Dumb SEO Questions

(Entry was posted by Devin Peterso on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 02/03/2014).

Should I nofollow (internal) links that point to pages that are blocked by robots.txt or is that redundant

Should I nofollow (internal) links that point to pages that are blocked by robots.txt or is that redundant? Can pagerank be passed to noindex pages? And if so, should I prevent that from happening by using nofollow? Examples are my checkout and personal account pages.?
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YOUR ANSWERS

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

  • Devin Peterson: Should I nofollow (internal) links that point to pages that are blocked by robots.txt or is that redundant? Can pagerank be passed to noindex pages? And if so, should I prevent that from happening by using nofollow? Examples are my checkout and personal account pages.
  • Jim Munro: I am not an expert, Devin, but I do not think it is good practice to nofollow internal links for any reason.

    Blocking in robots.txt does not prevent a file from being indexed. Only being unblocked from robots.txt and carrying either a meta noindex tag or a noindex X-Robots-Tag can do that.

    BTW I think that pages that are not in the index still receive and pass PageRank. I don't think this is an issue to be concerned about.
  • john ryan pagulayan: +Devin Peterson nofollowing doesn't help out that much.

    In fact, even if you nofollow a link it will still receive some kind of link juice (like youtube videos for example)

    
  • john ryan pagulayan: Why not completely remove the URL by requesting it to be removed in your google webmaster tools?
  • Devin Peterson: Well I'm confused because Matt Cutts says pagerank sculpting should be a 2nd or 3rd order recommendation, which is odd coming from someone who usually discourages EVERYTHING other than "Good Content". He then goes on to say "There may be a miniscule number of pages (such as links to a shopping cart or to a login page) that I might add nofollow on". So, is he wrong?
  • Devin Peterson: +john ryan pagulayan ;It shouldnt be there to remove if it's always been in my robots.txt right? But I still link to it on my site, so should I add nofollow to it since there is no need for crawlers to access that page?
  • john ryan pagulayan: well yes. Like I've said you can do nofollow or discourage robots to crawl that site but then again, it's google's decision still even if you instruct them not to crawl it
  • Jim Munro: My recommendation would be to watch next Thurday's Hangout on Air, Devin. We'll make an effort to clarify misconceptions in this area, specifically, robots.txt won't keep a url out of the index.
  • Tanja Preuße: Have a look here: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2298312/Matt-Cutts-You-Dont-Have-to-Nofollow-Internal-Links some month ago Matt Cutts answered your question.
  • Devin Peterson: +Tanja Preuße ;So it says that it can't hurt to use nofollow on certain pages, but it wont hurt to not have the nofollow either. It's impossible to get a straight answer :(
  • Tanja Preuße: +Devin Peterson PageRank sculpting is a very old technique what is not working anymore! So the right answer is: it can‘t hurt but there is no reason doing it.
    My suggestion: leave your internal links normal (without nofollow). For pages you want prevent From indexing use noindex meta tag.
  • Terry Simmonds: PageRank flows to Pages that are blocked by the Google robots.txt but don`t pass on the Page Rank.

View original question in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 02/03/2014).

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