Noindexing of 'off-topic' content can help boost site's authority?

[Selen]

I have a question regarding allowing/disallowing indexing of off-topic content of a website (user generated content).

Let's say the site's goal is to become an authority in "Birds" and it has 4 different categories:

- Blue Birds (25% of content)
- Red Birds (25% of content)
- Yellow Birds (25% of content)
- Off-Topic Discussions (25% of content)

The Off-Topic discussions are unrelated to Birds at all (they are like a place for contributors to discuss anything).

The question is - should the 'Off-Topic' discussions be disabled from indexing (by meta robots: NoIndex) to increase the site's relevancy/authority on Birds topic? Or maybe noindexing would not do anything to boost the site's authority.

[goodroi]

If you want to be an authority you probably should read up on EAT: expertise, authoritativeness or trustworthiness as discussed in the recently exposed Google Quality Rater Guide.

[Selen]

Thanks. It appears the site is already 'authority' in 'Birds' subject, but I was wondering if the off-topic content doesn't hinder it's true potential. Or if it won't trigger any penalty in the future.

[Planet13]

My gut feeling would be to noindex the off-topic content.

Do visitors to the off topic content end up buying stuff / clicking on ads?

[lucy24]

they are like a place for contributors to discuss anything

That's one hallmark of a well-established forum. When people have unrelated stuff to yak about, they want to have the conversation with people they "know". But why index it? Give your members a place where they can let their hair down without having to worry about typos, unfortunate grammar, or the occasional missing "not".

[Selen]

Do visitors to the off topic content end up buying stuff / clicking on ads?

No, it doesn't have any ads. It's like a wikipedia-style talk for moderators.

But why index it?

Now I think it's better not to index it, thanks :)

[Clay_More]

I recently built a site with 3 widely different topics which were sectioned into subfolders with the subfolders accessible from a nondescript home page. One topic received 301 page-for-page redirects from an existing site, another had an assortment of links pointed to it, the third had no outside influences.

I was curious if topic 3, with no outside influence other than on-topic links from the home page, would be able to rank. At 30 days plus, it is nowhere to be found.