SEO quality strategy for my xf board

ProCom said:
Brilliant, thanks @dutchbb !

From the SEO firm:

"Several /tags/ URLs are showing up in Google's Search Index causing "index bloat"

All tag pages must be made "not-indexable" by way of meta robots tags.

Reference: https://developers.google.com/search/reference/robots_meta_tag

Place the following code into the <head> of all /tags/ URLS:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex" />

Important:
Only add this code to tag pages. Adding this anywhere else could result pages not indexing.
Be sure it is only "noindex"
Make sure the snippet is found in the <head>"

I'll need to dig into the pros/cons of doing this stuff via robots.txt vs. noindex in the header.
Click to expand...

Yep, i have the noindex tag on my tags pages. Is correct advise, indeed only noindex. Just add it in the template 'tag_view' like this:

<xen:container var="$head.robots">
<meta name="robots" content="noindex" /></xen:container>

Google prefers noindex if you don't want them in search results (low content pages) and will also remove these faster. If you block in robots.txt google can still find the pages if linked to and takes a little longer for them to be removed. Noindex is the correct signal for removing. You can block in robots or nofollow if adding noindex is not possible or there is no usable content on that page.

Question here is if it matters, google is pretty good at sorting this out themselves :p
 
Is there a best practice when noindexing thin content via robots that already is indexed? (Ie Member pages).

Is it possible to noindex only Tags displayed in certain forums?

If you want to prevent indexing of certain pages, can nofollow act as an alternative? (Ie no follow tags displayed on a private forum to prevent google attempting to crawl private threads). Is it ever appropriate to nofollow internal URLs?
 
Just add noindex and remove re=canonical if it is present (like on member pages).

Not that i am aware of. You can only add it to the tag template for all tags. Nofollow on tags (url, never place it on page self like noindex) in specific forums is possible.

Nofollow can help in cases where you can't use noindex (no template) or you don't want the page crawled like login for example. Google is not very clear about this, they state you can nofollow login url's but also that you should let link juice flow on internal links.
 
Here is an update

After more than 1 year
I can't say if it was a good or bad choice. I have almost same numbers of visitors per month
In one hand I can say that I have same visitor with less numbers of pages in google index. And in other hand I should have more visitors cuz my website have 1 more year old and should have generate new visitors from new threads?


What do you think
 
I de-indexed thin content pages for 6 months and tracked the result. For each thread, I used the now defunct SEO2 plugin from au lait, which counted the number of words in all the posts and added them together. If this number was less than 350, I told google to de-index them.

Before I de-indexed this was my per month metrics from Google Search Console:
ClicksImpressionsAverage CTRAverage PositionValid Pages Indexed
21,000252,0008.5%10.313,500

6 Months after de-indexing this content:
ClicksImpressionsAverage CTRAverage PositionValid Pages Indexed
24,400278,0008.8%12.75,500

Interesting that Clicks, Impressions & CTR were improved, but Average Position was worse. I guess you can't correlate position to CTR!

Since au lait left the scene I uninstalled the plugin, and am letting Google re-index everything. I am still tracking to see what happens.

As with all SEO stuff, it can be very hard to attribute what caused the change.

TL : DR Despite minor improvements I don't think the "no-indexing thin content" strategy works. I think it was just normal fluctuations that caused the changes.
 
Anomandaris said:
I de-indexed thin content pages for 6 months and tracked the result. For each thread, I used the now defunct SEO2 plugin from au lait, which counted the number of words in all the posts and added them together. If this number was less than 350, I told google to de-index them.

Before I de-indexed this was my per month metrics from Google Search Console:
ClicksImpressionsAverage CTRAverage PositionValid Pages Indexed
21,000252,0008.5%10.313,500
6 Months after de-indexing this content:

ClicksImpressionsAverage CTRAverage PositionValid Pages Indexed
24,400278,0008.8%12.75,500
Interesting that Clicks, Impressions & CTR were improved, but Average Position was worse. I guess you can't correlate position to CTR!


Since au lait left the scene I uninstalled the plugin, and am letting Google re-index everything. I am still tracking to see what happens.

As with all SEO stuff, it can be very hard to attribute what caused the change.

TL : DR Despite minor improvements I don't think the "no-indexing thin content" strategy works. I think it was just normal fluctuations that caused the changes.
Click to expand...

Any update on this?
 
Joe Link said:
Any update on this?
Click to expand...

Yes I was waiting until December to post but I can post an update now:

Before I de-indexed this was my per month metrics from Google Search Console:
ClicksImpressionsAverage CTRAverage PositionValid Pages Indexed
21,000252,0008.5%10.313,500

6 Months after de-indexing thin content:

ClicksImpressionsAverage CTRAverage PositionValid Pages Indexed
24,400278,0008.8%12.75,500

I then disabled the plugin at the 6 month mark and let google re-index everything.

4 Months after letting google re-index (past 28 days):
ClicksImpressionsAverage CTRAverage PositionValid Pages Indexed
35,600470,0007.6%16.313,000

The data is difficult to interpret. Clicks & Impressions have gone up significantly but CTR has dropped. What really concerns me is the average position has dropped really badly from 10.3 to 16.3, that really doesn't make me happy.
 
Most things i have done had no effect (tried them all), what did have effect are those damn google algo updates. When you are testing most of times there is an algo update and you think your changes have effect, but no..

Just good content and structure so google can find everthing is al you need.
 
Anomandaris said:
Yes I was waiting until December to post but I can post an update now:

Before I de-indexed this was my per month metrics from Google Search Console:
ClicksImpressionsAverage CTRAverage PositionValid Pages Indexed
21,000252,0008.5%10.313,500
6 Months after de-indexing thin content:


ClicksImpressionsAverage CTRAverage PositionValid Pages Indexed
24,400278,0008.8%12.75,500
I then disabled the plugin at the 6 month mark and let google re-index everything.


4 Months after letting google re-index (past 28 days):
ClicksImpressionsAverage CTRAverage PositionValid Pages Indexed
35,600470,0007.6%16.313,000
The data is difficult to interpret. Clicks & Impressions have gone up significantly but CTR has dropped. What really concerns me is the average position has dropped really badly from 10.3 to 16.3, that really doesn't make me happy.
Click to expand...
I look at this and see more clicks and more impressions which is the goal, your average position goes down when you have increased pages indexed that are not ranking well but that does not mean your core good ranking pages are decreasing.
 
frankdavis said:
I look at this and see more clicks and more impressions which is the goal, your average position goes down when you have increased pages indexed that are not ranking well but that does not mean your core good ranking pages are decreasing.
Click to expand...

Yeah, this is true, I keep track of a few of my best pages and they still rank where they should.

In the end, if you look at the data, re-indexing the thin content appears to have had a positive effect. Or, was it all the other thing I have been doing? Hard to say, the past 12 months have been a whirlwind.
 
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