Dynamic pages - ecommerce product pages
-
Hi guys,
Before I dive into my question, let me give you some background..
I manage an ecommerce site and we're got thousands of product pages. The pages contain dynamic blocks and information in these blocks are fed by another system. So in a nutshell, our product team enters the data in a software and boom, the information is generated in these page blocks.
But that's not all, these pages then redirect to a duplicate version with a custom URL. This is cached and this is what the end user sees.
This was done to speed up load, rather than the system generate a dynamic page on the fly, the cache page is loaded and the user sees it super fast.
Another benefit happened as well, after going live with the cached pages, they started getting indexed and ranking in Google.
The problem is that, the redirect to the duplicate cached page isn't a permanent one, it's a meta refresh, a 302 that happens in a second. So yeah, I've got 302s kicking about. The development team can set up 301 but then there won't be any caching, pages will just load dynamically.
Google records pages that are cached but does it cache a dynamic page though? Without a cached page, I'm wondering if I would drop in traffic. The view source might just show a list of dynamic blocks, no content!
How would you tackle this? I've already setup canonical tags on the cached pages but removing cache..
Thanks
-
Hi Cylo, I'm not sure if saying Google caches dynamic pages automatically is an accurate thing to say. I would say it like this: Google is more apt to cache and index a dynamic page if it is given a SEO-friendly URL. Perhaps a Mozzer who is more technically adept than I can comment on the accuracy of that statement.
That being said I definitely wouldn't recommend using dynamic URLs (which it sounds like you are not). Here is how you can set up URL-rewrites in your .htaccess file if you are on a Linux server: http://www.webconfs.com/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls-article-3.php
Not sure if that's helpful at all. I hope it is somewhat
Dana
-
Hi Dana,
Thanks for the reply, so am I right in assuming Google caches dynamic pages automatically? The bot would crawl the dynamic page and whatever it loads, it will cache, even if the page is made up of dynamic blocks?
Thanks for sharing the post, it's pretty close to the existing system. Information is saved in a CMS, and that information is fed dynamically to our product pages. As I mentioned, the original page has a dynamic url, and information on this URL is used for on-site search, but this URL isn't SEO friendly, that is why the page is duplicated with an SEO title and then cached, the end user only sees this
-
In my expierience, the way your site is working is unusual. Most often, even large dynamic e-commerce sites create pages on the fly. They are cached and inexed by Google without problems. Here's a post from Paddy Moogan that might be a little helpful in explaining: http://www.stateofsearch.com/how-to-scale-ecommerce-seo/
I would definitely opt to get rid of the 302s, put 301s in place and allow the pages to be built dynamically, especially if it is a large site (which it sounds like it is). Just my two cents.
Out of curiosity, how do you handle on-site search?
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
-
Sale Pages On An eCommerce Website
I have a client who sells 50 brands of shoes. At the moment the developer has a noindex/nofollow tag on all sale pages which is wrong as around 10% of site activity revolves around those pages. The structure looks like this: 1. For Cats/Sub Cats site/sale
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nigel_Carr
site/womens/sale
site/womens/shoe/sale
site/womens/shoes/ballerinas/sale For every cat/subcat - there are 10 cats and average 5 subcats per cat so 50 pages of sale. 2. For Brands site/brand
site/brand/womens
site/sale/brand
site/sale/womens/brand
site/sale/womens/cat/brand
site/sale/womens/cat/subcat/brand So each brand can have four sale pages on top of its own brand page. 50 brands x 54 = around 2700. Now no one is going to start writing 2700 pieces of additional on page content (although Meta is OK! ) and we risk further diluting the brand pages we need to show highly for, so we need to do something. Should we Category Pages: 1. Allow all sale cat and subcat pages to proliferate through Google? or
2. Canonicalise all sale sub category pages back to category
3. Caonicalise all category and Subcategory pages back to sale/womens Brand Pages: 1. Allow all sale brand pages to proliferate through Google ?
2. Canonicalise Sub Cat brand pages back to sale/category/brand
3. Canonicalise Sub Cat and Cat back to sale/brand Note the lower pages never do well in search. If you search a brand + Sale in Google it is always the site/brand page that comes up, never the sale version (This is from research on other similar sites and my own analysis) Same with Sub Cats - eg, Brand + Subcat - it's always site/brand that comes up first wand has the highest PA. Also we can't analyse any of these sale pages in MOZ or anywhere else as they are not in search at all having been no indexed. That's my conundrum for today, Any thoughts would be appreciated!0 -
May integrating my main category page in the index page improve my ranking of main category keyword?
