Can anyone help me diagnose an indexing/sitemap issue on a large e-commerce site?
-
Hey guys. Wondering if someone can help diagnose a problem for me.
Here's our site: https://www.flagandbanner.com/
We have a fairly large e-commerce site--roughly 23,000 urls according to crawls using both Moz and Screaming Frog. I have created an XML sitemap (using SF) and uploading to Webmaster Tools. WMT is only showing about 2,500 urls indexed. Further, WMT is showing that Google is indexing only about 1/2 (approx. 11,000) of the urls. Finally (to add even more confusion), when doing a site search on Google (site:) it's only showing about 5,400 urls found. The numbers are all over the place!
Here's the robots.txt file:
User-agent: *
Allow: /
Disallow: /aspnet_client/
Disallow: /httperrors/
Disallow: /HTTPErrors/
Disallow: /temp/
Disallow: /test/Disallow: /i_i_email_friend_request
Disallow: /i_i_narrow_your_search
Disallow: /shopping_cart
Disallow: /add_product_to_favorites
Disallow: /email_friend_request
Disallow: /searchformaction
Disallow: /search_keyword
Disallow: /page=
Disallow: /hid=
Disallow: /fab/*Sitemap: https://www.flagandbanner.com/images/sitemap.xml
Anyone have any thoughts as to what our problems are??
Mike
-
A site running ASP should be perfectly fine. I bet you will see substantial increases in a lot of positive metrics by just pairing down that navigation.
-
Thanks so much for your response, Russ.
You're confirming one of the many issues we have identified (too many internal links) but I had not connected it to indexing or site speed. When I use the Google Page Speed Tool, many of our pages are not even registering. It seems like it's taking too long to load them so it times out. Could the crazy amount of links have to do with this, too?
Moreover, our mobile speed is especially poor. This could be an even bigger problem in mobile, no?
Are you familiar with .asp sites, in particular, having indexing issues...or is that a false assumption?
Mike
-
Thanks for the question!
First, it is very common to get inconsistent answers from GSC, site:, sitemap and crawl results. Don't worry too much about that.
Your goal is to get as many of your pages indexed and that is a function of links pointing to your site and internal link structure. While it is an imperfect analogy, we often refer to this as "crawl budget". There are essentially 2 solutions to this...
1. Get more/better backlinks to a diversity of pages on your site.
2. Improve your internal link architecture so that Googlebot finds your pages more quickly.
I think the problem in your case is that the site inundates bots with generic navigational links. For example, this page...
http://www.flagandbanner.com/products/chrome-air-force-lt-general-flag-kit.asp
has 1400 internal links! That is crazy!
This page has 1500!
https://www.flagandbanner.com/products/citizenship-gifts.asp
You need to reel this back in dramatically. Your navigation should like to top level categories or maybe a handful of subcategories. Once in a category, you can reveal deeper categories. This will increase the likelihood that the related and "also" buy links that you find on product pages will get found and followed by Googlebot.
Finally, on a different note, you need to make sure you standardize the casing of URLs (ie: /Products/ or /products/) I noticed that you have links both internal and external that do not take this into account, causing unnecessary 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
-
Merging Two Sites: Need Help!
I have two existing e-commerce sites. The older one, is built on the Yahoo platform and had limitations as far as user experience. The new site is built on the Magento 2 platform. We are going to be using SLI search for our search and navigation on the new Magento platform. SLI wants us to 301 all of our categories to the hosted category pages they will create, that will have a URL structure akin to site.com/shop/category-name.html. The issue is: If I want to merge the two sites, I will have to do a 301 to the category pages of the new site, which will have 301s going to the category pages hosted by SLI. I hope this makes sense! The way I see it, I have two options: Do a 301 from the old domain to categories of the new domain, and have the new domain's categories 301 to the SLI categories; or, I can do my 301s directly to the SLI hosted category pages. The downside of #1 is that I will be doing two 301s, and I know I will lose more link juice as a result. The upside of #1, is that if decide not to use SLI in the future, it is one less thing to worry about. The downside of #2, is that I will be directing all the category pages from the old site to a site I do not ultimately control. I appreciate any feedback.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KH20171 -
2015/2016 Sitemaps Exclusions
Hello fellow mozrs!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | artdivision
Been working on a few Property (Real Estate for our American friends) websites recently and and two questions that constantly come up as we spec the site are: 1. What schema (schema.org) should the website use (throughout all pages as well as individual pages). Did anyone found that schema actually helped with their ranking/CTR?
