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
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Seeing some really bad sites that ranked in my niche years ago reaching 1st page
It started after the update about 4 websites form the 1st page dropped to the 2nd and 4 of the other sites just popped back to the 1st page and the bad part is that the Da and inbound links of these sites are really bad, so my question is must we just wait this out till Google realises how bad these site are and some of them haven't been updated in years links broken i can go on and on. what these sites have is just the age of the domains, but can this really be the main focus of these results?
Algorithm Updates | | johan80 -
Ctr question with home page and product pages
do you believe that the advantage of targeting a search term on the home page is now worse off than before? as I understand it ctr is a big factor now And as far as i can see if two pages are equal on page etc the better ctr will win out, the issue with the home page is the serp stars cannot be used hence the ctr on a product page will be higher? I feel if you where able to get a home page up quicker (1 year instead of two) you still lost out in the end due to the product page winning on ctr? do you think this is correct?
Algorithm Updates | | BobAnderson0 -
What date tags are required/best to use for articles or other landing pages?
Does anyone have suggestions on which date tag(s) are most important to use and how to use them on the frontend? (i.e. dateModified, dateCreated, and datePublished). The Structured Data Testing Tool is coming up with errors for my article pages, but I'm a bit confused which ones should be in the code vs. showing on the frontend.
Algorithm Updates | | ElsaT0 -
Who else is noticing a shift in deeper pages ranking?
Without mentioning names, we're noticing a shift in many of our clients ranking pages. Previously many of them held page 1 positions with their home page. We've been building brand only anchor text to these pages for some time now and there's a noticeable change in visibility to the domain as a whole displayed in GWT and there's an uplift in organic traffic too. It just happens that some of our clients already had pages in the root directory that were very optimised for the clients' head terms, but all of a sudden, these sub pages with very few inbound links have started ranking in the place of the home pages. I've attached a screenshot of the landing page organic traffic. The pages in question have been there for at least 8-10 months. These inner pages would not normally have been able to hold their ground in this position and I'm concerned that this is a temporary change. I can see this going one of two ways; (i) home page beings to out rank sub page as before, (i) sub page loses ranking ability and home page rank does not come back. My questions to the community are therefore; **Has anyone else noticed this shift in ranking behaviour? ** What are everyone's thoughts on this? - Will it remain this way? From this query I can easily ask another wider question; Good advice across the internet says we should be building strong brand links and citations to our clients' domains. Typically brand links go to the homepage, which should provide the homepage and (to a lesser extent the domain) with a ranking/traffic/visibility uplift. However, as I'm noticing other pages now picking up ranking boosts as a result of this; **Should we still be trying to gain links to these more commercial landing pages? ** How are others building high quality links to pages full of commercial copy? I hope this can spark a little bit of a debate. I look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts. Thanks yPOEjVA.png
Algorithm Updates | | tomcraig860 -
Google local page
I was in google places and then set up a goole local account 9 months ago but it is not showing as listed. What am I doing wrong or what can I do about it?? https://plus.google.com/u/0/106415232585067786390/about thanks Jo Ann
Algorithm Updates | | jojojo0 -
How to find which keywords bring traffic to a particular page on my website ?
I have been using Google Analytics and SEOMoz tools for a while now. I know which are my top landing pages and some of the keywords which bring me traffic. But I don't know which are the top searched keywords for my website as these are "not provided" by Google Analytics. More importantly, I want to know which keywords are directing traffic to a particular page on my website. Can anyone help ?
Algorithm Updates | | EricMoore0 -
Local Pages Help
Hi All, I have a client who is looking heavily at Google+ Local. He has a main business, with a number of locational franchises. He has created a local listing for each of these franchise pages. The question he has asked is 'How do I improve my rankings for these local listings?' Now some of them seem to rank well without any work performed to improve them, but some are not. My question is, What can we do to improve the rankings of Google+ Local listings? This has changed greatly since I last looked into it, so anyone who can say 'right, this is what you need to do to improve Google+Local listings' would be greatly appreciated!!!! Many thanks Guys!!
Algorithm Updates | | Webrevolve0 -
Using ™ and ® in page titles
Is it bad to use registered trademark symbols in page titles? Does this somehow hurt in search rankings?
Algorithm Updates | | mlentner0