What to do when all products are one of a kind WYSIWYG and url's are continuously changing. Lots of 404's
-
Hey Guys, I'm working on a website with WYSIWYG one of a kind products and the url's are continuously changing. There are allot of duplicate page titles (56 currently) but that number is always changing too.
Let me give you guys a little background on the website. The site sells different types of live coral. So there may be anywhere from 20 - 150 corals of the same species. Each coral is a unique size, color etc. When the coral gets sold the site owner trashes the product creating a new 404. Sometimes the url gets indexed, other times they don't since the corals get sold within hours/days. I was thinking of optimizing each product with a keyword and re-using the url by having the client update the picture and price but that still leaves allot more products than keywords.
Here is an example of the corals with the same title http://austinaquafarms.com/product-category/acans/
Thanks for the help guys. I'm not really sure what to do.
-
Hey Aron
Just wanted to chime in on the wordpress bit. EGOL nailed the core answer though. But for the noindex, yes you can just noindex any pages you want to and this isn't going to cause any issues. Noindexed pages do not count towards Panda or low user metrics in the algo, so it's a great way to let the content exist but not have it cause trouble in the SERPs.
-Dan
-
The way woocommerce works is by creating a custom post type. (similar to a regular blog post but styled for products) and then dynamically adds the products to a product category page or anywhere else I want them displayed. Creating a custom post type for products also enables allot of customization and even advanced reporting.
-
....but the product url will always be there.
I agree..... but if you never link to that page then Google should not know about it.
I am not familiar with Wordpress and Woocommerce, however, the shopping systems that I have used all allowed me to create "add to cart" buttons. I could place these anywhere on the site - even in pdf documents. I have never used the product pages that my shopping systems produce. Why? I think that I can make product pages that are better optimzied for search and better arranged for customers. So, I have lots of pages on my site that list multiple items and almost no pages that list a single item. This has saved me a lot of time, I think that my site competes a lot better, I think that it makes more convenient shopping and I believe that I sell a lot more.
-
Well I'm not sure it's possible to remove the product pages since the site is built with WordPress and Woocommerce. Each product creates a url. I can create a quick view box with an add to cart button for a better user experience but the product url will always be there.
Thinking about what you said I may have a few options but I may be way off.
1. I can optimize the category page for the product keywords with more content and details. Then I can noindex all the product pages.
2. I can optimize the single product pages and add unique content to each product for about 10 products and noindex the rest.
Not sure if noindexing would be the right way to do it or if it would add more issues. Since I'm using WordPress and the yoast seo plugin I can have the website owner check the noindex button on all new products created. What do you think?
As far as content we are in the process of putting together a full content strategy and will have many tutorials and other great care info along with industry tips and blog posts.
-
Awesome coral! Awesome. http://austinaquafarms.com/product-category/acans/
If this was my site, I would make it just a few pages. One page for each type of coral.
The individual product pages on the site right now have almost no information. So, I would put all of the information on a huge category page and optimize it perfectly for the type of coral. Plus I would add several authoritative paragraphs of text onto the page - maybe in the right side bar with background info about the type of coral, how to care for it, tips for making it do well in your tank. This extra content will enable the page to be more competitive and will pull in traffic for long tail keywrods.
Eliminating the product pages will eliminate the 404 problems, simplify maintaining the site and when visitor lands on the Acans page they will say WOW! I think you will sell more... from this presentation... no guarantees, just my gut.
I also believe that it will pull all of the power that has seeped into the product pages back into the category page. From my experience, a compact site with a small number of pages competes a LOT better than a larger site with a bunch of pages with very thin content.
Those thin content pages also put this site at risk for Panda problems if it does not have them already.
