Noindex follow on checkout pages in 2017
-
Hi,
My website really consists of 2 separate sites.-
Product site:
• Website with product pages.
• These product pages have SEO optimised content. -
Booking engine & checkout site:
• When a user clicks 'Book' on one of the product pages on the aforementioned product site they go to a seaparate website which is a booking engine and checkout.
• These pages are not quality, SEO optimised content, they only perform the function of booking and buying.
Q1) Should I set 'noindex follow' via the meta tag on all pages of the 'Booking engine and checkout' site?
ie.Q2) should i add anything to the book buttons on the product site?
I am hoping all this will somehow help concentrate the SEO juice onto the Product Site's pages by declaring the Booking engine and Checkout sites pages to be 'not of any content value'.
-
-
Hi
Ironically MOZ will pick this up as a problem as it reports anything that is noindexed!
For me I just ignore noindex as a problem in certain cases as clearly it makes perfect sense to noindex certain pages and indeed sometimes whole directories.
I sometimes find that developers have noindexed directories like /new-products or /sale but clearly there are better ways of handling the potential duplicate problem here by adding a canonical. In you case it makes no sense having Google index the checkout pages.
Regards Nigel
-
Hi Martin / Nigel,
Thanks for your responses, In regards to Q1.
By adding to the 'Booking engine and checkout' site's pages will this also stop Moz from Crawling these pages - and consequently remove 'issues' from their Moz Site Crawl 'issues count' as it currently crawls these pages and picks up issues?
-
Hi Nigel,
You're right, I didn't think about the duplicates from UTM previously.
Thanks for the update.
Best, Martin
-
Hi Martin
Surely if the traffic was coming from a different source then that would be in the URL of that source. Adding a UTM would simply create duplicate page content between the URL and the UTM tagged URL.
He'd then be faced with the tricky and potentially dangerous task of messing with parameters. I just wouldn't mess with creating UTM tagged URLs,
Apologies - I didn't mean to argue I just couldn't understand your logic.
Regards Nigel
-
Hey Nigel,
As far as I've understand the system of his websites, it consists of two separate websites (unless he meant "page" by the "site").
Then, I think it would be useful to add the UTM so he can see from exactly which source a user comes (since those are two separate websites).
Also, I suppose that by clicking on the book buttons on the product site, they will be redirected to the book site so you would basically add the UTMs in the URL.
If he meant by "site" only "page" then the solution would be different, of course.
Cheers, Martin
-
Hi Martin
Please can you explain why and how you would add UTM parameters to the book buttons on his website?
Thanks Nigel
-
Hey there,
Regarding Q1, I'd set , as you've said. Since the Booking site has no content value for the visitor, there's no need for it to be found in Google SERP.
Regarding Q2, you can add UTM parameters to make the analytics easier in GA.
Since the booking site has no "content value", there's nothing more you can really pass.
Hope it helps. Cheers, Martin
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Which is the best way - to have all FAQ pages at one place, or splitted in different sections of the website?
Hi all, We have a lot of FAQ sections on our website, splitted in different places, depending on products, technologies, etc. If we want to optimize our content for Google's Featured Snippets, Voice Search and etc. - what is the best option: to combine them all in one FAQ section? or it doesn't matter for Google that this type of content is not in one place? Thank you!
Algorithm Updates | | lgrozeva0 -
Issue with Category Ranking on Page 1 vs. Homepage Ranking on Page 2
A client has a high-volume keyword that is rendering different results, whether it is on page one or page two of Google SERPs. If the keyword is on page one, ONLY the category page is ranking. When the keyword bumps off to page two, BOTH the category AND the homepage are ranking. This is happening on our IP and theirs, incognito and personalized searches. This has been happening since February. Any thought/insights would be greatly appreciated, thank you!!!!
Algorithm Updates | | accpar0 -
Hi guys, I have a question about linking to a product page for linkbuilding. Does that count adversely vs. linking to a homepage?
Hi - so until now we have been building links via blog posts and articles and linking them to the homepage. It seems the ranking of some of my top keywords has fallen so had a few questions/concerns: Does it affect the rankings adversely if I link to the product page vs the homepage? What is rule of thumb for increasing rankings of inside pages/keywords and building links to them? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | DGM0 -
Links to category pages unnatural?
If people are linking to your site, it would seem natural that the vast majority of those links would point to the homepage, product page, or a article/content page. Let's say you have 100 links pointing to your site, and 40 of them are pointing to category pages. Would this seem unnatural? Does Google or other search engines have a way of determining this as a factor in ascertaining whether the links are natural or not? Is there a rule of thumb when it comes to the pages that are linked to on your site?
Algorithm Updates | | inhouseseo0 -
Lots of dublicate titles and pages on search page
I own a paiting website with a lot of searchable paintings. The "search paintings" feature creates tons of dublicate pages and titles. See here:
Algorithm Updates | | KasperGJ
http://www.maleribasen.dk/soegmaleri.asp I guess the problem is, that the URL can actually be different and still return the same content. First time you click the "Search paintings" the URL will shown as above. But as soon as users
begin to definere they search to the left and use the "Search button" the top URL changes. So, depending on how the top URL looks different results are shown. This is pretty standard in searches. But it returns tons of dublicate pages and titles. How, do you guys cope with that? Is there a clever way to use ref="cannonical" or some other smart way to avoid this? /Kasper0 -
What effect does previous page visits have in SERP?
We've all seen it before, right before a result, you see "You visited this page on ____" What effect does a single visit have? Multiple visits?
Algorithm Updates | | 10JQKAs0 -
Gifts.com - Multiple domain pages in SERPs
One of our big natural search competitors for gift keywords is Gifts.com. We are competing for many keywords like "teen gifts", "gifts for him", "gifts for her". For many of these, the Google SERP has multiple Gifts.com pages on the first page. I have never seen more than one of our pages (uncommongoods.com) on a SERP page. Any clue how/why Gifts.com has multiple pages in search results ? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | znotes0 -
Google Cached Pages
I made some on-site changes to a site last week, in particular their page titles. This was all done on the same day at the same time. Now, one of those pages, got re-indexed on August 8th and has my updated changes, which also helped with my ranking. The other page I made changes to still shows a cached version from July 27th, which is before I made the changes. Why wouldn't google have an updated page from August 8th for both pages, not just one?
Algorithm Updates | | MichaelWeisbaum0