90% of our sales are made with products in one of our product categories.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
A search for main category keyword returns our root domain index page in google, not the category page.
I was wondering whether integrating the complete main category directly in the index page of the root domain and this way including much more relevant content for this main category keyword may have a positive impact on our google ranking for the main category keyword. Any thoughts?1 -
Duplicate Pages #!
Hi guys, Currently have duplicate pages accross a website e.g. https://archierose.com.au/shop/cart**#!** https://archierose.com.au/shop/cart The only difference is the URL 1 has a hashtag and exclamation tag. Everything else is the same. We were thinking of adding rel canonical tags on the #! versions of the page to the correct URLs. But Google doens't seem to be indexing the #! versions anyway. Does anyone know why this is the case? If Google is not indexing them, is there any point adding rel canonical tags? Cheers, Chris https://archierose.com.au/shop/cart#!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
Does it make sense to create new pages with friendlier URLs then redirect old pages to new?
Hi Moz! My client has messy URLs. does it make sense to write new clean URLs, then 301 redirect all old URLs to the new ones? Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
2 pages lost page rank and not showing any backlinks in google
Hi we have a business/service related website, 2 of our main pages lost their page rank from 3 to 0 and are not showing any backlinks in google. What could be the possible reason. Please guide me.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tech_Ahead0 -
Ecommerce SEO - Indexed product pages are returning 404's due to product database removal. HELP!
Hi all, I recently took over an e-commerce start-up project from one of my co-workers (who left the job last week). This previous project manager had uploaded ~2000 products without setting up a robot.txt file, and as a result, all of the product pages were indexed by Google (verified via Google Webmaster Tool). The problem came about when he deleted the entire product database from our hosting service, godaddy and performed a fresh install of Prestashop on our hosting plan. All of the created product pages are now gone, and I'm left with ~2000 broken URL's returning 404's. Currently, the site does not have any products uploaded. From my knowledge, I have to either: canonicalize the broken URL's to the new corresponding product pages, or request Google to remove the broken URL's (I believe this is only a temporary solution, for Google honors URL removal request for 90 days) What is the best way to approach this situation? If I setup a canonicalization, would I have to recreate the deleted pages (to match the URL address) and have those pages redirect to the new product pages (canonicalization)? Alex
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | byoung860 -
Online Store With 4 Products Available in 50 Sizes, Need Tips Categories/Products
I own and manage 2 online stores selling furnace filters. http://www.furnacefilterscanada.com and http://www.filtrationmontreal.com/ We have 4 different qualities furnace filters and each of them are avaible in almost 50 different sizes. My store is setup with almost 200 different products. ( 4 filtres X 50 sizes) None of them have variable. This was a lots of work to create 200 different products. The reason I did this is because when searching in search engine, vistors will use such keywords: 16x20x4 filter 20x25x2 furnace filter a/c filter 10x20x1 replacement filter online 20x20x1 16x25x5 filter toronto and so on... Must keywords request in search engine will included the furnace filter size. QUESTIONS: all my products descriptions are the same, the only difference is the filter size, is this Duplicate Content? will it be better to sell 4 filters with 50 variables? if my store use variable I don't see how I will rank on Google when shopper search for keyword like mention before in this post. My page name will always be the same. My description page the same and so on... Furnace Filters Canada is on BigCommerce platform and I love it. I'm in the process of moving Filtration Montreal to CoreCommerce. You can have a look at it here http://furnacefilter.corecommerce.com I'm very limited in SEO knowledge, the way I have setup http://furnacefilter.corecommerce.com I thing is the best way for SEO. What is your opinion & recommendations. Thank you for your help, BigBlaze
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BigBlaze2050 -
Why does google not show my ecommerce category page when I have the same keywords for many products in the product title?
I have found that google removes the google serach listing of a category from my site (ecommerce) when products within the category have the same key words. I sell golf shirts and have a category called "Mens Golf Shirts" Within the category I have added many products but when the too many of the products say mens golf shirt my link on google gets removed. Before i had products named: FUNKTION Mens Short Sleeve Golf Shirt Red / Black but now I have had to change it to: FUNKTION Red / Black I can understand that they may see this a keyword stuffing but how do I get around this to ensure that each product can rank on google for mens golf shirt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | funktiongolf0