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In this article we will look at the impact of UTM tags on SEO and their role in website promotion.
Subscriber question: “How do UTM tags affect SEO? If you add them to external links, what will be the result?
What are UTM tags?
First, let's understand what UTM tags are and how they are perceived by search engines. UTM tags are parameters that are added to page URLs. For example, you have a link “sait.ru/katalog”, and the parameter “sait.ru/katalog?utm-source=example” can be added to it. Most often, several labels are used - for example, utm_source, utm_campaign, utm_medium, and so on. It is important to note that for search engines this is perceived as a separate page.
Search engines know that pages can have common tags such as UTM and other parameters. However, these pages continue to be indexed. Previously, when the “Backlinks” section was updated in Yandex.Webmaster, such pages sometimes appeared, but were then deleted. Similar events are happening at Google. This is due to the peculiarities of how search engines work, and such pages either appear in the index or disappear. This can ultimately lead to confusion.
When search engines don't have clear information about which URLs and parameters are important, they can make mistakes when adding or removing pages from the index, which negatively impacts SEO.
What to do
When you place a paid link to your site, it is better not to add UTM tags. In this case, the link will look like a natural recommendation from another user or site, and not like advertising material. Including a UTM tag in a link signals to the search engine that this is an advertising link, and its evaluation will be less favorable. This is similar to how Google uses “sponsored” markup to mark paid links.
If you want to prevent search engines from treating UTM tags as unique pages, there are ways to control this.
How to force search engines to ignore UTM tags
When a link with a UTM tag appears on a page, search engines try to index it. To avoid duplication or incorrect indexing, there are several ways to tell search engines that these parameters do not change the content of the page and should not affect its ranking.
In Yandex, the parameter is used for this clean-param, which is added to the robots.txt file. This method helps search engines understand that added parameters (including UTM) should not affect the indexability of the page.
As for Google, there used to be a URL Parameters tool in Google Search Console that helped manage the indexing of pages with get parameters. However, this tool has been disabled because the search engine believes it now automatically understands which options modify content and which do not.
However, no one forbids using canonical links (canonical), which point to the main version of the page. For each page with added parameters, you can specify a canonical link that will point to the original address of the page. This helps avoid duplication and prevents pages with UTM tags from being indexed incorrectly.
Of course, search engines do not always follow canonical guidelines. While Google sometimes ignores these links, Yandex tends to pay attention to such markup more often. However, this does not mean that you cannot use these methods to optimize page indexing.
To properly manage page indexing, it is important to use all the tools available, telling search engines which pages are important for indexing and which parameters can be ignored.
You can find more detailed information in other articles on our website.
If you have any questions about SEO, you can write to the SEO studio "SEO COMPUTER" at info@seo.computer.
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