Can Google Crawl This Page?
-
I'm going to have to post the page in question which i'd rather not do but I have permission from the client to do so.
Question: A recruitment client of mine had their website build on a proprietary platform by a so-called recruitment specialist agency. Unfortunately the site is not performing well in the organic listings.
I believe the culprit is this page and others like it: http://www.prospect-health.com/Jobs/?st=0&o3=973&s=1&o4=1215&sortdir=desc&displayinstance=Advanced Search_Site1&pagesize=50000&page=1&o1=255&sortby=CreationDate&o2=260&ij=0
Basically as soon as you deviate from the top level pages you land on pages that have database-query URLs like this one. My take on it is that Google cannot crawl these pages and is therefore having trouble picking up all of the job listings. I have taken some measures to combat this and obviously we have an xml sitemap in place but it seems the pages that Google finds via the XML feed are not performing because there is no obvious flow of 'link juice' to them.
There are a number of latest jobs listed on top level pages like this one: http://www.prospect-health.com/optometry-jobs and when they are picked up they perform Ok in the SERPs, which is the biggest clue to the problem outlined above.
The agency in question have an SEO department who dispute the problem and their proposed solution is to create more content and build more links (genius!).
Just looking for some clarification from you guys if you don't mind?
-
Hi shr109,
I've sent an email over so you have my address. Please let me know if it doesnt come through, we're recovering from a couple of email issues this end (infected web server in the same IP Subnet as our email server got us blacklisted), it might have ended up in spam!
Thanks,
-
Thanks Toby, good to get a second opinion on these things and some clarification.
The platform is the agency's own proprietary one but i don't know if it's based on an existing framework or completely bespoke. Having looked at some of the other sites they have build though, it seems other clients are experiencing similar indexing problems as they have all utilised a workaround of some sort.
I'll share the name of the agency with you by email if you want to do some digging but I don't think it's fair to name and shame them on here - shr109@hotmail.com
-
I think your pretty much spot on. Google -can- crawl queries but they wont rank very well at all.
Your best bet will be to change: (just reading into this that looks like a 'get all jobs' query)
to just
http://www.prospect-health.com/Jobs
There are loads of ways to remove the query string and keep the functionality, depending on the software powering the site, personally i'd fix up the search to POST data so that it keeps the url clean and add in the appropriate routes to create the path.
I have some experience of job search sites (having worked on a couple of the largest in the UK) and breaking URLS down something like this seems to work best. (depending on the data you have obviously)
<domain>/jobs/<location>/</location></domain>
You could also take a look at how other job sites structure their URLS, (monster.co.uk, targetjobs.co.uk, jobsite.co.uk etc)
Let me know if you need a hand and i'll see if i can be more specific. (you'll have to tell me what its running on though)
EDIT:: You should force lower-case on urls as well. Caps wont effect google but they arn't user friendly (miss types etc)
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
-
Home Page Deindexed Only at Google after Recovering from Hack Attack
Hello, Facing a Strange issue, wordpress blog hghscience[dot]com was hacked by someone, when checked, I found index.php file was changed & it was showing some page with a hacked message, & also index.html file was added to the cpanel account.All pages were showing same message, when I found it, I replaced index.php to default wordpress index.php file & deleted index.htmlI could not find any other file which was looking suspicious. Site started working fine & it was also indexed but cached version was that hacked page. I used webmaster tool to fetch & render it as google bot & submitted for indexing. After that I noticed home page get deindexed by google. Rest all pages are indexing like before. Site was hacked around 30th July & I fixed it on 1st Aug. Since then home page is not getting indexed, I tried to fetch & index multiple time via google webmasters tool but no luck as of now. 1 More thing I Noticed, When I used info:mysite.com on google, its showing some other hacked site ( www.whatsmyreferer.com/ ) When Searching from India But when same info:mysite.com is searched from US a different hacked site is showing ( sigaretamogilev.by )However when I search "mysite.com" my site home page is appearing on google search but when I check cached URL its showing hacked sites mentioned above.As per my knowledge I checked all SEO Plugins, Codes of homepage, can't find anything which is not letting the homepage indexed.PS: webmaster tool has received no warning etc for penalty or malware. I also noticed I disallowed index.php file via robots.txt earlier but now I even removed that. 7Dj1Q0w.png 3krfp9K.png
Technical SEO | | killthebillion0 -
How come only 2 pages of my 16 page infographic are being crawled by Moz?
