Noindex PPC landing pages or optimise for SEO?
-
Organic seems to be down YoY on one of the categories of a large ecommerce website that I work on. This particular category has multiple landing pages set up for PPC consisting of filtered products. So these landing pages are prone to duplicate content due to the products listed.
e.g.
- Blue Thingamajigs
- White Thingamajigs
- Black Thingamajigs
- High Gloss Thingamajigs
- Oak Thingamajigs
- Glass Thingamajigs
- etc
These landing pages do well for PPC, but are nowhere to be seen in organic (51+). The main category page however ranks quite well for quite a variety of root and longtail keywords, though not as well as it used to. For example, it does rank for "thingamajigs", "white thingamajigs", "white gloss thingamajigs" and "white gloss thingamajigs with cherries on top".
Would it benefit the main category page if the PPC landing pages were noindexed? Or, despite Google's preference for the main category, work on further optimising the landing pages for SEO? Or is there another solution that I'm completely overlooking? (It is a Friday afternoon after all...)
-
Our clients have bespoke CMS's developed in-house, with additional functionality built in if a client needs something different. But I think it would be a great idea to ask our developers if we could start making this standard across all new websites. Definitely seems like something that will make life a lot easier in future...
Thanks again for your help!
-
Sure thing! Many times that functionality is already built into the CMS, so it may already exist.
For PPC landing pages, it's typically fine to use a "noindex, follow" as well.
-
Thank you, Erika. That is very helpful.
I might suggest to the developers then that we add functionality to the CMS for landing pages to have a simple noindex check box that when ticked will add the noindex tag to that particular page so it can be implemented on a case by case basis.
-
Hi Ria,
This is difficult to answer without reviewing the actual pages in question, but I’ll answer this with my general approach.
I see the approach to PPC and SEO pages as different for the most part. There are instances where it makes sense to use an actual website page as the destination; it just really depends on the product/business.
The PPC pages should be tightly woven with the ad groups and keywords, and sometimes “non-PPC landing pages” are too distracting with everything else on your website considering you are paying for each click.
If you take the above approach, then I would noindex the PPC landing pages as they probably contain content that is duplicated from your website.
Hope this helps. I’m also happy to look at specific examples. It’s very hard to say why organic traffic is down without understanding more about the actual situation.
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
-
Why does Google's search results display my home page instead of my target page?
Why does Google's search results display my home page instead of my target page?
Technical SEO | | h.hedayati6712365410 -
JavaScript page loader - SEO impact
Hello all,
Technical SEO | | Lvet
I am working on a site that has a bizarre page load system. All pages get loaded trough the same Javascript snippet, for example: Changing the values in the form changes the page that is loaded. The most incredible thing is that, against my expectations, pages do get indexed by Google.
My question is: "Does loading pages dynamically using JavaScript affect the overall SEO performance?" Why are pages getting indexed? Thank you for shedding light on this.
Cheers
Luca0 -
Big page of clients - links to individual client pages with light content - not sure if canonical or no-follow - HELP
Not sure what best practice here is: http://www.5wpr.com/clients/ Is this is a situation where I'm best off adding canonical tags back to the main clients page, or to the practice area each client falls under? No-following all these links and adding canonical? No-follow/No-index all client pages? need some advice here...
Technical SEO | | simplycary0 -
Has Google stopped rendering author snippets on SERP pages if the author's G+ page is not actively updated?
Working with a site that has multiple authors and author microformat enabled. The image is rendering for some authors on SERP page and not for others. Difference seems to be having an updated G+ page and not having a constantly updating G+ page. any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | irvingw0 -
Handling 301s: Multiple pages to a single page (consolidation)
Been scouring the interwebs and haven't found much information on redirecting two serparate pages to a single new page. Here is what it boils down to: Let's say a website has two pages, both with good page authority of products that are becoming fazed out. The products, Widget A and Widget B, are still popular search terms, but they are being combined into ONE product, Widget C. While Widget A and Widget B STILL have plenty to do with Widget C, Widget C is now the new page, the main focus page, and the page you want everyone to see and Google to recognize. Now, do I 301 Widget A and Widget B pages to Widget C, ALTHOUGH Widgets A and B previously had nothing to do with one another? (Remember, we want to try and keep some of that authority the two page have had.) OR do we keep Widget A and Widget B pages "alive", take them off the main navigation, and then put a "disclaimer" on the pages announcing they are now part of Widget C and link to Widget C? OR Should Widgets A and B page be canonicalized to Widget C? Again, keep in mind, widgets A and B previously were not similar, but NOW they are and result in Widget C. (If you are confused, we can provide a REAL work example of what we are talkinga about, but decided to not be specific to our industry for this.) Appreciate any and all thoughts on this.
Technical SEO | | JU19850 -
Thoughts about stub pages - 200 & noindex ok, or 404?
With large database/template driven websites it is often possible to get a lot of pages with no content on them. What are the current thoughts regarding these pages with no content, options; Return a 200 header code with noindex meta tag Return a 404 page & header code Something else? Thanks
Technical SEO | | slingshot0 -
Dealing with 404 pages
I built a blog on my root domain while I worked on another part of the site at .....co.uk/alpha I was really careful not to have any links go to alpha - but it seems google found and indexed it. The problem is that part of alpha was a copy of the blog - so now soon we have a lot of duplicate content. The /alpha part is now ready to be taken over to the root domain, the initial plan was to then delete /alpha. But now that its indexed I'm worried that Ill have all these 404 pages. I'm not sure what to do.. I know I can just do a 301 redirect for all those pages to go to the other ones in case a link comes on but I need to delete those pages as the server is already very slow. Or does a 301 redirect mean that I don't need those pages anymore? Will those pages still get indexed by google as separate pages? Please assist.
Technical SEO | | borderbound0 -
Which pages to "noindex"
I have read through the many articles regarding the use of Meta Noindex, but what I haven't been able to find is a clear explanation of when, why or what to use this on. I'm thinking that it would be appropriate to use it on: legal pages such as privacy policy and terms of use
Technical SEO | | mmaes
search results page
blog archive and category pages Thanks for any insight of this.0