HELP - Site architecture of E-Commerce Mega Menu - Linkjuice flow
-
Hi everyone,
I hope you have a couple of mins to give me your opinion. Ecommerce site has around 2000 products, in english and spanish, and around only 70 hits per day if that.
We have done a lot of optimisation on the site - Page Titles, URL's, Content, H1's, etc.... Everything on page is pretty much under control, except I am starting to realise the site architecture could be harming our SEO efforts.
Once someone arrives on site they are language detected and do a 302 to either domain.com/EN or domain.com/ES depending on their preferred language.
Then on the homepage, we have the big MEGA MENU - and we have
CAT 1
SubCat 1
SubsubCat 1
SubsubCat 2
SubsubCat 3Overall, there are 145 "categories". Plus links to some CMS pages, like Home, Delivery terms, etc...
Each Main Category, contains the products of everything related to that category - so for example:
KITCHENWARE
COOKWARE BAKINWARE
SAUCEPANS BOWLS
FRYING PANSKitchenware contains: ALL PRODUCTS OF SUBCATS BELOW, SO COOKWARE ITEMS, SAUCEPANS, FRYING PANS, BAKINGWARE, etc... plus links to those categories through breadcrumbs and a left hand nav in addition to the mega menu above.
So once the bots hit the site, immediately they have this structure to deal with.
Here is what stats look like:
Domain Authority: 18www.domain.com/EN/
PA: 27
mR: 3.99
mT: 4.90www.domain.com/EN/CAT 1
PA: 15
mR: 3.05
mT: 4.54www.domain.com/EN/CAT 1/SUBCAT1
PA: 15
mR: 3.05
mT: 4.54Product pages themselves - have a PA of 1 and no mR or mT.
I really need some other opinions here - I am thinking of:
- Removing links in Nav menu so it only contains CAT1 and SUBCAT1 but DELETE SUBSUBCATS1 which represent around 80 links
- Remove products within the CAT1 page - eg., the CAT 1 would "tile" graphical links to subcategories, but not display products themselves. So products are only available right at the lowest part of the chain (which will be shortened)
But I am willing to hear any other ideas please - maybe another alternative is to start building links to boost DA and linkjuice?
Thanks all,
Ben
-
Your DA and PA are weak so if I were you I would be selective on what your target. Do some research on keywords you would like to rank for and see what the competition is like for that keyword in the serps and if you have a hope to rank ( you might want to start on mid-long term keywords).
You can also see what pages your currently rank for (page 2 or 3) and if a little improvement with the PA would it get to the front page, then you will know if it worth having a site wide link (via the Nav) to get the max PA to that page from your own site.
But don't for get the people have to use the site so it might not be possible to have every link on the nav to be a landing page.
-
Thanks.
Our landing pages are both - depending on google - we rank for some category pages and rank for products also - the content and keywords are sprinkled without overspamming in the content, so it should make semantic sense what our pages are about.
I think I really need to work on the nav - I think link juice aint flowing.
-
--- your product descriptions are duplicated on other sites and your site has been hit by Panada or the age-old duplicate filter (YES, they are - We are writing new content that is not Manufacturer description copies - e.g., our own unique content - in the meantime, I am META NOINDEX, FOLLOW)
--- you are working on a nascent site that has no links and that nobody is tweeting, liking or citing (Partially correct - we are tweeting and liking it via various social network accounts of our own)
--- you have a bad link profile and have been hit by Panda
(I cant see any "bad links" from unreputable domains - Our link profile is pretty poor and we only have a couple of external references from other websites and nothing too spammy)So, what do you say about the three items above?
Also, those 70 visitors. What are their referring domains, or where are they coming from? We are getting exposure in Google, so mostly traffic coming from Google but not enough
If we were hit by a Google penalty, what would it look like?
-
you have to think what your landing pages are related to the keyword, (are your products your landing page or are your categorys your landing pages) the 145 links on the nav is really splitting your PA of you pages very thin. eg the 27 pa of your homepage is being spread over those 145 pages. Its better to reduce those site wide links to just your landing pages, with clearly always thinking of your users use the site and what works best for them. Think of it like this is a menu with 145 really helping your users?
I'm currently doing the same think for our website, reducing a 222 link nav down is about 20
-
You have certainly done a lot of analysis.
Before considering what you have posted my suspicions for a site that has 2000 products and 70 visits per day are....
--- your product descriptions are duplicated on other sites and your site has been hit by Panada or the age-old duplicate filter
--- you are working on a nascent site that has no links and that nobody is tweeting, liking or citing
--- you have a bad link profile and have been hit by Panda
So, what do you say about the three items above?
Also, those 70 visitors. What are their referring domains, or where are they coming from?
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
-
Advise / Help on Bad Link Removals
Hey everyone.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TheITOteam
Im new to the community and new to backlinks - hence the question to the community today.
I would like help understanding options and work load around back links and removing them.
I have a client with over 8000 back links as a few years ago he paid someone about £10 to boost his rankings by adding thousands of backlinks.
