The difference between an noindex and nofollow?

[cschwartzel]

What is really the difference between an noindex and nofollow and why/when do you want to use them? Built my first wordpress site and the blog "posts" that make up my home page confuse me....as far as passing link juice to my home url...not sure what I am asking here! How do I use nofollow/noindex or is the issue I should be looking at is 301/canonical. Or neither?

[TimNealon]

Noindex = You are telling Google not to index that page. This is usually not a good thing if you want the content to be found in search engines. If it is a specific page, image or what-not that you don't want indexed by Google use NoIndex. If you want it to be able to be found, don't use it.

Nofollow is used in links. It is telling a search engine that you don't want it to follow the link you are posting. When a link has nofollow attached pagerank or anchor text isn't transferred.

[cschwartzel]

Thanks! Helpful and to the point? Can you do the same for 301 and canonilical? I have watched blog videos, read, etc....what is the simple answer? you are awesome! Thanks...but what about wordpress treating each post on my home page like it's own URL...I just want the home page to get the "link juice" right?

[ske11]

Hi Courtney

No you do not just want the home page to get the "link juice" you want the whole site to be visible to the search engines, or at least all the pages and posts that you want people to be able to read for free.

Remember that every word you write on your blog has the chance to send more people to your site, so the more pages you can get Google to index and rank the more chance you have of getting traffic.

I hope this helps

Sean