Dumb SEO Questions

(Entry was posted by Nathan Gaidai on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 12/03/2020).

Can disallowing pages in robots.txt and "noindexing" affect PageRank?

Disallowing in robots.txt and "noindexing" a bunch of old blog posts from the 90s can affect PageRank negatively?
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YOUR ANSWERS

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

  • Travis Bailey: Are you okay? Should we call someone?
  • Nathan Gaidai: Travis Bailey SorryRephrased the questionI meantI have about 150, 000 old posts from the 90sThat I am considering archiving as they are partially pointing at old versions of expired/abandoned applications...But they do have lots of keywords, links etcI saw that other similar archives on the website were disallowed. Can it hurt PageRank? Should they be set as "noindex" as well?Blocking the crawler is done due to the fact that the posts are not being updated?
  • Richard Hearne: What`s the question here?
  • Nathan Gaidai: Richard Hearne SorryRephrased the questionI meantI have about 150, 000 old posts from the 90sThat I am considering archiving as they are partially pointing at old versions of expired/abandoned applications...But they do have lots of keywords, links etcI saw that other similar archives on the website were disallowed. Can it hurt PageRank? Should they be set as "noindex" as well?Blocking the crawler is done due to the fact that the posts are not being updated?
  • Ian Warner: This group is called dumb Seo questions!
  • Nathan Gaidai: Ian Warner Most dumb questions actually answer million dollar questions
  • Stephen McConville: So, the answer is as always, it depends. 1. Do these blog posts rank and bring traffic? Or2. Do they not rank at all, don`t provide any traffic and are of no relevance or use to the user. If 1. Keep them indexed, update them, keep them live but make sure rhe info is upto date. If the apps etc are dead say that on the article. Offer an alternative etc... because a source of traffic can pass weight to the right page in links and bring traffic to places you want it. If its 2. Then mark them as no index. Or even better, delete them and redirect them to something more relevant. But make your decision wisely. They are aged content so id probably suggest try 1. First and see if it doesn`t reap some benefits anyway. Deleting or no indexing content particular decades old, should be considered as a last resort
  • Nathan Gaidai: Stephen McConville Got it! I will offer an alternative and whatever else is there I prefer not to delete a I do not what the future might hold.No indexing on the poor quality pages.Thanks
  • Tony McCreath: Also, avoid using disallow unless you have crawl budget issues. It stops the bots crawling to see it`s noindexed, which is you main objective. Maybe pick the worst performing 10% and noindex them. See what happens. If nothing, do the next lot.
  • Nathan Gaidai: Tony McCreath What if those page don`t get updated? At all
  • Nathan Gaidai: They are 20+ years old. No changes whatsoever.
  • Tony McCreath: Nathan Gaidai noindex and see what happens. I`m just suggesting you test to see what happens.
  • Ammon Johns: You will lose any and all incoming link equity to any URL that you have blocked or removed, so if any of those old posts had links to them, those were lost.

View original question in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 12/03/2020).