Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Optimize a Classifieds Site

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Optimize a Classifieds Site

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    2
    5
    3809
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • ketan9
      ketan9 last edited by

      Hi,

      I have a classifieds website and would like to optimize it. The issues/questions I have:

      • A Classifieds site has, say, 500 cities. Is it better to create separate subdomains for each city (http://city_name.site.com) or subdirectory (http://site.com/city_name)?

      • Now in each city, there will be say 50 categories. Now these 50 categories are common across all the cities. Hence, the layout and content will be the same with difference of latest ads from each city and name of the city and the urls pointing to each category in the relevant city.

      The site architecture of a classifieds site is highly prone to have major content which is not really a duplicate content. What is the best way to deal with this situation?

      I have been hit by Panda in April 2011 with traffic going down 50%. However, the traffic since then has been around same level. How to best handle the duplicate content penalty in case with site like a classifieds site.

      Cheers!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • ketan9
        ketan9 @Dr-Pete last edited by

        Thanks Dr. Peter :). I have implemented your suggestions, so will see if I get any better rankings. Meanwhile, I will continue link building effort for the site!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Dr-Pete
          Dr-Pete Staff @ketan9 last edited by

          They shouldn't - a META NOINDEX is easier to undo than a Robots.txt block, 301, or canonical tag, in my experience. The biggest risk is just a delay - it may take Google a little time to re-index the content once you remove the tag.

          What I wouldn't do is add/remove the tag rapidly. For example, if you had a product that went out of stock every other day, I'd leave it alone - Google wouldn't respond quickly enough to all those changes. So, once a category has enough results, I'd lift the NOINDEX permanently. It's really just a move to consolidate while you build up the site - both in terms of content and your link profile.

          ketan9 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • ketan9
            ketan9 last edited by

            I really want to clear out thin content and your response makes it much clear to me. Now I know want to do next. Thank you so much for replying and clarifying the details.

            I have another question.. Let's consider this scenario where I add META NOINDEX to the category pages that have less than 5 classified ads. Later down the road there are more than 5 ads posted in that category and I would like to put META INDEX...  will google treat this page differently meaning with some penalty of NOINDEX in first place and then INDEX later on or not index these categories as they were NOINDEX earlier?

            Dr-Pete 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Dr-Pete
              Dr-Pete Staff last edited by

              Unfortunately, the painful reality, especially if you've been hit by Panda, is that you probably can't support that scale or that it looks thin to Google. 500 cities X 50 categories = 25,000 "category" pages, so to speak, all of which are basically just search results. For most sites, it's just too much.

              I'd definitely keep the cities as sub-folders. If you go the sub-domain route, you could fracture your internal link-juice even more. It depends a bit on the authority and marketing budget of the site. If each city is a separate property with its own sales force, budget, etc., there may be a logic to sub-domains. Unless you're Groupon or someone like that, though, it's probably a bad idea.

              You may have to prune down the indexed content, to be frank. I'd look for other Panda factors, too, like aggressive ad density (too many ads to too little content) or very thin pages. If you have tons of cities or categories with no listings, META NOINDEX them. You could even do it dynamically - only let Google index a page if it has 1+ listings, for example.

              I'd also take a look at other low-value content, like paginated search. If each city has 100s of pages and you're indexing page 2, page 3, etc., consider consolidating them. It's a tricky topic, but Adam Audette has a great write-up here:

              http://searchengineland.com/five-step-strategy-for-solving-seo-pagination-problems-95494

              These pages can look very low-value to Google. Add in search sorts and other variants, and your 25K categories could be exploding into hundreds of thousands of pages, before Google even gets to the listings themselves. The ads are the real meat of the site, and that's where you want Google to focus.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                Last post

              Got a burning SEO question?

              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


              Start my free trial


              Browse Questions

              Explore more categories

              • Moz Tools

                Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

              • SEO Tactics

                Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

              • Community

                Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

              • Digital Marketing

                Chat about tactics outside of SEO

              • Research & Trends

                Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

              • Support

                Connect on product support and feature requests.

              • See all categories

              Related Questions

              • SIMON-CULL

                So many links from single site?

                this guy is ranking on all high volume keywords and has low quality content, he has 1600 ref domains check the attachment how did  he get so many links from single site is he gonna be penalized YD2BvQ0

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SIMON-CULL
                0
              • McTaggart

                Dealing with 404s during site migration

                Hi everyone - What is the best way to deal with 404s on an old site when you're migrating to a new website? Thanks, Luke

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart
                0
              • dkeipper

                Page Rank Worse After Optimization

                For a long time, we had terrible on page SEO. No keyword targeting, no meta titles or descriptions. Just a brief 2-4 sentence product description and shipping information. Strangely, we weren't ranking too bad. For one product, we were ranking on page 1 of Google for a certain keyword. My goal to reach the top of page 1 would be easy (or so I thought). I have now optimized this page to rank better for the same keyword. I have a 276 word description with detailed specifications and shipping information. I have a strong title and meta description with keywords and modifers. I have also included a video demonstration, additional photos and an PDF of the owners manual. In my eyes, the page is 100% better than it ever was. In the eyes of MOZ, it's better also. I've got an A with the On-Page Grader. Why is this page now ranking on page 8 of Google? What have I done wrong? What can I do to correct it?

