Using meta robots 'noindex'

[ClaytonKendall]

Alright, so I would consider myself a beginner at SEO. I've been doing merchandising and marketing for Ecommerce  sites for about a year and a half now and am just now starting to attempt to apply some intermediate SEO techniques to the sites I work on so bear with me. We are currently redoing the homepage of our site and I am evaluating what links to have on it. I don't want to lose precious link juice to pages that don't need it, but there are certain pages that we need to have on the homepage that people just won't search for. My question is would it be a good move to add the meta robots 'noindex'  tag to these pages? Is my understanding correct that if the only link on the page is back to the homepage it will pass back the linkjuice? Also, how many homepage links are too many? We have a fairly large ecommerce site with a lot of categories we'd like to feature, but don't want to overdo the homepage. I appreciate any help!

[john4math]

If you meta noindex, follow these pages, they won't appear on search result pages, but they'll still pass link juice.  It won't increase the amount of link juice any of your indexed pages are getting however, so I'm not sure why you'd want to do that unless you want those pages removed from search engine indexes.

The search engines have gotten rid of link juice sculpting.  Your next question might be whether or not you should start nofollowing links to your own pages to try to pass more link juice to important pages.  That won't work either, as that only serves to burn the link juice the links would pass, it doesn't cause the followed links to pass more.

[RyanKent]

John offers a great reply. Just to add a bit:

how many homepage links are too many?

You will hear "100" as a common answer, but that is not necessarily true at all. For some sites 50 sites could be too many where other sites 150 links may not be enough. You should present whatever links are necessary and useful. Use your Google Analytics to determine which links are not used. If you offer links which are not used, it is a waste and adjustments should be made. An unused link should generally either modified so it is more visible or removed.

Generally speaking, you do not wish to attempt to sculpt your site by using no follow or no index. If there is a page which you feel should not be indexed, then add the noindex tag. Otherwise let the search engines decide whether or not to index the page.

[evolvingSEO]

"Use your Google Analytics to determine which links are not used. If you offer links which are not used, it is a waste and adjustments should be made. An unused link should generally either modified so it is more visible or removed."

• now THAT'S some killer advise right there!  I'm always weary of things like 'only 100 links on a page'.  Every situation is so unique, it will really hurt you to try and stick blindly to a 'rule' like that without thinking for yourself.

[ClaytonKendall]

Thanks for all of the help! It's not that there's anything wrong with our on page links, and we have used analytics as a helpful resource. I'm just trying to learn best practice for all of the little things. Any other advice for homepage redesign is greatly appreciated!