2. Whilst setting up the sitemaps (usually Yaost is our preferred plugin for the job), what page would you EXCLUDE from the site map? Looking forward to some interesting comments.
Dan.0 -
Why is this site not indexed by Google?
Hi all and thanks for your help in advance. I've been asked to take a look at a site, http://www.yourdairygold.ie as it currently does not appear for its brand name, Your Dairygold on Google Ireland even though it's been live for a few months now. I've checked all the usual issues such as robots.txt (doesn't have one) and the robots meta tag (doesn't have them). The even stranger thing is that the site does rank on Yahoo! and Bing. Google Webmaster Tools shows that Googlebot is crawling around 150 pages a day but the total number of pages indexed is zero. It does appear if you carry out a site: search on Google however. The site is very poorly optimised in terms of title tags, unnecessary redirects etc which I'm working on now but I wondered if you guys had any further insights. Thanks again for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iProspect-Ireland0 -
Do image sitemaps provide value for non e-commerce sites?
Is it worth putting together an image sitemap to submit to Google if you're not an e-commerce site? Also, if you're using a CDN like Amazon Web Services (cloudfront), can you even submit an image sitemap? According to Google you need to verify your CDN in webmaster tools if you're going to do so. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/178636?hl=en
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kking41201 -
Google Site Extended Listing Not Indexed
I am trying to get the new Site map to be picked up by Google for the extended listing as its pulling from the old links and returning 404 errors. How can I get the site listing indexed quickly and have the extended listing get updated to point to the right places. This is the site - http://epaperflip.com/Default.aspx This is the search with the extended listing and some 404's - Broad Match search for "epaperflip"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Intergen0 -
E-Commerce site - How do I geo-target towns/cities/states if there aren't any store locations?
Site = e-commerce Products = clothing (no apparel can be location specific like sports gear where you can do the location specific team gear (NBA, NFL, etc)) Problems = a. no store front b. I don't want to do any sitewides (footers, sidebars, etc) because of the penguin update Question = How do you geo-target these category pages and product pages? Ideas = a. reviews with clients locations b. blog posts with clients images wearing apparel and location description and keywords that also links back to that category or be it product page (images geo- targeted, tags, and description) c. ? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cyclone0 -
My Job Site is having Indexing Issues
I have 2 job sites that I am managing and working on. One of the sites has a great deal of job vacancies and expired job pages that have been indexed. This one below: http:// job search.cctc .com/cctc Jobsearch/expandedjobsearch.do This job site does not have any job pages index: http://www.cross countryallied. com/ctAlliedWebSite/ travel-nurse-jobs/job-search.jsp Why and what can I do to get the dynamic pages index and ranking? Any help tips would be much appreciated. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia0 -
How 'Off Topic' can I go - site wide?
Hello, I am currently number 1 for a competitive keyword - so don't want to push the wrong button and self destruct! My site is highly focused on one relatively narrow niche with about 50-60 pages of content bang on topic. I was wondering if Google will discredit my site in any way if I start adding pages that are** 'loosely related' **to the overall theme of my niche. Some of them are what you might call sister concepts with maybe one mention of my target keyword in the body..... Does the algo value what percentage of the whole site's content is on/ off topic? If so how important is this as a factor? Thanks a lot
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | philipjterry0