Our Infographic titled "What Is Coaching" was officially launched 5 weeks ago. http://whatiscoaching.erickson.edu/ We set up campaigns in Moz & Google Analytics to track its performance. Moz is reporting No organic traffic and is only crawling 2 of the 16 pages we created. (see first and third attachments) Google Analytics is seeing hundreds of some very strange random pages (see second attachment) Both campaigns are tracking the url above. We have no idea where we've gone wrong. Please help!! 16_pages_seen_in_wordpress.png how_google_analytics_sees_pages.png what_moz_sees.png
Technical SEO | | EricksonCoaching0 -
Can You Use More Then One Google Local Rich Snippet on a single site/ on a single page.
I am currently working on a website for a business that has multiple office locations. As I am trying to target all four locations I was wondering if it is okay to have more then one Local Rich Snippet on a single page. (For example they list all four locations and addresses within their footer and I was wondering if I could make these local rich snippets). What about having more then one on a single website. For example if a company has multiple offices located in several different cities and have set up individual contact pages for these cities, can each page have it's own Local Rich Snippet? Will Google look at these multiple "local rich snippets" as spaming or will they recognize the multiple locations and count it towards their local seo?
Technical SEO | | webdesignbarrie1 -
How to know which pages are indexed by Google?
So apparently we have some sites that are just duplicates of our original main site but aiming at different markets/cities. They have completely different urls but are the same content as our main site with different market/city changed. How do I know for sure which ones are indexed. I enter the url into Google and its not there. Even if I put in " around " it. Is there another way to query google for my site? Is there a website that will tell you which ones are indexed? This is probably a dumb question.
Technical SEO | | greenhornet770 -
Trying to get on Google page one for keyword "criminal defense attorney san diego". What can I do?
I'm trying to help a friend who is an attorney get on page one for the keyword "criminal defense attorney san diego." So far I've changed his title and description tags since they weren't optimized before. (SERP shows old title tag, however I submitted a XML sitemap through Webmaster tools to get the new title tags updated.) He also had a few duplicate pages, but I took care of that with some 301 redirects. I also added a h1 tag, alt image tag, and more content. I also spent a few hours building links for him. He currently has a page authority of 52 and domain authority of 44 with a decent amount of links pointing to his site. I'm wondering why he's stuck on page 4, when his competitors that have less impressive numbers seem to show up on page 1. I did look at his link profile using OSE and I'm worried that his old SEO guy got him spam links. His website is www.nasserilegal.com, however the page I was focusing on was www.nasserilegal.com/criminal.html Any advice would be great.
Technical SEO | | micasalucasa0 -
How to Find all the Pages Index by Google?
I'm planning on moving my online store, http://www.filtrationmontreal.com/ to a new platform, http://www.corecommerce.com/ To reduce the SEO impact, I want to redirect 301 all the pages index by Google to the new page I will create in the new platform. I will keep the same domaine name, but all the URL will be customize on the new platform for better SEO. Also, is there a way or tool to create CSV file from those page index. Can Webmaster tool help? You can read my question about this subject here, http://www.seomoz.org/q/impacts-on-moving-online-store-to-new-platform Thank you, BigBlaze
Technical SEO | | BigBlaze2050 -
Can leaving up old web pages no longer accessible through my site navigation hurt my rankings?
My firm recently overhauled a client's website. As part of the project, we gave the content a new structure, eliminating certain pages and creating several new ones. However, I just found out that some of the "old" pages (the ones we supposedly eliminated) still appear in the Google SERPs. Somehow, the client - who handled the coding - let these pages remain live even though they can no longer be accessed through the site navigation. This seems like something that could hurt the client's SEO rankings, but I want to make sure before contacting the client and suggesting they take down the old pages. Can anyone confirm my suspicion?
Technical SEO | | matt-145670 -
What is the largest page size a searchbot will crawl?
When setting up pagination, what should we limit the page size to? When will a searchbot stop crawling a particular page?
Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline0