Handling long URLs and overly-dynamic URLs on eCommerce site
-
Hello Forum,
I've been optimizing an eCommerce site and our SEOmoz crawls are favorable for the most part, except for long URLs and overly-dynamic URLs. These issues stem from two URL types: Layered navigation (faceted search) and non-Google internal search results. I outline the issues for each below.
We use an SEO-friendly URL structure for our product category pages, but once bots start "clicking" our layered navigation options, all the parameters are appended to our SEO-friendly urls, causing the SEOmoz crawl warnings.
Layered Navigation :
SEO-Friendly Category Page: oursite.com/shop/meditation-cushions.htmlEffects of layered navigation: oursite.com/shop/meditation-cushions.html?bolster_material_quality=414&bolsters_appearance=206&color=12&dir=asc&height=291&order=name
As you can see the parameters include product attributes and page sorts. I should note that all pages generated by these parameters use the element to point back to the SEO-friendly URL We have also set up Google's Webmaster Tools to handle these parameters.
Internal Search Function:
Our URLs start off simple: oursite.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=brown. Then the bot clicks all the layered navigation options, yielding oursite.com/catalogsearch/result/index/?appearance=54&cat=67&clothing_material=83&color=12&product_color=559&q=brown. Also, all search results are set to noindex,follow.My question is: Should we worry about these overly-dynamic and long ULR warnings? We have set up canonical elements, "noindex,follow" solutions, and configured Webmaster Tools to handle our parameters. If these are a concern, how would you resolve these issues?
-
I see this thread was from last year, so I am hoping between then and now you have determined an answer and would be able to advise. I am having the same issue with our consumer sight.
-
If you make them friendly it will shorten them
x=y can become y
But having done that and they are still too long i would ignore them as they are no-index.
-
There another company handling the server side of things. All I know is that we're using PHP and MySQL for Magento.
Even if we did a friendly URL rewrite, wouldn't we still get long URLs? We would just have each parameter become words separated by slashed. i.e .
/shop/meditation-cushions.html/high quaily/patterened/green/10inches/sortedbyname/
I suppose these URLs shorter. Is something like this better?
-
Marc
The crawl warnings are those found in SEOmoz's crawl diagnostics: "Overly-Dynamic URL" and "Long URL." These are not duplicate content issues and the URLs resolve properly.
I just want to make sure we're not getting dinged for having URLs that are too long. If we are, what are some way to go about shortening them?
-Aaron
-
What kind of "crawl warnings" are we talking about here? Duplicate content? Do the URL's resolve properly when the additional parameters are appending to the SEO-friendly URL's?
"I should note that all pages generated by these parameters use the element to point back to the SEO-friendly URL We have also set up Google's Webmaster Tools to handle these parameters."
Keep in mind, using canonical tags is like setting up 301 redirects on all those pages. Some people don't now that, so I thought I'd just throw it out there. So, if any of those additional pages with the host of parameters contain unique/different content than the seo-friendly versions, using canonical tags is not a good move as they will get no attention from search engines that respect the canonical tag.
For example, do not use a canonical tag on a 'Page 2' to point back to page 1. Each page will contain different information/products/whatever, and you want search engines (SE) to see and index those pages, regardless of what the URL looks like (as long as it works and your Title/META/H1-H6 tags are all in order to reflect the different content on each page.
I'm not sure I'm following your concern 100% percent, so I hope I was on the right path with what I said. Can you please be more specific as to what you concern is with the "overly-dynamic and long ULR warnings" please, and I'll be happy to help you out some more.
- Marc
-
The easy fix is the canonical, yet Bing suggest not using the canonical on the true page, only the duplicates. Best if you can handle that in code, but not a big worry of you cant.
Facet naviagtion is a big problem, with no easy answers.
What sort of server are you using, on a windows server it is very easy to set up friendly urls for your dynamic urls.