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dkeipper
                0
              • kdaniels

                Moving to a new site while keeping old site live

                For reasons I won't get into here, I need to move most of my site to a new domain (DOMAIN B) while keeping every single current detail on the old domain (DOMAIN A) as it is. Meaning, there will be 2 live websites that have mostly the same content, but I want the content to appear to search engines as though it now belongs to DOMAIN B. Weird situation. I know. I've run around in circles trying to figure out the best course of action. What do you think is the best way of going about this? Do I simply point DOMAIN A's canonical tags to the copied content on DOMAIN B and call it good? Should I ask sites that link to DOMAIN A to change their links to DOMAIN B, or start fresh and cut my losses? Should I still file a change of address with GWT, even though I'm not going to 301 redirect anything?

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kdaniels
                0
              • ArchMedia

                Should I redirect images when I migrate my site

                We are about to migrate a large website with a fair few images (20,000). At the moment we include images in the sitemap.xml so they are indexed by Google and drive traffic (not sure how I can find out how much though). Current image slugs are like:
                http://website.com/assets/images/a2/65680/thumbnails/638x425-crop.jpg?1402460458 Like on the old site, images on the new website will also have unreadable cache slugs, like:
                http://website.com/site_media/media/cache/ce/7a/ce7aeffb1e5bdfc8d4288885c52de8e3.jpg All content pages on the new site will have the same slugs as on the old site. Should I go through the trouble of redirecting all these images?

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ArchMedia
                0
              • Paul78

                Removed Site-wide links

                Hi there, I have recently removed quite a lot of site-wide links leaving the only link on homepage's of some websites, since doing this I have seen a dramatic drop on my keywords, going from position 2-3 to nowhere. Has anyone else experienced anything like this, should I expect to see a return on these keywords? Thanks

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul78
                0
              • danielparry

                Multiple sites in the same niche

                Hi All A question regarding multiple sites in the same niche... If I have say 10 sites all targetting the same niche yet all on different C-class IPs with different hosts, registrars, whois data and ages can I use the same template, or will Google discern a pattern? Basically I have developed a WordPress template which I want to use on the sites albeit with different logos / brand colours. NB/ All of the 10 sites will have unique, original content and they will NOT be interlinked

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danielparry
                1
              • James77

                Is it possible to Spoof Analytics to give false Unique Visitor Data for Site A to Site B

                Hi, We are working as a middle man between our client (website A) and another website (website B) where, website B is going to host a section around websites A products etc. The deal is that Website A (our client) will pay Website B based on the number of unique visitors they send them. As the middle man we are in charge of monitoring the number of Unique visitors sent though and are going to do this by monitoring Website A's analytics account and checking the number of Unique visitors sent. The deal is worth quite a lot of money, and as the middle man we are responsible for making sure that no funny business goes on (IE false visitors etc). So to make sure we have things covered - What I would like to know is 1/. Is it actually possible to fool analytics into reporting falsely high unique visitors from Webpage A to Site B (And if so how could they do it). 2/. What could we do to spot any potential abuse (IE is there an easy way to spot that these are spoofed visitors). Many thanks in advance

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | James77
                0

              Get started with Moz Pro!

              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

              Start my free trial
              Products
              • Moz Pro
              • Moz Local
              • Moz API
              • Moz Data
              • STAT
              • Product Updates
              Moz Solutions
              • SMB Solutions
              • Agency Solutions
              • Enterprise Solutions
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • Local Citation Checker
              • MozBar Extension
              • MozCast
              Resources
              • Blog
              • SEO Learning Center
              • Help Hub
              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
              • How-to Guides
              • Moz Academy
              • API Docs
              About Moz
              • About
              • Team
              • Careers
              • Contact
              Why Moz
              • Case Studies
              • Testimonials
              Get Involved
              • Become an Affiliate
              • MozCon
              • Webinars
              • Practical Marketer Series
              • MozPod
              Connect with us

              Contact the Help team

              Join our newsletter
              Moz logo
              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
              • Accessibility
              • Terms of Use
              • Privacy

              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.