Dumb SEO Questions

(Entry was posted by Athanasios Giannias on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 01/20/2015).

Footer links on e-commerce site

Hi everyone,  

In an eccommerce site, the below sections in red should be "nonindexed" 
Thank you  
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YOUR ANSWERS

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

  • Athanasios Giannias: Hi everyone,  ;

    In an eccommerce site, the below sections in red should be "nonindexed" ? ;
    Thank you
  • Toni Anicic: The account area, maybe, depends on what you're trying to achieve. Although I would never noindex the terms and conditions, payment methods and delivery pages. If you read the Google's document for quality raters, you'll notice the content of those pages is exactly the kind of information that Google evaluates to figure out if it should trust such an eCommerce website. ;
  • Tony McCreath: I used to no index terms and privacy but I saw advice like what +Toni Anicic ;made and changed my ways.

    With accounts and other member pages ;will probably just lead to a login page. I still think this adds no value so should be nondexed.

    I'd say it's not a big deal as there are only a few pages involved which will not cause any crawling or quality issues.
  • Athanasios Giannias: Most eCommerce sites have very similar terms and conditions. Maybe in the eyes of google its duplicate? The account area, there is no reason for search engines to have access to this!
  • Tony McCreath: On usability. These links should probably not exist until someone logs in or registers, and therefore they will be invisible to the search engines.

    For an anonymous user you should present other options that make more sense. Login, Register/Subscribe (explain benefits).

    When people are going through the checkout process you should also highlight login. For new customers I like to get them buying before I push registration. e.g. Keep the checkout form as simple as possible, then after they have paid ask them if they want an account. They will have already given you enough information to create one anyhow (email). Then send them a message to verify the email and set up a password. If a visitor uses the same email you can again give them the options to create an account. Behind the scenes they have one anyhow ;-)
  • Tony McCreath: +Athanasios Giannias ;there is no duplicate penalty. There is a duplicate filter but that has no consequence when you don't want to rank for those pages.

    There is Panda that looks a low quality websites which includes ones that mainly contain content from other websites. I'm sure a few boiler plate pages will not get a website into that sort of trouble.
  • Athanasios Giannias: thank you +Tony McCreath ;+Toni Anicic ; ;In GWT  ;under crawl --> crawl errors there are 404's errors appearing Pressing on them to see from where they are linked, i realize that its the customers "Shopping cart summary" and "My account details".  ;Its actually the reason why i think the whole account area should be non indexed.  ;
  • Tony McCreath: If Google is crawling into peoples account details then you need to look into your security.

    Still, noindexing those pages is easy and will keep them out of the search index.
  • Athanasios Giannias: thank you Tony ;
    Be well ;
  • Mark Steenbakkers: I agree with +Toni Anicic , you could block the user account pages, javascript via the robot.txt. Here is an example if you use Magento.

    https://www.byte.nl/blog/magento-robots-txt/

View original question in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 01/20/2015).