Should I "No Index" Certain Pages On My Site?

[KyleEaves]

I have some pages on my site that don't really have any content other than some iframes that are embedded from another site. I thought it would be best to tag the page with a no-index so that search engines would leave the page alone since it has no content as far as the search engine can tell (but does provide value to my site visitors). Is this the proper approach or does it do more harm than good?

[KyleEaves]

Thanks, was able to get it done on most of them but a few I don't think I have the ability to add the no index with how my CMS is setup so will be working on trying to include unique content to those pages. Thanks for all the great advice.

[Everett]

Kyle,

It sounds like you've put a lot of thought into this and have come to the same conclusion that I would recommend, which is to prune those pages out of the index using a robots noindex,follow meta tag.

I think you're good to go with that strategy.

[KyleEaves]

Thanks for the response Travis, it's only about 35 pages so far and the content in the iFrames does update automatically each month. Right now other than page title and description the pages are basically identical to each other, so was worried about it being seen as identical content, that's why I have already no indexed them, so they shouldn't be showing up in search engines. Just want to make sure I'm using the tags right as to not do more harm than I am benefiting the site. The majority of my site is made up of Real Estate listings (I'm a REALTOR) so most of those pages don't carry much link juice I'm assuming, since they change frequently.

My focus is on maximizing my core pages so they show up on search engines so trying to exclude content that does not add value to the site (in the eyes of search engines). Maybe I'm looking into it too deep but just trying to get started on the right path since my site just launched a few months ago.

I appreciate you taking the time to comment and yes, possibly down the road if I can add enough unique content to those pages I will remove the tags, that's probably what I should do.

[Travis_Bailey]

Do the pages, inexplicably, get organic traffic? They don't appear to be indexed by Google. But it's a good idea to check your site analytics. Is there any way you can possibly add some content related to the iframes?

It appears that the pages iframe content about market trends and foreclosures. Could you possibly commission or produce some content that's 'evergreen' in regard to those markets and trends. That way, you may not have to update the content frequently.

So far my crawler has picked up 15 pages with iframe tags, out of 16,000 URLs. Granted, this isn't the whole picture - but I'm getting the impression it's not the bulk of your site.

It wouldn't take long to add a meta noindex tag to such a low percentage of pages. They aren't indexed anyway. Though I would noindex follow them. You never know... links and such from humans can flow into the site.

Though if you can add some content to those pages, it would be a very good idea to allow them to be indexed.