Is there something fundamentally wrong with our site architecture?

[danatanseo]

Thanks EGOL,

I have spent some time discussing the "Review Request" page types that you referenced above with our IT director. Since we have these set as "disallow" in our robots.txt file, and it appears that none of these pages have been indexed, shouldn't we be able to accomplish what needs to be done by adding a "no follow" attribute to these pages?

[EGOL]

That would evaporate a lot of pagerank.

I would place the form under a tab to reduce that loss.

[danatanseo]

Thanks EGOL,

Is it evaporating pagerank simply because those pages exist as many separate pages with thin/duplicate content? Or would the "no follow" be evaporating pagerank? If so, how? I was under the impression that adding a "no follow" attribute retained the pagerank of the page on which the  no followed link resides?

Thanks for any clarification you can provide. I am trying to get my ducks in a row before giving marching orders to our IT director.

Dana

[EGOL]

My understanding is that pagerank flows into every link on a page.  If the page has a nofollow link then the pagerank into that page is lost.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVOOB_Q0MZY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl0MBeKDXLY

These pages are not needed for the visitor either.  One click less if the form is placed under the review/ratings tab that leads to them.

[danatanseo]

Fascinating. It never ceases to amaze me that the better I get at SEO, the less I seem to know   Thanks very much EGOL I very very much appreciate your explanation and help on this one!

[danatanseo]

One final follow up question EGOL if you don't mind. We also have a link on all the product pages that goes to an "Email this Product to a Friend" request page on another URL. It's a very similar scenario as the "Rating/Review" request links. Are these causing a similar problem? I ask because if we are going to fix one we might as well fix the other at the same time. Let me know what you think.

Thanks as always!

[EGOL]

If this was my site I would place that form under a tab.

If you get rid of the review/ratings page and the email to friend page that will decrease the size of your site by a lot of pages.  That will give you a more compact site with a much higher content value per page.

If I dumped pages like these from one of my sites I would be hoping to see my rankings slowly climb a little higher.

I can't guarantee that... It is what I would do myself and what I would hope the result would be.

Good luck if you try it.  I think that there is upside here and I think that the downside is about zero.

[danatanseo]

Thanks again. Yes, we are definitely going to go for it. It makes complete sense.

[EGOL]

Come back in two or three months after you remove the pages and let us know if anything happened.

[danatanseo]

Thank you so much Peter. This is excellent advice and has dot fallen on deaf ears! As we move forward, not only with trying to make the current site better but also to redesign a site on a new platform that is easier for our customers to use, your advice is going to come in very handy. Thanks so much for taking the time to comment and advise!

Dana