Noindex follow on checkout pages in 2017

[DGAU]

Hi,
My website really consists of 2 separate sites.

1. Product site:
   • Website with product pages.
   • These product pages have SEO optimised content.

2. 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'.

[benesmartin]

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

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi Martin

Please can you explain why and how you would add UTM parameters to the book buttons on his website?

Thanks Nigel

[benesmartin]

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

[Nigel_Carr]

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

[benesmartin]

Hi Nigel,

You're right, I didn't think about the duplicates from UTM previously.

Thanks for the update.

Best, Martin

[DGAU]

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?

[Nigel_Carr]

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