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I have a blog with around 50 posts and it has a fair amount of organic traffic.

There is a plan to add a forum (as subdirectory) to that blog. I can't maintain the quality of forum as blog posts because they are user generate content. So will it be a bad for entire site?

I could even no-index the forum because I am not expecting organic traffic to the forum. It is just for loyal readers. But I fear that low quality forum will be affect for whole site? Is there way to add a forum (low quality user generated content) without affecting entire website SEO?

Note: Even though I can no-index forum I have to link to forum posts in blog posts. Will it be a problem?

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3 Answers 3

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No-indexing the forum will mean it is not indexed for any purpose. Only indexed pages count towards penalties and rankings.

Pages marked noindex, by definition, are not in the index. Google uses the index for determining ranking and penalties. If a page isn't in the index, it can't be used for/against the site.

Google recommends using noindex for pages which Google has marked low quality and that one should be in the process of rewriting:

If you have entries that you want to rewrite, then using a noindex meta tag sounds like a good solution.

Can I use the NOINDEX meta for exclude low-value pages from google? Reply from JohnMu Google Employee, Webmaster Central Help Forum

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  • This sounds correct, but such a short answer is not high quality. Can you expand this? Some links to references would really help.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Jun 23, 2017 at 11:08
  • " Only indexed pages count towards penalties and rankings". If this 100% correct, wowww!!!
    – Damith Ruwan
    Jun 23, 2017 at 11:27
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If you will not let the forum to be index by Google then there will be no issue. You can have links from the blog to forum and forum to blog.

Example:

  • example.com => Blog

  • example.com/forum/ => Forum

Additionally, you may like to let the blog be read by Google and but keep all links in the blog as 'no follow' and you can do basic monitoring and see if you may have a positive impact on the entire site.

If you got low visit blog then most likely it won't be that popular overnight. So, i would say it might be better to see the opportunity in the forum.

Generally, forum ranks well unless it is spammed badly. The reason Forum ranks well because it generally solves problem and user tend to visit regularly and stays longer.

So, i would think positive and will let the forum to crawl by Google.

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I see no problem with that. Use canonicals to show strict hierarchy of your blog<>forum and content with poor links won't affect your overall SEO

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    This isn't very clear. What do you see no problem with? Adding a forum, or no-indexing the forum? I'm also not sure how canonicals would help. Canonical tags are for dealing with duplicate content and multiple URLs that point to the same thing. That doesn't sound like it would be the case here.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Jun 23, 2017 at 11:10

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