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
-
Block Moz (or any other robot) from crawling pages with specific URLs
Hello! Moz reports that my site has around 380 duplicate page content. Most of them come from dynamic generated URLs that have some specific parameters. I have sorted this out for Google in webmaster tools (the new Google Search Console) by blocking the pages with these parameters. However, Moz is still reporting the same amount of duplicate content pages and, to stop it, I know I must use robots.txt. The trick is that, I don't want to block every page, but just the pages with specific parameters. I want to do this because among these 380 pages there are some other pages with no parameters (or different parameters) that I need to take care of. Basically, I need to clean this list to be able to use the feature properly in the future. I have read through Moz forums and found a few topics related to this, but there is no clear answer on how to block only pages with specific URLs. Therefore, I have done my research and come up with these lines for robots.txt: User-agent: dotbot
Moz Pro | | Blacktie
Disallow: /*numberOfStars=0 User-agent: rogerbot
Disallow: /*numberOfStars=0 My questions: 1. Are the above lines correct and would block Moz (dotbot and rogerbot) from crawling only pages that have numberOfStars=0 parameter in their URLs, leaving other pages intact? 2. Do I need to have an empty line between the two groups? (I mean between "Disallow: /*numberOfStars=0" and "User-agent: rogerbot")? (or does it even matter?) I think this would help many people as there is no clear answer on how to block crawling only pages with specific URLs. Moreover, this should be valid for any robot out there. Thank you for your help!0 -
How do you create tracking URLs in Wordpress without creating duplicate pages?
I use Wordpress as my CMS, but I want to track click activity to my RFQ page from different products and services on my site. The easiest way to do this is through adding a string to the end of a URL (ala http://www.netrepid.com/request-for-quote/?=colocation) The downside to this, of course, is that when Moz does its crawl diagnostic every week, I get notified that I have multiple pages with the same page title and the dup content. I'm not a programming expert, but I'm pretty handy with Wordpress and know a thing or two about 'href-fing' (yeah, that's a thing). Can someone who tracks click activity in WP with URL variables please enlighten me on how to do this without creating dup pages? Appreciate your expertise. Thanks!
Moz Pro | | Netrepid0 -
How to fix overly dynamic URLs for Volusion site?
We're currently getting over 5439 pages with an 'overly dynamic URL' warning in our Moz scan. The site is run on Volusion. Is there a way to fix this seeming Volusion error?
Moz Pro | | Brandon_Clay0 -
Page Authority is the same on every page of my site
I'm analyzing a site and the page authority is the exact same for every page in the site. How can this be since the page authority is supposed to be unique to each page?
Moz Pro | | azjayhawk0 -
Comparing with Open Site Explorer
Hi, I am trying to compare a website that has a url of e.g. https://mysite.com on Open Site Explorer. Any idea how to do this? It will only compare it when I use www and it also doesn't accept https. So I am comparing www.mysite.com which has redirects on it https://mysite.com but I am worried it's not comparing the right stats? If this makes sense and you can help it would be greatly appreciated. Cheers
Moz Pro | | Hughescov0 -
Tons of Crappy links in new OSE (Open Site Explorer)
I am starting to miss the old OSE. I've found that for a lot of the pages on our site, the new OSE is showing WAY more links and most of them are garbage nonsense links from China, Russia, and the rest of the internet Wild West. For instance, in the old OSE, this page used to show 9 linking domains: http://www.uncommongoods.com/gifts/by-recipient/gifts-for-him It now shows 454 links. Some of the new links (about 5 of them) are legitimate. The other 400+ are garbage. Some are porn sites, most of them don't even open a web page, they just initiate some shady download. I've seen this for other sites as well (like Urban Outfitters) This is making it much harder for me to do backlink analysis on bc I have no clue how many "Normal" links they have. Is anyone else having this problem ? Any way to filter all this crap out ? See attached screenshot of the list of links I'm getting from OSE. NHXnn
Moz Pro | | znotes1 -
Does anyone know what the %5C at the end of a URL is?
I've just had a look at the crawl diagnostics and my site comes up with duplicate page content and duplicate titles. I noticed that the url all has %5C at the end which I've never seen before. Does anybody know what that means?
Moz Pro | | Greg800