Third party pages

[ChristopherGlaeser]

Suppose you are using a third party tool such as an affiliate program.  Typically, all the files are organized under one subdirectory.  In addition, you may have little or no ability to modify any of the files in terms of SEO.  Would you recommend hiding the entire subdirectory with a noindex?

Best,
Christopher

[RyanKent]

You should have the ability to completely control any and all content which appears on your site. An affiliate program may provide images, suggested text, and may have certain requirements such as always including certain phrases, etc. That is fine, but not entire content blocks.

If you are sharing any content, affiliate or otherwise, which is not under your control or is duplicated on other sites, then yes, I would recommend the noindex tag being applied to the content.

[ChristopherGlaeser]

I should have been more clear.  The affiliate code that we licensed tracks the referrals from our affiliates and pays commissions for conversions to sales.  We installed the package in a subdirectory.  While the package does allow some customization, the code is not written to be modified.  A number of pages have the same titles.

Per your suggestion, I added a Disallow in the robots.txt to keep the bots away from that subdirectory.

Best,
Christopher

[RyanKent]

I would recommend using the noindex meta tag over blocking pages with the robots.txt file. Either will achieve the same result, but the noindex tag is a superior solution for several reasons:

• the noindex tag will allow a crawler to see the rest of the page and for your PR to continue it's natural flow throughout your site.

• there are times when a robots.txt file is deleted or modified in error, and then you have a big headache on your hands. Even if a meta tag is erased, it would just affect a single page so the damage is a lot more manageable.

[ChristopherGlaeser]

If I noindex all links from my pages to the main page of the affiliate program, and Google can still see all the other pages within the affiliate subdirectory, is that OK?  In other words, if I put a noindex firewall between my pages and the third party pages, is it OK that the third party pages exist in a subdirectory on my site?

Best,
Christopher

[RyanKent]

I am unclear on what you are asking. The only thing I can share based on your question is to noindex any content you don't wish Google to index or otherwise have concerns about.