Is rel=prev/next necessary for ecommerce?
-
We are currently not using rel=prev/next for paginated categories. My predecessor instead canonicaled paginated pages back to the parent. This obviously needs to be fixed. The pages should self-canonical.
Is using the parameter handling function of Google Search Console enough, or do we need to have our dev team implement rel=prev/next?
-
Will do. I'm not expecting much. Maybe a slight bump for products.
-
Hi
Honestly? no, I know it's best practice and all but what you have there is a kind of 'workable fudge'. I actually have a client who implemented what you have in place now a couple of years ago and his pages rank brilliantly so we just haven't bothered changing it yet.
For best practice and to make it Google future proof, do it, but don't expect a huge bump.
I'd love to know what the outcome is after you do it,
Regards
Nigel
-
Good answer. Thanks, Nigel. Exactly what I thought.
Do you think fixing this will have any significant positive rankings impact? I've never had to correct this before.
-
Hi Satans Apprentice
Best practice is to add rel/prev to the pages and self-canonicalise as you say. Then go to parameters and tell Google that the parameter (usually 'page') paginates and to crawl every URL.
See attachment for the setting in search console.
If you don't do this and you 'release' all the pages you risk them being indexed and cannibalising the main content.
Best Regards
Nigel
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
-
Duplicate ecommerce sites, SEO implications & others?
We have an established eCom site built out with custom php, dedicated SERPs, traffic, etc.. The question has arisen on how to extend commerce on social and we have found a solution with Shopify. In order to take advantage of this, we'd need to build out a completely new site in Shopify and would have to have the site live in order to have storefronts on Pinterest and Twitter. Aside from the obvious problem with having two databases, merchant processing, etc, does anyone know whether there are SEO implications to having two live sites with duplicate products? Could we just disavow a Shopify store in Webmaster Tools? Any other thoughts or suggestions? TIA!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PAC31350 -
Javascript onclick redirects / porn sites...
We noticed around 7 websites which with domains that were just recently registered (with privacy protection). They are using our website keywords/titles and brand name and the sites are mostly porn / junk sites. They don't link to our website directly but use a javascript onclick redirect which is why we think we aren't seeing them in our backlinks report. We've been in business for over 12 years and haven't come across sites like this before. We recently lost our first page rankings for a few of our highest converting key phrases and have been digging in to possible causes. Just wondering if these sites could be impacting our results, and how to figure out if there are more like this? Examples: nesat.net
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EileenCleary
flowmeterdirectory.biz
finnsat.net
dotsjobs.net0 -
SEO within the URL /
If I were optimizing for 'marketing success' and my URL structure was domain.com/marketing/success would that count? I'm not sure if the '/' affects the keyword term. My assumption is that it does, but I wasn't 100% sure. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KristinaWitmer0 -
How do I handle this 301/indexing mess?
I'm working on a client's site and noticed a brisk drop in rankings. In doing some digging I found that the homepage (domain.com) is 301'd to domain.com/home.html. Here's my problem/questions: 1. domain.com is indexed by Google 2. domain.com/home.html is not indexed by Google 3. both domains have some healthy linking 4. Is the fact that domain.com/home.html impacting rankings? 5. How do carefully handle this situation (ex. redirect domain.com/home.html back to domain.com?) 6. See the attached jpeg for a visual representation of my debacle. hcIiPAs
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rhoadesjohn0 -
Maintaining SEO with Ecommerce Search Refinement
Hey Everyone, i have an interesting scenario I'd appreciate some feedback on. I'm working on restructuring a client site for a store design, and he had previously built a bunch of landing pages mostly for SEO value- some of them aren't even accessible from the main nav and contain a lot of long-tail type targets. These pages are generating organic traffic but the whole thing is pretty not user-friendly because it's cumbersome to drill down into specific categories (that many of the landing pages fulfill) without going through 3 or 4 pages to get there. For example, if I want to buy orange shoes, i can see specific kinds of orange shoes, but not ALL the orange shoes, even though there is an SEO page for orange shoes that is otherwise inaccessible from the main navigation. If that wasn't too confusing, essentially the usability solution to this is implementing some search refinement so that the specific sub categories can be drilled into easily with less steps. My issue is that I'm hesitant to implement this even though I know it would be an overall benefit to the site, because the existence of these SEO pages and being wary of destroying the organic traffic they're already receiving. My plan was to see to it that the specific category pages are built with the necessary keywords and content to attract those organic visits, but I'm still nervous it might not be enough. Does anyone have any suggestions for this circumstance, but also just maximizing SEO efforts on a site with search refinement and how to minimize loss. From a usability standpoint, search refinement is great, but how do you counter the significant SEO risks that come with it? Thanks for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrandLabs0 -
Microdata / Schema.org and HTTPS
I have a quick question regarding Microdata / Schema.org files that are not hosted on secure connections. I receive a receive a security error from my e-commerce site because the code references the schema over HTTP instead of HTTPS.<div< span="">itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Product"></div<>This is not the first time I have run into this issue. We also use MRSS schema for an RSS feed from yahoo and the same thing happens.<div< span="">xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss"></div<>The problem mainly lies in the fact that these schemas are not hosted over HTTPS. If you add HTTPS to the beginning of both you will get a security error.Just wondering if anyone else has dealt with this or similar issue and what the "best practices" are around this?Is it ok to obtain the schema directly and then host it on our server, over our secure connection?Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AnthonyMangia0 -
/%category%/%postname%/ Permalink structure
Mostly everyone seems to agree that /%category%/%postname%/ is the best blog structure. I'm thinking of changing my structure to that because now it's structured by date which is bad. But almost all of my posts are assigned to more than one category. Won't this create duplicate pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | UnderRugSwept0 -
Avoiding duplicate content on an ecommerce site
Hi all, I have an ecommerce site which has a standard block of text on 98% of the product pages. The site also has a blog. Because these cause duplicate content and duplicate title issues respectively, how can I ever get around this? Would having the standard text on the product pages displayed as an image help? And how can I stop the blog being listed as duplicate titles without a nofollow? We already have the canonical attribute applied to some areas where this is appropriate e.g. blog and product categories. Thanks for your help 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CMoore850