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I NEED TO CLARIFY SOMETHING HERE I JUST REALIZED
The goal should always be to rank your "Value" pages—your landing pages, blogs, and product galleries. You want the search engine to see your site as an authority in your niche, and then you internally guide that "warm" traffic toward the payment gateway once they trust you. Keeping your CCBill or Netbilling links behind a "Join" button or a login wall is the best way to keep the bots out and the real customers in.
Also in response - before there's a call out. The reason the advice shifted is basically because the first pass was looking at it from a generic "how do websites work" perspective, while the second pass actually factored in the reality of running a high-risk business.
In a textbook world, SEO is about making everything findable. But in the real world—especially with processors like CCBill or Netbilling—making a checkout page findable is basically suicide for your merchant account. You were spot on with the "carder" comment. If a bot can find your payment link via a simple Google search, they’re going to use your site as a testing ground for stolen cards. Even if those transactions fail, the sheer volume of attempts will get you flagged for fraud and probably kicked off the platform.
The "change" in my answer happened because I realized we weren't just talking about ranking a blog post; we’re talking about a massive security vulnerability. A standard SEO mindset says "more traffic is better," but a smart business mindset says "only qualified traffic should see the bill." If someone hasn't seen your landing page or your pricing, they have no business being on your checkout page.
So, the strategy really has to be a hybrid. You want your "Join" and "Pricing" pages to rank like crazy because that's where the marketing happens. But you want to keep the actual payment gateway under wraps. Using a "noindex" tag or a robots.txt block isn't "bad SEO"—it's just being smart about security. It keeps the bots away while letting your real customers move through a secure, branded funnel that you control.
At the end of the day, SEO should help you make money, not get your bank account shut down. Keeping the payment pages hidden while ranking the sales pages is the only way to play it safe
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