Help! Optimizing dynamic internal search results pages...
-
Hi guys,
Now I have always been against this, and opted to noindex internal search results pages to stop the waste of link juice, dupe content, and crawl loops... however, I'm in a discussion with somebody who feels there may be a solution, and that the pages could actually be optimized to rank (for different keywords to the landing pages of course).
Anybody come across such a thing before?
My only solution would be still to noindex and then build static pages with the most popular search results in but that won't suffice in this case.
Any recommendations would be much appreciated
Thanks,
Steve
-
Hi Steve,
Sorry for responding so late.
So whenever we have a situation as having many dynamic pages optimized, I always get back to the idea of Faceted Navigation. This way you will give the Search Engines one path to crawl to each products (but be aware that you will need to invest time and energy to have a well planned, structured navigation path).
What's the positive behind Faceted navigation:
- it will resolve the duplicate page flag on your products (giving search engines only one good specified path to crawl)
- it will raise the user experience as the visitors will have the chance to easily get to the desired product fast
The negatives:
- Are there any? - Ok, seriously speaking, you will need to sit down and think a lot of which path you choose, how to resolve it to be efficient, the web dev team will work a few days/weeks (depending on their other tasks, importance of their tasks, etc.)
What it will bring to your site (relative to what you have now): currently you have noindex on the "category" (basically a search page with a filter on it, right?) page. With faceted navigation this current structure will be completed with an "tree" structure to your final products on the specified path (that you have chosen).
I hope this is clear and helped!
Gr.
Istvan
-
Thanks Istvan,
What are the solutions you're thinking of if you were to go against best practice?
-
Hey Steve,
Yes there are possibilities for optimizing the dynamic pages, but I am on the same side with you, I would simply noindex the search result pages and focus my energy on other possibilities on the site.
Gr.,
Istvan
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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.
Related Questions
-
Is dynamic pages helps in E commerce SEO?
Whats are the best way to create dynamic pages in eCommerce website having static urls? Or what are other ways to increase/create more pages in websites.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Obbserv0 -
Why isn't my uneven link flow among index pages causing uneven search traffic?
I'm working with a site that has millions of pages. The link flow through index pages is atrocious, such that for the letter A (for example) the index page A/1.html has a page authority of 25 and the next pages drop until A/70.html (the last index page listing pages that start with A) has a page authority of just 1. However, the pages linked to from the low page authority index pages (that is, the pages whose second letter is at the end of the alphabet) get just as much traffic as the pages linked to from A/1.html (the pages whose second letter is A or B). The site gets a lot of traffic and has a lot of pages, so this is not just a statistical biip. The evidence is overwhelming that the pages from the low authority index pages are getting just as much traffic as those getting traffic from the high authority index pages. Why is this? Should I "fix" the bad link flow problem if traffic patterns indicate there's no problem? Is this hurting me in some other way? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GilReich0 -
Indexing of internal search results: canonicalization or noindex?
Hi Mozzers, First time poster here, enjoying the site and the tools very much. I'm doing SEO for a fairly big ecommerce brand and an issue regarding internal search results has come up. www.example.com/electronics/iphone/5s/ gives an overview of the the model-specific listings. For certain models there are also color listings, but these are not incorporated in the URL structure. Here's what Rand has to say in Inbound Marketing & SEO: Insights From The Moz Blog Search filters are used to narrow an internal search—it could be price, color, features, etc.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ClassicDriver
Filters are very common on e-commerce sites that sell a wide variety of products. Search filter
URLs look a lot like search sorts, in many cases:
www.example.com/search.php?category=laptop
www.example.com/search.php?category=laptop?price=1000
The solution here is similar to the preceding one—don’t index the filters. As long as Google
has a clear path to products, indexing every variant usually causes more harm than good. I believe using a noindex tag is meant here. Let's say you want to point users to an overview of listings for black 5s iphones. The URL is an internal search filter which looks as follows: www.example.com/electronics/apple/iphone/5s?search=black Which you wish to link with the anchor text "black iphone 5s". Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you no-index the black 5s search filters, you lose the equity passed through the link. Whereas if you canonicalize /electronics/apple/iphone/5s you would still leverage the link juice and help you rank for "black iphone 5s". Doesn't it then make more sense to use canonicalization?0 -
Why does the site I am working on have so few visits from organic search results?
Hello! I am not very experienced with SEO, but I am trying to help out on a site that has been around since 2010 and has well over a thousand pages of high-quality, original content, with more being added all the time. Only around 65 of the site's daily visits come from organic search results; this seems very low. There has already been significant SEO work done on the site. Is there something about the site that strikes anyone as obviously getting in the way of organic traffic? The URL is ellenjovin.com. I would appreciate any thoughts you may have. Thank you very much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nyc-seo0 -
Empty search results labeled as Soft 404s?
I have a site with faceted search but sometimes when someone drills down too far it ends up with no results. The page and outlined and faceted navigation are still there. The site uses dynamic URLs for the faceted navigation but Google is reporting these no results pages as Soft 404s. How should we handle these? Should we redirect these? Can we return 404 in the status code but still show the no results page they are looking for? Thanks for your responses
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarloSchneider0 -
To index search results or not?
In its webmaster guidelines, Google says not to index search results " that don't add much value for users coming from search engines." I've noticed several big brands index search results, and am wondering if it is generally OK to index search results with high engagement metrics (high PVPV, time on site, etc). We have an database of content, and it seems one of the best ways to get this content in search engines would be to allow indexing of search results (to capture the long tail) rather than build thousands of static URLs. Have any smaller brands had success with allowing indexing of search results? Any best practices or recommendations?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Handful of internal pages penguin penalized. 302 them or let them 404?
We have a site that is for the most part doing great, but the internal pages that received too much link building received some penguin penalties (no warning in WMT) but it's fairly obvious. Has anyone tried letting these pages 404 and just creating new URL's? Or 302 redirecting the old URL's to new ones?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iAnalyst.com0 -
Is linking to search results bad for SEO?
If we have pages on our site that link to search results is that a bad thing? Should we set the links to "nofollow"?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0