as the content that I am getting link from is adult content and I will have to do some link cleansing soon.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Malika10 -
Using Canonical URL to poin to an external page
I was wondering if I can use a canonical URL that points to a page residing on external site? So a page like:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | llamb
www.site1.com/whatever.html will have a canonical link in its header to www.site2.com/whatever.html. Thanks.0 -
HELP! How does one prevent regional pages as being counted as "duplicate content," "duplicate meta descriptions," et cetera...?
The organization I am working with has multiple versions of its website geared towards the different regions. US - http://www.orionhealth.com/ CA - http://www.orionhealth.com/ca/ DE - http://www.orionhealth.com/de/ UK - http://www.orionhealth.com/uk/ AU - http://www.orionhealth.com/au/ NZ - http://www.orionhealth.com/nz/ Some of these sites have very similar pages which are registering as duplicate content, meta descriptions and titles. Two examples are: http://www.orionhealth.com/terms-and-conditions http://www.orionhealth.com/uk/terms-and-conditions Now even though the content is the same, the navigation is different since each region has different product options / services, so a redirect won't work since the navigation on the main US site is different from the navigation for the UK site. A rel=canonical seems like a viable option, but (correct me if I'm wrong) it tells search engines to only index the main page, in this case, it would be the US version, but I still want the UK site to appear to search engines. So what is the proper way of treating similar pages accross different regional directories? Any insight would be GREATLY appreciated! Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Scratch_MM0 -
Google+ Personal Page pass link juice?
I noticed recently that a clients google plus business page (Set up as a personal page) has a followed link pointing to their site. They have many links on the web pointing to the google+ page, however that page is an https page. So the question is, would a google+ page that is https still pass authority and link juice to the site linked in the about us tab?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iAnalyst.com0 -
Link Acquisition - link building
When using Site Explorer to find out my competiters links so I can do some link aquisition SEO do I look for the "inbound" links or or "linking domains"? Also, what filters should I choose? I want to make a spreadsheet as Rand suggested in his video and start to prioritize my link building.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | musicforkids0 -
Blog links - follow or nofollow?
I need my memory refreshed here! Say, I've got a blog and some of the posts have links to recommended external sites and content. Should these be nofollowed? They're not paid links or anything like that, simply things relevant to the post.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeterAlexLeigh0