Which pages should I index or have in my XML sitemap?

[mjk26]

Hi there,

my website is ConcertHotels.com - a site which helps users find hotels close to concert venues.  I have a hotel listing page for every concert venue on my site - about 12,000 of them I think (and the same for nearby restaurants).

e.g.

https://www.concerthotels.com/venue-hotels/madison-square-garden-hotels/304484

Each of these pages list the nearby hotels to that concert venue.  Users clicking on the individual hotel are brought through to a hotel (product) page e.g.

https://www.concerthotels.com/hotel/the-new-yorker-a-wyndham-hotel/136818

I made a decision years ago to noindex all of the /hotel/ pages since they don't have a huge amount of unique content and aren't the pages I'd like my users to land on .  The primary pages on my site are the /venue-hotels/ listing pages.

I have similar pages for nearby restaurants, so there are approximately 12,000 venue-restaurants pages, again, one listing page for each concert venue.

However, while all of these pages are potentially money-earners, in reality, the vast majority of subsequent hotel bookings have come from a fraction of the 12,000 venues.  I would say 2000 venues are key money earning pages, a further 6000 have generated income of a low level, and 4000 are yet to generate income.

I have a few related questions:

• Although there is potential for any of these pages to generate revenue, should I be brutal and simply delete a venue if it hasn't generated revenue within a time period, and just accept that, while it "could" be useful, it hasn't proven to be and isn't worth the link equity.  Or should I noindex these "poorly performing pages"?

• Should all 12,000 pages be listed in my XML sitemap?  Or simply the ones that are generating revenue, or perhaps just the ones that have generated significant revenue in the past and have proved to be most important to my business?

Thanks

Mike

[mjk26]

Hi Chris,

thank you very much for your help and suggestions, it is much appreciated.  I'll de-noindex a handful of my biggest artist pages and see if they attract much interest from users.

As for the /venues/ pages, these have been fairly neglected to date, so perhaps I need to really focus my attention on them, as you say, and bring in some cross referencing.

I have also wondered whether allowing companies to create pages dedicated to their events would be a good route to take - it could be done with ease, so perhaps I should investigate further.

Again, thanks very much, and hopefully I can report back with good news at some point.

Best wishes

Mike

[Chris.Menke]

I think they should be indexed, but keyword  research should shed light on this topic for you. It will let you  know if your audience is searching for those things and in what numbers.  Even as they are, though, they might make sufficient landing pages for google.  You could de-noindex a group of those pages at a time, starting with the ones most likely to be popular and see how google treats them. I think I'd go that route rather than release them into the wild all at once.

To me, the pages with the most interesting potential are the /venues/  pages like /venues/md-concert-venues/a, for example. I think the potential lies in populating them with venue grouping, upcoming artists grouping, and state.   How hard would it be to populate an area above the black line with all/some of the upcoming artists playing near the hotels that show on that page. That 3-way cross referencing would make those pages fairly unique on the web and unique on your site and would give google a number of good reasons to send traffic there. They'd probably be good pages to publish advertising on, too.

Also wondering if there is  a thing such as  "licensing" dedicated pages out to companies/hotels that are putting on non-musical events like conferences, etc, so they can link to a kind of pre-fab hotels-close-by page up for their attendees?

[mjk26]

Thanks Chris,

appreciate your comments.  Google in indexing a high percentage of the key pages, and does not have any noindex pages indexed.  Pages are loading at a decent speed.   And only indexed pages are in the sitemap.  So perhaps the non-performing pages are not something I should be particularly concerned about, especially they don't necessarily take up much of my time.  I guess if I start to run into issues with overall site speed then perhaps then is is the time to consider whether they should continue to be listed.  So perhaps, you're right, it's more of a business decision, rather than an SEO one.

I have a further question if you don't mind, which is related but I think is an SEO one.  I have a large number of /artist/ pages - these are pages that list which venues a particular artist is performing at, and allows a user to then check hotel availability for the specific venue and date they will be attending.  At the minute the pages are fairly light on content - they just list venues and dates, although I'm planning to start introducing more content in the near future.  An example page can be seen here:

https://www.concerthotels.com/artist/hotels-near-guns-n-roses-events/1227

At the minute, I've noindexed every artist page on the site, because I was worried Google would see them as thin pages.  But I actually think they are potentially very useful to users, and a powerful landing page for quickly taking a user to the correct venue page with the correct dates for the concert.    I also think that not all users will search for "Hotels near Metlife Stadium" - they might instead search for "Hotels for Guns n roses in NJ..." etc etc. so perhaps I can pick up some long tail searches with these additional landing pages.

The question is, should I index these pages?

If the answer to that question is yes..... obviously, artists/bands do a tour and then generally disappear into a recording studio for a year or two - as a result, there will be many /artist/ pages that, for a while, have lots of useful event dates/venues listed, but at the end of the tour, the pages will simply be empty, and no longer useful, at least until the next tour.  Would you recommend that such pages are indexed when there are events, but when no future events are listed, I set them to noindex?

Many thanks

Mike

[Chris.Menke]

Mike,

I'm wondering...is that an SEO question? It sounds like a business decision to me. From what you've said, I don't see any reason for Google to ding you on anything.  My only questions would be--Is google indexing all the pages you  want it to and does not have your noindex pages indexed? Any bad links coming in? Pages are loading at a decent speed? Oh, and I don't see a reason to have your noindex pages in the the sitemap.

Other than that, if those non-performing page are taking up time that you  could be spending on more productive pages or on exploring more productive opportunities, then, again, it's time to put on your CEO cap.