Is it possible we are being penalized for doorway pages?
-
www.trophycentral.comHi, we were hit very hard a few years ago by Panda and have been try to recover. We completely revamped our site (structure, canonical, duplicates, content, etc.) and had a couple of keywords recover. However, most traffic has not comeback and still cannot be found in the top 30 pages or so for major phrases. We have compared ourselves to major competitors in our industry and see very few differences. The only thing I see as a difference is that many of our products are in multiple sections. For example, we have all baseball awards (trophies, pins, medals) grouped together. We then have just baseball medals together and just baseball pins together. Is this something that could be causing us not to rank? I am asking because the phrases that are ranking are the ones that don't have multiple categories. We have no manual penalties, but now I am thinking this is what Google might consider a doorway page?As an experiment, I just noindexed all but one category for baseball and soccer to see what happens.Does this make sense? Has anyone else seen this?Thanks!
-
Hi Neil,
What I mean by category URLs is that a product sits on a URL like http://www.trophycentral.com/5x7blacmarpl.html, rather than http://www.trophycentral.com/plaques/insertplaques/5x7blacmarpl.html but as I said, the flat structure you are using can work as well. Putting products in structures like that can get confusing if products exist in multiple categories and make way for duplicate content (i.e. a product is found under multiple different URLs). Just worth mentioning though because it's not common to see such a flat structure nowadays with the ecommerce platforms a lot of folks are using, like Magento, etc.
I wouldn't worry too much about tabs. If the content behind tabs is a) not incredibly long, b) relevant to the page, and c) available in the source code on page load (i.e. it doesn't require the execution of a JavaScript function to pull the content into the tab / onto the page), Google can see this content and should treat it much the same as if the content wasn't tabbed.
Cheers,
Jane
-
Hi Jane, thanks for your response.
Yes, the sections that are ranking better do not have as many products listed in other sections. That is why I originally thought we might be getting dinged. But have products in multiple categories is very common, so it is likely a coincidence. I have made some changes to experiment, so I guess I will find out soon enough.
I also realized that I may be getting hurt by the tabs on our item pages. While our descriptions are getting indexed, because they are tabbed I am told they may be carrying a much lower value. So I am changing this as well.
Can you elaborate on what you mean be the structure without category URLs? The vast majority of products should be in a category (trophies, plaques, etc.). I guess we do have some that are not which I could remove or put in a category, but I want to be sure I know which ones you might be looking at.
Thanks again! … Neil
-
Hi there,
The duplication of the products is not highly likely to be causing an issue here given that many ecommerce sites operate like this, but duplicate content was one of the primary issues Panda sought to weed out. It seems as if Panda can be very hard to get rid of, even if you have cleaned up 99% of the issue: you're doing the same or better than similar sites that are not under a penalty but the penalty remains because a certain amount of duplication (or another issue) remains.
Is the problem uniform - i.e. all products that rank well are not duplicated, and all products that have ranking problems are duplicated?
The structure without category URLs is a little abnormal too but what amounts to a flat website shouldn't hold you back completely either.
-
I am interested as well to see what others think. I agree with the categories and dup content issues that could occur.
Please keep us all posted
-
Thanks, Lesley. What you are saying makes perfect sense and putting products in categories seems pretty pervasive. I don't really think this was the issue, but I am running out of things to change. (-: I am definitely suffering from a Panda penalty, but still not sure why as I have cleaned up all of the common issues. I have a couple of phrases that came back to page 2 or 3 (not where I want, but it's a start), such as Award Ribbons and Award Plaques. So I tried to compare those pages to my other ones and this is what I came up with (these products are not in multiple categories). Again, like you I don't think this is the issue, but I figured I would test it as maybe Google is somehow getting confused with how the categories are created.
Again, many thanks.
PS If you happen to see anything else that looks funny, please let me know! We have been in business since 1999, so it is hard to have virtually no traffic from Google!
-
I would not think so. If you are using a logical division of products using categories and sub categories, I cannot see that holding you back. It is really the defacto standard on how e-commerce sites work. As long as your site is not doing something weird with the re-writes on the the products I think you would be fine. A weird rewrite would be like this, say you are selling a baseball pin. If your rewrites do this site.com/baseball-things/pin.html and the page is also at site.com/baseball-things/pins/pin.html then I would highly suggest using canonical urls. Because one of the pages is going to get a duplicate content penalty.
Another thing I would suggest is if you are not already, use category descriptions for the category pages and also mix the products. You don't want your main category to have 75% of the products that a sub category has. Like in the example above, if 3/4 of the products in the baseball root category are pins, I would change that to be a more even number between the categories.
Also one other suggestion, I wouldn't use empty categories either. Like for basketball, if all you offer is trophies, I would not have a basketball category then a basketball trophies category. That would be seen as duplicate content.
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
-
Menu interlinking Pages
Hello, I have my most important pages in my menu. Those pages are present on all my pages because they are on the menu. Are those pages considered to be linking between each other because they are in the menu or should I create links between those pages in my text if I want them to link with each other ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Duplicate Page getting indexed and not the main page!
Main Page: www.domain.com/service
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ishrat-Khan
Duplicate Page: www.domain.com/products-handler.php/?cat=service 1. My page was getting indexed properly in 2015 as: www.domain.com/service
2. Redesigning done in Aug 2016, a new URL pattern surfaced for my pages with parameter "products-handler"
3. One of my product landing pages had got 301-permanent redirected on the "products-handler" page
MAIN PAGE: www.domain.com/service GETTING REDIRECTED TO: www.domain.com/products-handler.php/?cat=service
4. This redirection was appearing until Nov 2016.
5. I took over the website in 2017, the main page was getting indexed and deindexed on and off.
6. This June it suddenly started showing an index of this page "domain.com/products-handler.php/?cat=service"
7. These "products-handler.php" pages were creating sitewide internal duplicacy, hence I blocked them in robots.
8. Then my page (Main Page: www.domain.com/service) got totally off the Google index Q1) What could be the possible reasons for the creation of these pages?
