Pyramid link structure - how to noindex, nofollow
-
I'm talking about this article: https://moz.com/learn/seo/internal-link
Take this sample: HOME --> Shirts --> Plain shirt --> shirt#1
Product page: noindex, follow all links except 1 from breadcrumbs to nearest category (plain shirts).
SubCategory page (plain shirts): noindex, follow all links except 1 link from breadcrumbs to nearest category (shirts) and all products belonging to current subcategory.
Category page (shirts): noindex, follow all links except 1 link from breadcrumbs to front page (site.com) and links to own subcategories.
Front page: noindex, follow all links except 12 links to main categories (shirts, pants etc.)
Is it correct? If I noindex some parts of website, will it be harmful?
-
Hi there,
I see what you're trying to do, and I think I understand it. You're attempting to conserve your link equity and flow it only to the most important pages, or what we use to call "pagerank sculpting."
The good news is you don't really need to worry about it. These days, adding nofollow to your links doesn't really increase the equity flowing through the followed links. And in fact, you could be shooting yourself in the proverbial foot by denying equity passing links to your lower product pages.
Best time to use nofollow for internal pages is typically to increase crawling efficiency, or to prevent bots from visiting pages you don't want indexed anyway. Attempting to scuplt link equity in this way could cause lots of unintended negative consequences and my advice would be in most cases to let your link equity flow freely throughout your site in a way that was natural to both humans and bots alike.
Best of luck!
-
I agree with Nitin here.
I think the confusion is perhaps that you're taking the pyramid structure in that Moz article too literally? There is nothing wrong with linking between different pages as Nitin said. In fact, by linking to related/relevant content on your website, you are enforcing the context and the meaning of the pages' content. The diagram in the Moz article is just showing how you should have the minimum number of links possible between the homepage and any given "deep" page on the website. So, using Moz's diagram as an example, from that website's homepage, you can get to their deepest page in only three clicks. The more clicks (or links) the harder the page is to find, and therefore less likely to be found and crawled by Google. Remember that Google has a crawl budget.
So long as you don't have hundreds of links on any one page you are trying to rank and it doesn't take too many links to get to any one page, I wouldn't worry too much it. The nofollow attribute is only to be used when you don't want Google to follow that link and pass link juice between the pages.
-
Well, these aren't "useless" links. After all, they're linking your categories/sub-categories etc. and should be followed by bots even if a HTML snapshot of any page captures 2-3 follow links (from flyout/menu navigation, breadcrumbs etc.) of another page.
Hope this helps!
-
No, I just want get rid of million useless links from both menus and make clean pyramid structure with plain link flow:
(product have only 1 link to subcategory, subcategory have 1 link to category and few links to products and so on). -
No! Don't "nofollow" them. Why do you want to nofollow them now?
You're not spamming here, inter-linking from flyout-navigation/header/footer/on-page-navigation/breadcrumbs are the natural ways people use for internal-linking, that won't hurt you for sure.
-
Alright, I got it, lets forget about noindex, left nofollow only.
Now to have pyramid scheme my plan should look like this, right?
Product page: nofollow all links except 1 from breadcrumbs to nearest category (plain shirts).
SubCategory page (plain shirts): nofollow all links except 1 link from breadcrumbs to nearest category (shirts) and all products belonging to current subcategory.
Category page (shirts): nofollow all links except 1 link from breadcrumbs to front page (site.com) and links to own subcategories.
Front page: nofollow all links except 12 links to main categories (shirts, pants etc.)
-
Are you trying to say that you're planning to have multiple URLs for a single product page here? For instance, if you have a product which can be reached from multiple navigation paths, so you want to have those multiple URLs for it?
Like if a product is tagged in category "x" and "x" is a sub-category of category "y", then the number of possible URLs for product page "p" would be
So, here these 2 URLs are candidates of duplicate content penalty and hence, you want to noindex them? Is this what you're trying to explain?
-
Hi,
Well, following "pyramid" scheme and noindexing pages are two different things altogether. Let's not mix them, its creating confusion actually. So, tell me why do you want to noindex your pages?
Using pyramid scheme and optimizing your site's architecture the best possible way can be done independently.
-
If you noindex a page, you are telling Google that you don't want the page to be indexed and it will disappear from Google Search. Are you sure that this is what you want to do? Maybe you are thinking of index, nofollow on Recommended Products instead to reduce the number of links that Google will follow?
