Noindex Thin Content to Improve SEO

A technical SEO step that looks risky, yet always helps, is to noindex pages with thin content on your website.

Many are reluctant to do this since removing pages from search engines seems drastic. Nonetheless, I’ve never had a client that didn’t experience a traffic boost afterward. It works mostly by consolidating your link equity toward pages that matter.

Start by noindexing…

  1. blog categories & tags.
  2. author & date blog archives.
  3. pages with no value created by tools, forums, & classifieds.
  4. faceted navigation or filtered product pages within e-commerce.
  5. conversion & paid landing pages.

Important exception: if any of these pages have more than several backlinks, keep them indexed. Improve them instead. Begin with increasing the copy to over 300 words.

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