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
-
Can I cover any topic(s) or are they some required ones
Can you talk about anything (any topics) when you write about something or is google expecting to see certain topics ? Let me clarify, let's say I do "bike tours on the island of Corsica"and bike through villages that none of the companies ranking on the 1 st page ride thru. Can I still rank as long as I write good content or do I need to cover at least some of the topics covered by the companies ranking on the 1 st page ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
GSC is reporting a lot of chopped URLs
Recently, in the last two weeks, I started seeing a lot of odd 404 errors in GSC for my site. Upon investigation, the URLs are for fairly new articles, and the URLs are chopped in various places. From missing a character at the end to missing about 10 characters at the end of the URL. (an old similar issue is that GSC reports duplicate contents on weird subdomains that we've never used like 'smtp' 'ww1' or even random ones like 'bobo'.) GSC doesn't report any 'linked from' for those odd URLs and I know for sure these links aren't on the site itself. They're definitely not errors in the CMS. The site is a long established site (started 1997-1998) and we've been subject to a lot of negative SEO. I recently had to disavow about 1000 .ru domain linking to us, with some domains containing over a million link each. Could these chopped links be a new tactic of negative SEO? How do I find these seemingly intentionally broken links to us?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Lazeez2 -
What's more valuable, a Blog or a Forum, and how to integrate?
We want to start a blog or forum (maybe eventually both) and are unsure what is the best way to publish it from an SEO standpoint. If the blog is published on our domain, like domain.com/blog then that obviously helps the site but if the base site is a for-profit business wouldn't it get less credibility, eyeballs, links as opposed to if you started the blog as it's own separate community on a separate domain and then just strategically linked to the for profit site (sponsorship links)? Essentially the question is, if I'm the Lucky Soday Company, do I start a Blog on the Lucky Soda website, or do I start a separate website to grow a soft drink enthusiast community blog / forum? I would guess a blog has more SEO potential than a discussion forum?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MrSem0 -
Magento: Should we disable old URL's or delete the page altogether
Our developer tells us that we have a lot of 404 pages that are being included in our sitemap and the reason for this is because we have put 301 redirects on the old pages to new pages. We're using Magento and our current process is to simply disable, which then makes it a a 404. We then redirect this page using a 301 redirect to a new relevant page. The reason for redirecting these pages is because the old pages are still being indexed in Google. I understand 404 pages will eventually drop out of Google's index, but was wondering if we were somehow preventing them dropping out of the index by redirecting the URL's, causing the 404 pages to be added to the sitemap. My questions are: 1. Could we simply delete the entire unwanted page, so that it returns a 404 and drops out of Google's index altogether? 2. Because the 404 pages are in the sitemap, does this mean they will continue to be indexed by Google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andyheath0 -
Weird 404 URL Problem - domain name being placed at end of urls
Hey there. For some reason when doing crawl tests I'm finding pages with the domain name being tacked on the end and causing 404 errors.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jay328
For example: http://domainname.com/page-name/http://domainname.com This is happening to all pages, posts and even category type 1. Site is in Wordpress
2. Using Yoast SEO plugin Any suggestions? Thanks!0 -
What's new with SEO in last 6 months?
Hi, I've been away from the SEO scene for about 6 months now. I was wondering if anyone could summerise what the big changes are and how one needs to approach an SEO strategy now compared to last year before this Penguine (?) update.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LoveChicken0 -
Can some brilliant mozzer out there teach a moron/newbie like me how to 301 redirect several URL's I have?
Okay - I am a supermodel. I look pretty. My legs are amazing. My cheekbones are high. But when it comes to 301 redirects I am the ugliest supermodel on the block. Crap, here is the truth: I am not even a supermodel. I am just a middle-aged, goofy looking dude who is a newbie to fixing websites. I have inherited several sites from a friend and I have been helping by creating solid contextual links internally and externally for a while. But, when Roger the wondrous SEOMoz robot talks to me, he says, "oops, it looks like your foolish freak self has a site that has both a www. and a non-www, which can create competition for yourself." What do I do when he says that? I just whisper a "thank-you" but gently press the skip this step button and go on with my life because I do not know how to make my non-www.'s redirect into the www. sites... Now, I have sort of asked this question on the site before, but I was answered by someone who does not understand my level of ignorance. any use of the word canonical or just put this lfwjkshj.htp/php inside the left ear of your mom, does not tell me anything so, is there any willing and kind soul who can walk me through redirecting several of my sites to their proper home - kind of like Carl Chubbs Weathers did for Happy Gilmore in that Academy Award winning classic? Thanks for the help in advance best, dumbhead
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | creativeguy0 -
What's your best hidden SEO secret?
Don't take that question too serious but all answers are welcome 😉 Answer to all:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | petrakraft
"Gentlemen, I see you did you best - at least I hope so! But after all I suppose I am stuck here to go on reading the SEOmoz blog if I can't sqeeze more secrets from you!9