-
I just want to follow "pyramid" scheme (see pic in article). If not use noindex, how to do this pyramide?
-
Oh, sorry, I mean product page have lot of links from top, left menu, from "recommended" products. My offer is left only 1 "way out" - to parent category (in this case it Plain shirts).
But if I will noindex "recommended" products, are they will disappear from G. search?..
-
I'm confused. Why would you want to noindex all of those pages? If you don't want those pages to be indexed by Google, tagging them noindex is not harmful at all. But why would you want to noindex the front page, category, subcategory and product page?
-
Hi,
Could you please help me understand your concern here? What do you mean by "noindex, follow all links except 1 from breadcrumbs"?
May be you need to elaborate your concern or share some screenshots to help me understand it.
P.S noindexing a subset of pages is not harmful for sure.
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
-
Problem with internal links.
Hello,I am trying to do an audit of the internal links of my site at zenplugs.com. I am having great difficulty simply trying to establish how many internal links there are on the home page. Off the top of my head I think there are probably 20-25 but Screaming Frog tells me there are 574, the MozBar is listing zero and Open Site Explorer is telling me my site hasn't been indexed yet. I have tried several web based services but most of them don't work. Can anyone recommend a tool which has given them a number they trust? My second query is that one of the tools told me that there are 4 links on the home page with no anchor text, linking to http://zenplugs.com/#. Is this a problem? Many thanks, in advance. Toby
On-Page Optimization | | T0BY0 -
Outbound links. External Links.
I have been reading alot on SEO and there is something confusing about having "Outbound links. External Links." on your main ranking page. Some say that We shouldn't have any out bound links. (from Random website) According to Yoast, we should have outbound links. (yoast.com) we should have outbound links but we should add the "no-follow" tag. (from Random website) Q: What should i do and follow?
On-Page Optimization | | kevinbp
If the answer is yes, how many outbound links is an appropriate amount per page?0 -
Link Structure
On my site I have a dropdown menu going across the page at the top to all of my categories on each page, I also have a similar structure going down the side going to the same categories, is this acceptable or would Google count this as double the internal links?
On-Page Optimization | | Palmbourne0 -
When should I dofollow a link?
I know I should have all my affiliate links as nofollow but when should I dofollow a link? When will it HELP me to have a dofollow link? Right now - all my links are nofollow because I haven't figured out how to have nofollow and dofollow in the same blog post. Any info appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | dealblogger0 -
Using meta robots 'noindex'
Alright, so I would consider myself a beginner at SEO. I've been doing merchandising and marketing for Ecommerce sites for about a year and a half now and am just now starting to attempt to apply some intermediate SEO techniques to the sites I work on so bear with me. We are currently redoing the homepage of our site and I am evaluating what links to have on it. I don't want to lose precious link juice to pages that don't need it, but there are certain pages that we need to have on the homepage that people just won't search for. My question is would it be a good move to add the meta robots 'noindex' tag to these pages? Is my understanding correct that if the only link on the page is back to the homepage it will pass back the linkjuice? Also, how many homepage links are too many? We have a fairly large ecommerce site with a lot of categories we'd like to feature, but don't want to overdo the homepage. I appreciate any help!
On-Page Optimization | | ClaytonKendall0 -
Blog outgoing links to a certain domain?
Hi Mozzers, I am working with a website with very decentralized ownership. There are two different languages, each with a different owner. Owner A keeps linking to crap sites, that hurt the entire site. My question is this: Is there a way - through .htaccess or robots.txt - that Google can be asked NOT to crawl the links to external crap sites? The problem is that Owner B cannot control Owner A's html, and thus not implement rel="nofollow" on links. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | ThomasHgenhaven0 -
Nofollow tags
So on the homepage, should all the links like privacy, contact us, etc...be rel="nofollow" ? I want to get a better handle on passing as much link juice on homepage to important internal pages as I can, and want to get it right. Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | azguy1 -
Do external links drain PageRank?
Example: A page has 100 links, 90 internal links and 10 external links. The page has a Google internal PR of 1000. The question is: Is the pagerank that flows to the internal links being calculated taking into account all links on the page (internal + external) or only the 90 internal links? E.g. is the PR that flows to the internal links 1000/100 or 1000/90? Are links to external sites "votes" that do not affect the internal PR flow? Disclaimer: I understand that the maths behind the PR algo are more complex. This simplified example only serves to explain my question.
On-Page Optimization | | Florakel0
