What counts as a "deeper level" in SEO?
-
Hi,
I am trying to make our site more crawlable and get link juice to the "bottom pages" in an ecommerce site.
Currently, our site has a big mega menu - and we have:
Home >
CAT 1
SUBCAT 1
SUBSUBCAT 1
PRODUCTOur URL Structure looks:
www.domain.com/cat1/subcat1/subsubcat1/ and here are the links to the products but the URL's look like: www.domain.com/product.htmlObviously the ideal thing would be to cut out one of the CATEGORIES. But I may be unable to do that in the short term - so I was wondering if by taking CAT1 out of the equation - e.g., just make it a static item that allows the drop down menu to work, but no page for it -
Does that cut out a level?
Thanks,
Ben
-
Thanks for that - I think what I am trying to do is somehow cut the linkjuice dilution - my DA is weak and the mega menu contains around 150 links with all the cats / subcats... so my link juice is diluted all over the place.
We have 1750 products but only 50 hits per day -
Any suggestions?
www.eHYPHENcocinasplusDOTcom.
Thanks
-
As tom suggests, it won't be easy. I've a number of clients with this kind of multi-category set up (one is 5 layers deep!) and its really hard to get juice down to those levels consistently.
For example if you've a product 2 layers deep it seems to be twice as easy for it to gain traction as if it were 4 layers down. This isn't to say it can't be done, it can, but put simply it means you have to really push links at it externally and in social.
Also it sounds like you would benefit from splitting your sitemap by category to that you can focus some attention within sitemaps to these pages rather than have it be one of ten thousand entries.
-
I agree with Tom here.
Never go beyond the third level. We use TIER 0 till Tier 3 in our case for most websites.
Hopes this helps some
regards
Jarno
-
The key thing to consider here is whether or not that product page is accessible in any other way.
Take the URL appearance out of the equation and look for the quickest route to navigate to that product page. If it takes more than 3 steps to get to, you can think of it as a "deep page" and it may take longer to crawl.
Removing a category would help, but only if that is reflected in the navigation on the site and not just the URL appearance.
Of course, if a product page has a lot of external links going towards it and is featured prominantely in an XML sitemap, it negates the worry of it being not crawled as often to a degree. Ideally, you want your core landing pages or product pages as close to the root domain as possible (1 or 2 steps). 3 is usually the maximum for best practice, but with enough links and social shares Google will recognise it as an important page in its own right and will frequently recrawl it.
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
-
Local SEO: Is an equivalent of "practitioner listings" allowed for tradesmen, such as plumbers - in GMB (Google My Business)
I note practitioner listings are in place for certain professionals, so you can list your business address and then your individual name - one under a "practice listing" - the other under a "practitioner listing". As detailed here: https://whitespark.ca/blog/best-practices-for-practitioner-listings-on-google-my-business-gmb/ But can a self-employed tradesman do the same - for example a carpenter may have their workshop and be available for onsite work, so can they list their "carpentry business/brand name" and then their "personal name" they are also known by? Even if it is the same address.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LukeRow0 -
Does anyone know how to fix this structured data error on search console? Invalid value in field "itemtype"
I'm getting the same structured data error on search console form most of my websites, Invalid value in field "itemtype" I take off all the structured data but still having this problem, according to Search console is a syntax problem but I can't find what is causing this. Any guess, suggestion or solution for this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alexanders0 -
Nofollow "print" URLs?
Hi there, Apols for the basic question but is it considered good practice to nofollow one of one's own URLs? Basically our 'print page' command produces an identical URL in the same window but with .../?print=1 at the end. As far as I've been reading, the nofollow html attribute is, broadly speaking, only for links to external websites you don't want to vouch for or internal links to login/register pages that together with noindex, you're asking Google not to waste crawl budget on. (The print page is already noindexed so we're good there) Can anyone confirm the above from their own experience? Thanks so much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daft.ie0 -
With or without the "www." ?
Is there any benefit whatsoever to having the www. in the URL?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JordanBrown0 -
Should you bother with an "impact links" manual action
I have a couple sites that have these, and I have done a lot of work to get them removed, but there seems to be very little if any benefit from doing this. In fact, sites were we have done nothing after these penalties seem to be doing better than ones where we have done link removal and the reconsideration request. Google says "I_f you don’t control the links pointing to your site, no action is required on your part. From Google’s perspective, the links already won’t count in ranking. However, if possible, you may wish to remove any artificial links to your site and, if you’re able to get the artificial links removed, submit a reconsideration request__. If we determine that the links to your site are no longer in violation of our guidelines, we’ll revoke the manual action._" I would guess a lot of people with this penalty don't even know they have it, and it sounds like leaving it alone really doesn't hurt your site. If seems to me that just simply ignoring this and building better links and higher quality content should help improve your site rankings vs. worrying about trying to get all these links removed/disavowed. What are your thoughts? Is it worth trying to get this manual action removed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | netviper0 -
Pagination & SEO
I have the WP-Pagination plugin and I am wondering how to handle duplicate content issues and what's best for SEO. My developer initially downloaded the plugin to speed up loading for the home page. Now my home page has 21 pages of paginated content. But the pagination continues with each of my categories as well. Should I be placing a canonical reference to my home page, or category main page? My site name is gracessweetlife (dot) com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gracessweetlife0 -
Hidden Content with "clip"
Hi We're relaunching a site with a Drupal 7 CMS. Our web agency has hidden content on it and they say it's for Accessibility (I don't see the use myself, though). Since they ask for more cash in order to remove it, the management is unsure. So I wanted to check if anyone knows whether this could hurt us in search engines. There is a field in the HTML where you can skip to the main content: Skip to main content The corresponding CSS comes here: .element-invisible{position:absolute !important;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);clip:rect(1px,1px,1px,1px);} #skip-link a,#skip-link a:visited{position:absolute;display:block;left:0;top:-500px;width:1px;height:1px;overflow:hidden;text-align:center;background-color:#666;color:#fff;} The crucial point is that they're hiding the text "skip to main content", using clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px), which shrinks the text to one pixel. So IMO this is hiding content. How bad is it? PS: Hope the source code is sufficient. Ask me if you need more. Thx!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zeepartner0 -
SEO vs 301
I have a website about "Download of games" and im planning open one about "games online" i know that "games online" its super hard to get good ranks, soo im thinking and do a 301 from my website of "download games" to my new website, do you think that is a good strategy ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nafera21