We fear this is having a bad effect on their site and rankings organically as 90% of these back links have a spam score of over 50% and also no follows. My questions to the community (if you could be so kind to share) are:
1. Whats the best way to decide if a Backlink is worth keeping or removing
2. Is there a tool to decide this or assist with this somewhere on the internet? Ive had advise stating if its not hurting the page we should keep it. However, again...
How do I know what damage each Backlink is causing to the domain? I appriciate anyones time to offer some advice to a novice looking to clear these1 -
How do I get more video reviews on a new site?
Hi, I'm working on a site that has video reviews of various places. It's general information/experience that most people possess and production-wise they are selfies. These videos are then transcribed and, voila... searchable content. My problem is this... how do I get large numbers of people to go to the trouble to make a 2 minute selfie? I thought about HARO, since one could work in a plug for something, but they have a site traffic threshold that this new site isn't at. Any and all ideas on how to efficiently generate this content for a new site with very little traffic would be appreciated. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 945010 -
What could go wrong? SEO on mobile site is different than desktop site.
We have a desktop site that has been getting worked on over the year regarding improving SEO. Since the mobile site is separate, the business decided to not spend the time to keep it updated and just turned it off. So any mobile user that finds a link to us in search engines, goes to a desktop site that is not responsive. Now that we're hearing Google is going to start incorporating mobile user friendliness into rankings, the business wants to turn the mobile site back on while we spend months making the desktop site responsive. The mobile site basically has no SEO. The title tag is uniform across the site, etc. How much will it hurt us to turn on that SEO horrid mobile site? Or how much will it hurt us to not turn it on?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CFSSEO0 -
Suspicious external links to site have 302 redirects
Hi, I have been asked to look at a site where I suspect some questionable SEO work, particularly link building. The site does seem to be performing very poorly in Google since January 2014, although there are no messages in WMT. Using WMT, OPenSiteExplorer, Majestic & NetPeak, I have analysed inbound links and found a group of links which although are listed in WMT, etc appear to 302 redirect to a directory in China (therefore the actual linking domain is not visible). It looks like a crude type of link farm, but I cant understand why they would use 302s not 301s. The domains are not visible due to redirects. Should I request a disavow or ignore? The linking domains are listed below: http://www.basalts.cn/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | crescentdigital
http://www.chinamarbles.com.cn/
http://www.china-slate.com.cn/
http://www.granitecountertop.com.cn/
http://www.granite-exporter.com/
http://www.sandstones.biz/
http://www.stone-2.com/
http://www.stonebuild.cn/
http://www.stonecompany.com.cn/
http://www.stonecontact.cn/
http://www.stonecrate.com/
http://www.stonedesk.com/
http://www.stonedvd.com/
http://www.stonepark.cn/
http://www.stonetool.com.cn/
http://www.stonewebsite.com/ Thanks Steve0 -
Merging Sites - consolidation of your my web sites
I have had 3 tourism web sites for many years (each site represents a different place in Costa Rica) and they cross link with each other. www.monteverdetours.com is the main site - the most important one. In order to help ranking and to comply with all the new google changes.... I have recently been advised that (page by page, I should incorporate the other site, www, arenalvolcanotours.com into the monteverde site with 301s, In other words there will be a new directory on monteverde called /arenal-volcano-tours which will be the new home page for the arenal section. So page by page I can map the old URL's to the new URL's eg arenalvolcanotours.com/arenal-hotels-economy.html
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Llanero
301 redirect to
monteverdetours.com/arenal-volcano-tours/arenal-hotels-economy.html Now my monteverde site was once penalized by google and I am worried that doing this might have an adverse effect (although the thinking behind doing this change is because google prefers it to all the cross linking and also I will be able to consolidate all the links from Arenal into Monteverde). I respect the person who made the suggestion but I was interested in opinions from other people! I want to be positive this is a good ideas before undertaking this major work! Any opinions would be appreciated!0 -
Help figuring out if certain paid directories are worth it
The person in my position previously had quite a few paid directories our site was listed on. What is the best resources you guys have used or know of to figure out which ones are good to keep? For instance one that is up for renewal this week is site-sift.com. I know the person previous to me did some not so ethical stuff and I'm trying to clean up messes. Any advice on directories would be much appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | inhouseninja0 -
Does SEOMOZ provide any help regarding to Link Buildiing and directory submission?
Hi Everybody, I am trying to work out how off-site SEO works and I am facing some troubles when it comes to link building. Does SEOMOZ provide any solution to this? Regards, Guido.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SilbertAd0 -
Can someone explain how a site with no DA, links or MozTrust, MozRank can rank #1 in the SERPs?
I do SEO for a legal site in the UK and one of the keywords I'm targeting is 'Criminal Defence Solicitors'. If you search this term in Google.co.uk this site comes top www.cdsolicitors.co.uk, yet in my mozbar it has 0 links, 0 DA etc, I noticed it top a few weeks ago and thought something spammy was going on; I thought if I was patient, Google would remove it, however it still hasn't. Can someone explain how it is top in the SERPs? I've never seen this before. thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TobiasM0