Only receives nofollow links or links from canonicalized URLs
This means that the URL in question only receives incoming nofollow links, or incoming links from canonicalized URLs. In other words, the URL only receives links from URLs that do not pass Link Equity.
Why is this important?
Internal linking is the main way you help users and search engine crawlers discover pages on your website. From an SEO perspective, internal links are the most effective method of indicating to search engines the relative importance of pages on your website.
Link Equity is a measure of this importance. In general, pages with high Link Equity will receive lots of incoming internal links from authoritative pages on the website, and this helps them to rank well in search results.
Similarly, if you have URLs that do not receive any Link Equity, they have no power to rank in search results.
What does the Hint check?
This Hint will trigger for any internal URL which only has links from pages that don't pass link equity: canonicalized URLs or URLs with that contain the 'nofollow' directive.
Examples that trigger this Hint:
The Hint would trigger for any URL which only has links from URLs with 'Indexable Status' as follows:
- Disallowed
- Noindex
- Noindex Nofollow
- Canonicalized
- Canonicalized Noindex
- Canonicalized Noindex Nofollow
Why is this Hint marked 'Potential Issue'?
This Hint is a 'Potential Issue', which means that it should be investigated as it could be causing issues. In this case, it depends on whether the URLs in question are indexable or not.
URLs that don't receive Link Equity have no ranking power. If these URLs are not indexable, then the situation is probably correct. If the URLs are indexable, however, then you should deal with them in one of two ways:
- If you think they have little unique value and won't offer much as a potential search result, these URLs should just be noindexed or removed.
- If you think they have potential to be a valuable search result, then these URLs should have at least some followed links pointed at them from URLs which pass Link Equity.