Forced to remove Categories with high volume & revenue
-
Hi everyone
I've been forced to remove level 4 & 5 categories (e.g. example.com/level-2/level-3**/level-4/level-5/**) from our website, even though they're getting plenty of traffic, revenue and are ranking for some of our keywords. The argument is customers were using refinement/filters more than clicking into categories, and a new backend system is coming into the business and these need to be removed anyway.
We've done this before and seen a drop in visibility, revenue & traffic in these areas, but we're going ahead with another batch of removals anyway. I was wondering if anyone has any experience in fixing a problem like this? I've been told the categories will not be returning and have to 301 them, so need to find a workaround to get eligible for ranking for these Keywords again.
I've been looking at using the refinements to make it look like a category (change URL to a clean one, update Page Title, Meta Description, H1, remove text from core page, when refinement is clicked) but not sure what kind of knock-on effects this will have, if it even works!
Hope you can help! I've probably missed some details so let me know if you need more info!!!
Thanks
-
Very hard to prove these things before they're done - good luck with getting buy-in for what you need to do and in undoing the worst of the damage.
-
Thanks Will! Yep sounds similar to what I've sent onto Development, where the filters are actually those sub-category pages. Unfortunately they think it's going to be a huge amount of work, so now I need to show the value of creating these pages before they start working on it. From the Macro point of view, unfortunately, I had no choice and just had to redirect, which are all in place now. Painful to do when you know it's going to damage the performance, and after a couple of weeks it looks like the stats showing it already has
But great to have your feedback, will definitely give weight for my pitch to get those filters working for us! The top-level idea might actually be a great workaround for now too!
-
Hi Frankie,
Sorry for the slow reply to this one. I hope it's still relevant to offer some thoughts.
First, at the top level, I would say that the stated reasons don't necessarily mean that you should not have the kinds of pages you describe. My first preference would be to modify the functionality so that the filters you describe users actually using are those sub-category pages. Even if this meant changing URLs (and hence 301 redirecting the pages you currently have), it is possible to have filter / facet pages be indexable and have unique URLs and meta information.
If that's not possible for whatever reason, I would separate my efforts into the micro and the macro:
- Micro: apply a 80:20 or 90:10 rule to the pages that you are losing - find the small number of most important and highest traffic / conversion pages and find a way to keep versions of those pages (again - even if you have to 301 redirect them, you could create them as static content pages targeting those keywords or something if you had to)
- Macro: where you simply have no choice but to lose these pages, I think your best bet will be to redirect them to the absolutely best (/ next best!) page on the site for those queries - these might be other (sub-)category pages or they might be individual products or content pages, but at least for the highest traffic end, it'd be worth specific research effort to identify the best redirect targets
One final thought: it's not always the case that the URL has to represent every level in the hierarchy. I don't know your underlying technology, but it might be possible to recreate some of these sub-categories as top-level categories if products are allowed by your CMS to be in more than one category at once. I wrote this article about the difference between URL structures and site architecture that might give more clarity on what I mean here.
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
-
Paginated category pages still showing in Google
Despite our blog using rel=next and rel=”prev” we’re still finding paginated pages getting impressions in Google, suggesting they are taking up unnecessary crawl budget. An example is: https://www.theukdomain.uk/seo/page/2/ What steps would you recommend I take to most benefit my sites SEO? Thanks, Sam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sjefferies0 -
Pagination & SEO
Hi We have automatically created brand pages based on which brand they have in their attributes. At the moment, developers have restricted the ability to properly optimise these for SEO, but I also wanted to look at how we should handle pagination. Example: http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/brand/manutan?page=1 http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/brand/manutan?page=2 http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/brand/manutan?page=3 Should we do any of the following - which I've found in an article: Put no follow on all links located on pagination pages Should we no index these pages as they are wasting crawl budget? - Don’t show links to page 2, 3, 4, 5… 10, 11, 12… at the end of your content but only a link to the next and previous pages so that you won’t dilute your page authority. Or does anyone else have any tips on how to handle these pages? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
What could be the reasons why PA & DA changed
Hi, What could be the reason why PA & DA of the site dropped? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webdeal0 -
What Makes Good Content for Category Pages
Hello, We're putting (roughly, depending on the category) 500 words under the products or categories under category pages. We're having a writer do these who has to learn the products from scratch. With over 100 categories, it's not possible for the client to write 500 words for each one. We're wondering, 1. What should go into a category description? 2. How do you prep a writer to write these, and is it possible to do so and get good content? I'm afraid that we're writing just words for long tails, and I know on the product pages, home page, and articles that it has to be the best content, probably written by the client himself if he is knowledgable enough. Open to your suggestions on what should be in these, how long they should be, and who should write them.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Changing a parent category and 301 redirecting
I have a set of three pages that are subpages of a parent. The structure is as follows: mysite.com/directory/personal-widgets mysite.com/directory/commercial-widgets mysite.com/directory/widgets-services The partent page name "directory" really isn't working for where I want these pages to evolve. So I want to change it to "guides" In a world without worrying about google, I would simply change the parent page to guides, so they look like this, and be done with it: mysite.com/guides/personal-widgets But, the obvious problem is that I have external links to the page now. And the pages have a nice PR. And they also have Facebook page Likes and I don't know if I'll lose those. I know that if I should do this I should redirect the pages to the new pages of course. My question is: Will redirecting the old URL to the new URL with a 301 cause anything negative to happen that I might not be expecting? Does Google dislike Redirects for any reason, or understand they are sometimes necessary?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bizzer0 -
Category Pages up - Product Pages down... what would help?
Hi I mentioned yesterday how one of our sites was losing rank on product pages. What steps do you take to improve the SERPS of product pages, in this case home/category/product is the tree. There isn't really any internal linking, except one link from the category page to each product, would setting up a host of internal links perhaps "similar products" linking them together be a place to start? How can I improve my ranking of these more deeply internal pages? Not just internal links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | xoffie0 -
Should I remove all rel=nofollow links?
I have a 60 page site that had some nofollow links sprinkled throughout, 50% of which are probably on its mailto: email links. Should I remove all nofollows all in one go, or just the mailto links first, and later the others? Or has anyone had any negative effects in 2012 from this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | emerald0 -
Category pages in forums
I would like to hear feedback on the best SEO practice for forum category pages. An example would be a forum about cars. You can have a Chervorlet category which contains forums for every chevy model. Often this category page is simply a list of all the forums. If I noindex, follow the page then am I missing an opportunity? I am thinking of Google sitemaps for example where this page can be used for a category link. If I noindex the page, there probably isn't another great place for a sitemap to link to. I could fill out the page with wiki-like generic chevy information. Please share any thoughts or best practices.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RyanKent0