Block Low Quality Pages?

[poolguy]

What are your thoughts on blocking (in robots.txt) and/or noindexing low-quality pages to defend against Panda, assuming you can't remove, redirect, or add quality content to it?  Also, assume there are no external links pointing to these low-quality pages, no social shares, and zero incoming organic traffic.

Has anyone had experience with this as a solution to Panda?

[Malarowski]

If they are of no value to anybody, I'd just block them.

[SimonCullum]

Hi there,

For any such low quality pages, I'd suggest asking two simple questions first:

1. Is the page important for my users, does it add any value ?

2. Is the page beneficial for the site's SEO ?

which I think you have asked already from reading your question, so well done there.

Pages can usually be removed or redirected, perhaps not yet though at some point, they can be.

From what you've said, it sounds like those such pages are adding no value to anybody whatsoever, so Mike is right in suggesting to block them.

I have some further thoughts for you;

If the page adds no value to your visitors though could be useful for search, then think about Consolidating that page into another (re-using some of the content) or simply 301 redirect it to an appropriate & more valuable page.

This idea came from an SEOmoz Mozinar (web conference) from yesterday, is a great concept.

There is no point in keeping pages of no value there but hidden away from search engines or users, simple get rid of any such pages by Consolidation or 301 redirects.

If the page holds no user value though has some SEO value, then consider 301 redirecting it to another appropriate page.

Consolidation and Redirects help to keep a site clean, rather than blocking or noindexing pages that no longer need to be there.

If in doubt, then by all means make use of Robots.txt or the NoIndex attribute until you are sure of what to do with them long term.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon