Sitemap and content question
-
This is our primary sitemap https://www.samhillbands.com/sitemaps/sitemap.xml
We have a about 750 location based URL's that aren't currently linked anywhere on the site.
https://www.samhillbands.com/sitemaps/locations.xml
Google is indexing most of the URL because we submitted the locations sitemap directly for indexing.
Thoughts on that? Should we just create a page that contains all of the location links and make it live on the site?
Should we remove the locations sitemap from separate indexing...because of duplicate content?
# Sitemap Type Processed Issues Items Submitted Indexed --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- 1 /sitemaps/locations.xml Sitemap May 10, 2016 - Web 771 648 2 /sitemaps/sitemap.xml Sitemap index May 8, 2016 - Web 862 730 -
Hi Brian,
To answer your question directly, linking to these pages is the preferable option of the two.
That said, if it were my campaign I'd be looking to cut down on the volume of these pages to make them a bit more manageable first. I've listed some suggestions below that may point you in the right direction, take from them what you may!
Get Rid of These Location Pages These days, having a "Bands in Atlanta, GA" page isn't necessary to rank for that term. Your site is clearly about booking bands so if you've got a Georgia page in this example and your band's profiles list their locations, this combined with a generally well-optimised site means you can still rank for it just fine. Right now, having 750 orphan pages that are essentially duplicates of each other is not doing you any favors.
Consider How the Users Expect to Find a Band The user experience on the site right now is by now means bad but if you were to remove these pages, this is the way I would go about it:
Change "Browse Bands" to something more specific to their intent; perhaps "Find a Band". We're talking semantics here but "Browse Bands" suggests to me that I'm about to see a huge list of bands to sift through and I'm just as lazy as the next user.
Let the filters do the work. From this band finder page (essentially your existing /bands#band-finder page), have 2 drop-down options at the top. The first one for Location and the other for Type or Genre. Again, minor changes but I would expect that most users want to find a band in a specific location so rather than putting this option in the top corner as a text link, make it the most prominent option on the page. Also stating that the other drop-down is before they click it is another minor difference but helpful. "Now Showing: All Bands" isn't entirely intuitive. Minor detail.
Add a Page for Each State 750 location pages is not only hard to manage, it's also hard to offer unique value for. If you add a page for each state this is much easier to do. You can talk about the regional differences between each (most popular genres, different laws, any other common differences or booking requirements etc)
You could also include the pre-filtered results for each state on these pages to give users another way to find a band quickly. ie From the California page, show the California bands by default and they can select their specific town/city from there if they like.
Another great way to add unique and valuable content would be to have 1 to 3 featured bands on each state's page. This may be risky if it's going to upset other bands so it's obviously your call as well but it lets you expand a little more with something valuable and you could even include the areas they service which is a legit reason to talk about specific locations.
Include Serviced Locations on Band Profile Pages The current band profile pages are excellent. Videos, song samples, a list of songs, photos, reviews etc. Great work! The only thing it's missing is the areas they service. This is redundant for people finding the band through location filters but not if they go straight to the "Select a Band" drop-down.
Bonus points if this list of locations is also shown on a map rather than just a text list, though text is also important for those using Ctrl-F to find their location.
Build Links to State or Band Pages Building location-specific links to either of these pages will add another signal to search engines that you offer the solution to a user's intent. This can be as simple as offering your featured bands a "featured on" type of badge that links back to their profile on your site. Something similar to "as seen on TV" where them linking to you genuinely helps their own site/image by suggesting to their visitors they're trustworthy.
Don't Hide Too Much Content Be mindful of how much content is "hidden" in those pop-up windows. Bits and pieces of info is fine but if you do start populating pages with lots of content and obscuring most of it, you're devaluing your hard work!
This turned into quite the lengthy response that went on a bit of a tangent but hopefully it's at least somewhat helpful to you anyway!
Thin, duplicate pages bad; unique, rich landing pages good!
-
I would create a HTML sitemap as well (useful for users and spiders) and also the XML sitemap (spiders). They both will help in indexing and will hopefully help in get the remainder of the 750 indexed. No worries on the duplicate content. Good luck!
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
-
Content update on 24hr schedule
Hello! I have a website with over 1300 landings pages for specific products. These individual pages update on a 24hr cycle through out API. Our API pulls reviews/ratings from other sources and then writes/updates that content onto the page. Is that 'bad"? Can that be viewed as spammy or dangerous in the eyes of google? (My first thought is no, its fine) Is there such a thing as "too much content". For example if we are adding roughly 20 articles to our site a week, is that ok? (I know news websites add much more than that on a daily basis but I just figured I would ask) On that note, would it be better to stagger our posting? For example 20 articles each week for a total of 80 articles, or 80 articles once a month? (I feel like trickle posting is probably preferable but I figured I would ask.) Is there any negatives to the process of an API writing/updating content? Should we have 800+ words of static content on each page? Thank you all mozzers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HashtagHustler0 -
No content using Fetch
Wooah, this one makes me feel a bit nervous. The cache version of the site homepage shows all the text, but I understand that is the html code constructed by the browser. So I get that. If I Google some of the content it is there in the index and the cache version is yesterday. If I Fetch and Render in GWT then none of the content is available in the preview - neither Googlebot or visitor view. The whole preview is just the menu, a holding image for a video and a tag line for it. There are no reports of blocked resources apart from a Wistia URL. How can I decipher what is blocking Google if it does not report any problems? The CSS is visible for reference to, for example, <section class="text-within-lines big-text narrow"> class="data"> some content... Ranking is a real issue, in part by a poorly functioning main menu. But i'm really concerned with what is happening with the render.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MickEdwards0 -
A question of rankings (with actual domains)
Working with the main site featured in this Open Site Explorer comparison (you'll need a pro account to view this), and have been for quite some time. Recently we've slid behind Ebay (huge brand, I get it), but the other competitors don't really make sense to me. Main phrase is pontoon boats, and maybe I'm too close to this, but we seem to be in the best shape overall in terms of the domain, the page itself, and even our social media is pretty successful (we're closing in on 5,000 likes and have a pretty engaged audience). More internal linking is an opportunity, but I'd like another set of eyes (or several for that matter) to weigh in on opinions. I'm a bit stumped. Thanks Mozzers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NetvantageMarketing0 -
Duplicate content on subdomains.
Hi Mozer's, I have a site www.xyz.com and also geo targeted sub domains www.uk.xyz.com, www.india.xyz.com and so on. All the sub domains have the content which is same as the content on the main domain that is www.xyz.com. So, I want to know how can i avoid content duplication. Many Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HiteshBharucha0 -
Duplicate Content on Product Pages
I'm getting a lot of duplicate content errors on my ecommerce site www.outdoormegastore.co.uk mainly centered around product pages. The products are completely different in terms of the title, meta data, product descriptions and images (with alt tags)but SEOmoz is still identifying them as duplicates and we've noticed a significant drop in google ranking lately. Admittedly the product descriptions are a little bit thin but I don't understand why the pages would be viewed as duplicates and therefore can be ranked lower? The content is definitely unique too. As an example these three pages have been identified as being duplicates of each other. http://www.outdoormegastore.co.uk/regatta-landtrek-25l-rucksack.html http://www.outdoormegastore.co.uk/canyon-bryce-adult-cycling-helmet-9045.html http://www.outdoormegastore.co.uk/outwell-minnesota-6-carpet-for-green-07-08-tent.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gavinhoman0 -
Where to link to HTML Sitemap?
After searching this morning and finding unclear answers I decided to ask my SEOmoz friends a few questions. Should you have an HTML sitemap? If so, where should you link to the HTML sitemap from? Should you use a noindex, follow tag? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cprodigy290 -
What constitutes duplicate content?
I have a website that lists various events. There is one particular event at a local swimming pool that occurs every few months -- for example, once in December 2011 and again in March 2012. It will probably happen again sometime in the future too. Each event has its own 'event' page, which includes a description of the event and other details. In the example above the only thing that changes is the date of the event, which is in an H2 tag. I'm getting this as an error in SEO Moz Pro as duplicate content. I could combine these pages, since the vast majority of the content is duplicate, but this will be a lot of work. Any suggestions on a strategy for handling this problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ChatterBlock0 -
How often to resubmit updated sitemap?
Hello Forum, I am working with an eCommerce website (not huge, a site with ~300 products and a blog that is updated every few days) that occasionally adds new products and may make a few large edits per week, if that. Our CMS can automatically generate and submit our sitemap. Over what time interval is should we do this for? Daily, weekly, monthly, etc? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pano0