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No problem

Thank you very much Julie, I really appreciated your words. I have wondered so many times what Google think of "quality", and why before us there are always very low quality websites distributing the exact same music for free (often copyrighted music, which is illegal) and most of those sites are full of ads. Is that quality? We could open a new discussion thread on the "What is quality to Google?" topic, I think it'd be very popular! Thank you again.

Thank you Chris for your in-depth answer, you just confirmed what I suspected. To clarify though, what I am trying to save here by noindexing those subsequent pages is "indexing budget" not "crawl budget". You know the famous "indexing cap"? And also, tackling possible "duplicate" or "thin" content issues with such "similar but different" pages... fact is, our website has been hit by Panda several times, we recovered several times as well, but we have been hit again with the latest quality update of last June, and we are trying to find a way to get out of it once for all. Hence my attempt to reduce the number of similar indexed pages as much as we can. I have just opened a discussion on this "Panda-non-sense" issue, and I'd like to know your opinion about it: https://moz.com/community/q/panda-rankings-and-other-non-sense-issues Thank you again.

sub-domain vs folder - here is a whiteboard friday about the differences: https://moz.com/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday In your case i'd put it in subfolder

That's just the result of my frustration for not having more than a single answer after so many days of opening this thread. I have not offended or dissed anybody specific with that. My intent was just a wake-up call to anyone could bump into this thread. So, EGOL, please, let's stop here, ok? I am really interested to know if someone else can give me constructive feedback and advice. Thank you fr your cooperation.

Thank you Joshua for your additional reply and insights, may I ask you what are your two mentioned specific word phrases you wrote above about? Just curious, because those could be "brand" related keywords like "Virtual Sheet Music" or "Classical Sheet Music Downloads" which are both our own trademarks, therefore they should be considered as "natural"... you know what I mean. As for our affiliate links, yes, those are the URLs I am concerned about. I was thinking to 302 redirect those instead than 301, but I am afraid also to lose a big deal of juice from them by doing that, even though I am aware that Google could have already discounted those links at some extent, but I am not sure how much, and I don't want to risk losing that little juice that could help us with rankings if not really needed. So, my choice would be to leave things how they are, and, yes, as you are suggesting, start building more "link-baits" to have more natural links, but as you know, that takes time... I am eager to know your thoughts about my points above. Thank you!

Sure, I understand, that makes sense. Thank you for your help!

Thank you Oleg for confirming. I think a lot of people should be aware of this as well! Thank you again.

Thank you for your posting, but I made further research on all this, and I tend to disagree with what you state. It is now my understanding that if you remove a page from the index, that content is no longer considered by Google, because it is actually "out of the index"... therefore, if, let's say, a specific page or a specific section of the site which could have caused a site-wide "content" penalty is removed from the index, those pages are no longer affecting any algorithmic calculation on the quality of the site from a "contents" stand point, and such alleged "content-related penalty" should be lifted. Anyone else can confirm that?

Fantastic, thank you Paul! Those links are very useful, and I might have already read those when I setup those canonicals (I jut forgot after a few years to have worked on that!) I'll check them out carefully again Appreciated your help and prompt reply All the best, Fabrizio

Thanks Rand! That tells it all

Thank you Everett, I think what you wrote makes sense and I'll see what to do. I'll analyze again all my affiliate links and assess the risk of getting rid of those links. If I see I could risk losing rankings in some way, I'll consider to disable the stronger affiliates last. Thank you again.

Just wondering if what I have proposed above is feasible...

That's what I thought, I wanted just to have confirmation about that. Thanks!

I almost forgot: about Internal Links, please, have a look at this discussion I am having here below: https://moz.com/community/q/rankings-drop-and-google-search-console-internal-links-panel-correlation I'd love to know your thoughts about it. Thank you again!

I mentioned both.  You add a meta robots to noindex and remove from the sitemap.

Thank you for your reply and suggestions, actually ahrefs returned quite a number of links... what I don't understand is how you can see 350 links inside the "Just-Discovered beta" of OSE... I see just 23 links for the following URL: www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/ard.asp Ideas?

Thank you Kurt, that's exactly what I thought but I wanted to have confirmation from the experts community. Thank you again!

Thank you guys, I got it. I will remove all the internal nofollows from my site!