Q2) How can 301 get placed from main to duplicate URL?
Q3) When I have submitted my main URL multiple times in Search Console, why it doesn't get indexed?
Q4) How can I make Google understand that these URLs are not my preferred URLs?
Q5) How can I permanently remove these (products-handler.php) URLs? All the suggestions and discussions are welcome! Thanks in advance! 🙂0 -
New pages not ranking
I published some new landing pages about a month a go which are much better quality than previous pages and on an optimised URL. The old pages never ranked and the new pages aren't ranking either although they are much better. The old pages 301 redirect to the new pages. Any quick ways I can at least get them ranking? Not expecting Page 1 overnight but to at least see the new pages on Page 5 would be great!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marketing_Today0 -
Website Does not index in any page?
I created a website www.astrologersktantrik.com 4 days ago and fetch it with google but still my website does not index on google as the keywords I use is with low competition but still my website does not appear on any keywords?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ramansaab0 -
Google indexing only 1 page out of 2 similar pages made for different cities
We have created two category pages, in which we are showing products which could be delivered in separate cities. Both pages are related to cake delivery in that city. But out of these two category pages only 1 got indexed in google and other has not. Its been around 1 month but still only Bangalore category page got indexed. We have submitted sitemap and google is not giving any crawl error. We have also submitted for indexing from "Fetch as google" option in webmasters. www.winni.in/c/4/cakes (Indexed - Bangalore page - http://www.winni.in/sitemap/sitemap_blr_cakes.xml) 2. http://www.winni.in/hyderabad/cakes/c/4 (Not indexed - Hyderabad page - http://www.winni.in/sitemap/sitemap_hyd_cakes.xml) I tried searching for "hyderabad site:www.winni.in" in google but there also http://www.winni.in/hyderabad/cakes/c/4 this link is not coming, instead of this only www.winni.in/c/4/cakes is coming. Can anyone please let me know what could be the possible issue with this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | abhihan0 -
Google is indexing the wrong pages
I have been having problems with Google indexing my website since mid May. I haven't made any changes to my website which is wordpress. I have a page with the title 'Peterborough Cathedral wedding', I search Google for 'wedding Peteborough Cathedral', this is not a competitive search phrase and I'd expect to find my blog post on page one. Instead, half way down page 4 I find Google has indexed www.weddingphotojournalist.co.uk/blog with the title 'wedding photojournalist | Portfolio', what google has indexed is a link to the blog post and not the blog post itself. I repeated this for several other blog posts and keywords and found similar results, most of which don't make any sense at all - A search for 'Menorca wedding photography' used to bring up one of my posts at the top of page one. Now it brings up a post titled 'La Mare wedding photography Jersey" which happens to have a link to the Menorca post at the bottom of the page. A search for 'Broadoaks country house weddng photography' brings up 'weddingphotojournalist | portfolio' which has a link to the Broadoaks post. a search for 'Blake Hall wedding photography' does exactly the same. In this case Google is linking to www.weddingphotojournalist.blog again, this is a page of recent blog posts. Could this be a problem with my sitemap? Or the Yoast SEO plugin? or a problem with my wordpress theme? Or is Google just a bit confused?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | weddingphotojournalist0 -
Wrong page getting ranked
Hi all, we have product category pages on our ecommerce web site and we also produce blog content (such as buyers guides, setup guides etc) to help with ranking and give our site some good quality, unique content. However we are sometimes finding that the buyers guide / blog content gets ranked by Google over our product category page. I'm hoping, if I give an example or two, some one smart out there may be able to point me in the right direction as to how we can avoid this and get the product category page ranked instead? You will see from my examples we are linking internally using the keywords from the buyers guides to the product category pages in order to show the most important page to Google for these keywords and are trying to structure the product category pages as well as possible to make it the most optimized page for the term. Example: Keyword "twin dvd player"... product category page: http://www.3wisemonkeys.co.uk/dvd/portable-dvd-player-car/twin-dvd-player/ ... blog page actually getting ranked for this keyword: http://www.3wisemonkeys.co.uk/advice-center/dual-screen-and-twin-dvd-player-explained/ Keyword "site radio".... product category page: http://www.3wisemonkeys.co.uk/audio/radio/site-radio/ .... blog buyer guide page actually getting ranked for keyword: http://www.3wisemonkeys.co.uk/advice-center/Site-radio-buying-guide/ Any help / pointers appreciated. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasef0 -
Can use of the id attribute to anchor t text down a page cause page duplication issues?
I am producing a long glossary of terms and want to make it easier to jump down to various terms. I am using the<a id="anchor-text" ="" attribute="" so="" am="" appending="" #anchor-text="" to="" a="" url="" reach="" the="" correct="" spot<="" p=""></a> <a id="anchor-text" ="" attribute="" so="" am="" appending="" #anchor-text="" to="" a="" url="" reach="" the="" correct="" spot<="" p="">Does anyone know whether Google will pick this up as separate duplicate pages?</a> <a id="anchor-text" ="" attribute="" so="" am="" appending="" #anchor-text="" to="" a="" url="" reach="" the="" correct="" spot<="" p="">If so any ideas on what I can do? Apart from not do it to start with? I am thinking 301s won't work as I want the URL to work. And rel=canonical won't work as there is no actual page code to add it to. Many thanks for your help Wendy</a>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chammy0