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
-
Why does Moz recommend subdomains for language-specific websites?
In Moz's domain recommendations, they recommend subdirectories instead of subdomains (which agrees with my experience), but make an exception for language-specific websites: Since search engines keep different metrics for domains than they do subdomains, it is recommended that webmasters place link-worthy content like blogs in subfolders rather than subdomains. (i.e. www.example.com/blog/ rather than blog.example.com) The notable exceptions to this are language-specific websites. (i.e., en.example.com for the English version of the website). Why are language-specific websites excepted from this advice? Why are subdomains preferable for language-specific websites? Google's advice says subdirectories are fine for language-specific websites, and GSC allows geographic settings at the subdirectory level (which may or may not even be needed, since language-specific sites may not be geographic-specific), so I'm unsure why Moz would suggest using subdirectories in this case.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdamThompson0 -
Should I Keep adding 301s or use a noindex,follow/canonical or a 404 in this situation?
Hi Mozzers, I feel I am facing a double edge sword situation. I am in the process of migrating 4 domains into one. I am in the process of creating URL redirect mapping The pages I am having the most issues are the event pages that are past due but carry some value as they generally have one external followed link. www.example.com/event-2008 301 redirect to www.newdomain.com/event-2016 www.example.com/event-2007 301 redirect to www.newdomain.com/event-2016 www.example.com/event-2006 301 redirect to www.newdomain.com/event-2016 Again these old events aren't necessarily important in terms of link equity but do carry some and at the same time keep adding multiple 301s pointing to the same page may not be a good ideas as it will increase the page speed load time which will affect the new site's performance. If i add a 404 I will lose the bit of equity in those. No index,follow may work since it won't index the old domain nor the page itself but still not 100% sure about it. I am not sure how a canonical would work since it would keep the old domain live. At this point I am not sure which direction I should follow? Thanks for your answers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Noindex : Do Follow or No Follow Tags?
Hello, I have a website with tags (which have the noindex tag) on each article post. I've been told that I should noindex/nofollow these tag pages, because they are getting link juice passed to them, and since they aren't getting indexed, it's wasting link juice to those pages, when the link juice could be passed to a page that is actually getting indexed. What are your thoughts on this? Also, what would be the point to noindex/follow a page, if you are noindexing that page? Isn't it just wasting link juice? What is the proper SEO way to optimize tags.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
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 -
Use of subdomains, subdirectories or both?
Hello, i would like your advice on a dilemma i am facing. I am working a new project that is going to release soon, thats a network of users with personal profiles seperated in categories for example lets say the categories are colors. So let say i am a member and i belong in red color categorie and i got a page where i update my personal information/cv/resume as well as a personal blog thats on that page. So the main site is giving the option to user to search for members by the criteria of color. My first idea is that all users should own a subdomain (and this is how its developed so far) thats easy to use and since the domain name is really small (just 3 letters) i believe subdomain worth since personal site will be easy to remember. My dilemma is should all users own a subdomain, a subdirectory or both and if both witch one should be the canonical? Since it said that search engines treat subdomains as different stand-alone sites, whats best for the main site? to show multiple search results with profiles in subdomains or subdirectories? What if i use both? meaning in search results i use search directory url for each profile while same time each profile owns a subdomains as well? and if so which one should be the canonical? Thanks in advance, C
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HaCos0 -
Is it bad to host an XML sitemap in a different subdomain?
Example: sitemap.example.com/sitemap.xml for pages on www.example.com.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOTGT0 -
How Google treat internal links with rel="nofollow"?
Today, I was reading about NoFollow on Wikipedia. Following statement is over my head and not able to understand with proper manner. "Google states that their engine takes "nofollow" literally and does not "follow" the link at all. However, experiments conducted by SEOs show conflicting results. These studies reveal that Google does follow the link, but does not index the linked-to page, unless it was in Google's index already for other reasons (such as other, non-nofollow links that point to the page)." It's all about indexing and ranking for specific keywords for hyperlink text during external links. I aware about that section. It may not generate in relevant result during any keyword on Google web search. But, what about internal links? I have defined rel="nofollow" attribute on too many internal links. I have archive blog post of Randfish with same subject. I read following question over there. Q. Does Google recommend the use of nofollow internally as a positive method for controlling the flow of internal link love? [In 2007] A: Yes – webmasters can feel free to use nofollow internally to help tell Googlebot which pages they want to receive link juice from other pages
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit
_
(Matt's precise words were: The nofollow attribute is just a mechanism that gives webmasters the ability to modify PageRank flow at link-level granularity. Plenty of other mechanisms would also work (e.g. a link through a page that is robot.txt'ed out), but nofollow on individual links is simpler for some folks to use. There's no stigma to using nofollow, even on your own internal links; for Google, nofollow'ed links are dropped out of our link graph; we don't even use such links for discovery. By the way, the nofollow meta tag does that same thing, but at a page level.) Matt has given excellent answer on following question. [In 2011] Q: Should internal links use rel="nofollow"? A:Matt said: "I don't know how to make it more concrete than that." I use nofollow for each internal link that points to an internal page that has the meta name="robots" content="noindex" tag. Why should I waste Googlebot's ressources and those of my server if in the end the target must not be indexed? As far as I can say and since years, this does not cause any problems at all. For internal page anchors (links with the hash mark in front like "#top", the answer is "no", of course. I am still using nofollow attributes on my website. So, what is current trend? Will it require to use nofollow attribute for internal pages?0
