Advice urgently needed on best practice for handling multiple product categories on Magento website
-
I have an ecommerce site built using Magento and urgently need advice on best practice for handling multiple product categories (where products appear in more than one category on the site creating multiple URLs to the same page).
In April this year, based on advice from my SEO who felt that duplicate content issues were causing my rankings to be held back, I changed about 25% of the product categories to 'noindex, follow'. This has made organic traffic fall (obviously) as these pages fell out of Google's index. But, contrary to what I was hoping for, it didn't then improve rankings - not one iota, nothing - which was the ONLY reason why I did this. This has had a real negative impact on sales, so I'm starting to think this was actually an a terrible idea.
Should I change them back?
And to ask a wider question, what is best practice for this particular scenario?
-
Hi,
If there already is a canonical link then you can edit it using the layout update code I first mentioned. If you do not need to canonical to another page you can just leave it as it is (self referencing).
As to if you want to do it or not, this really depends on how big of a problem it is for your search efforts and how many cats/products you will need to manually adjust. I would think that if you keep track of them in an excel and remember to check when you are updating that with a couple of hundred categories/products (of which only maybe a couple dozen or less might have to be manually edited?) then you should be able to manage it ok.
Good luck!
-
Thanks, I have regenerated the xml sitemap. Fingers crossed it doesn't take too long to see the pages fall back into the index!
As it happens, my developer has since emailed back to say that there is a canonical link for each category but it points to itself. Is that a problem?? He can't tell me.
Thinking about it, I'm unsure about manually adding a canonical link for each product/category. I'm concerned about errors creeping in over time, with URL changes, etc. With hundreds of products, I think it won't be too difficult for this to happen. Plus, the XML is automatically generated, so don't think the URLs will match. Have you had encountered these problems before?
-
HI,
For the canonicals if they are not being added automatically at the category level then you can still do it just removing the first part of the above that removes the old url, so like this:
<reference name="head"><action method="addLinkRel"><rel>canonical</rel>
<href>http://www.domain.com/canonicalUrl</href></action></reference>The above will add a canonical tag to whichever category page you add it to (in the layout update box).
The fetch as google does not reindex your site, it just previews how google sees the site. Make sure all the category pages are included in your sitemap and resubmit the sitemap to GWT. You can then see how many pages in the sitemap are indexed and that number should go up as google recrawls the site and finds the noindex tag removed.
-
Thanks for taking the trouble to answer. I have now made all categories 'index, follow'.
No canonicals are automatically added to category pages, so can't use this technique. Thanks for the suggestion, though.
Should I 'Fetch as Google' in WMT? If so, is it best to add the URL for every single category that I've updated? Or, just wait?
Appreciate your help, Lynn.
-
Hi,
I would do it all at once, nothing unusual about it and google may not see the change on all pages at the same time anyway.
For the rankings it is really impossible to say, you might get lucky, you might have to be patient, its not exactly like starting over again, especially if you have a couple of existing external links but....
For the canonical tags, there is a way to do it depending on your setup. Have you got canonicals being automatically added to the category pages as well as the product pages? If yes then you can overwrite them on a case by case basis by putting the following code in the 'custom layout update' box (this works for both products and categories actually).
<reference name="head"><action method="removeItem"><type>link_rel</type>
<name>http://www.domain.com/oldurl</name></action></reference><action method="addLinkRel"><rel>canonical</rel>
<href>http://www.domain.com/new-url</href></action>You will need to identify the canonical url being inputted into the code, add it to the oldurl bit above to remove it and then put in the new canonical url you want. Needless to say, it pays to be sure about what you are trying to achieve and why before implementing this setup on a lot of pages.
Hope it helps!
-
The website uses Magento version 1.4. which actually does have the canonical link back to the base URL feature. This was in place already before I started even messing around with making these changes.
I will revert the categories back to 'index, follow'. Some questions about this:
- Is it best to do it all at once (or will this look odd/'unnatural' somehow from Google's perspective)
- How long will it take for these pages to re-rank? They were made noindex in April, so would it be like starting again as if these were totally brand new pages?
Another SEO has recommended another approach, which is to identify the 'best' URL (from SEO point of view) and add the canonical link to the rest. Is there a way to implement/manage this easily in Magento? I can't seem to find a solution online on this.
-
That Yoast plugin is only developed up to Magento version 1.4 which is pretty old now. The good news is you can get some of this functionality out of the box now at Admin -> Configuration -> Catalog -> Search engine optimizations. If you set the use canonical meta tag link on products to yes then all product pages are given a canonical link back to a base url with no category in it. Baring a more advanced paid module or custom development, this is going to be your best bet.
Certainly change your category pages back to index, follow. Depending on your setup and how many common categories/products you have any duplicate content issue you have would usually be on a product more than a category level anyway. For category pages look at getting some good descriptions and other unique content on them. Check out this video for more details.
-
Change them all back to INDEX, FOLLOW and use Canonical plugin by yoast.
Canonical URL's for Magento • Yoast (sorry if links not allowed)
Some products on our site appear in six categories and we have no issues with duplicate content whatsoever using the above.
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
-
How to check if my website is penalized ?
Hi all, I just went over some post that my page can get penalized for over optimizing. I realized my page has quite a lot of h1 (6 it had 30) and a lot of "bold" keywords, does the bolding affect the page seo/penalizing the page? the page im talking about it palmislander.com/dumaguete-travel-guide Thanks
Technical SEO | | i3arty0 -
Root domain change - how do we best handle existing backlinks from our own content platforms on youtube, etc?
Hi, we have recently changed our brand name after 7 years and have changed our root domain to match (33shake.com since 2012, now 33 fuel.com) The site is the same (no migration to a new one) as there were no other business changes apart from the name/domain. 301 redirects are looking after all former 33shake.com links, which are now being redirected to their new 33fuel.com equivalents (slugs are the same in 99% of cases). My question is: We have a lot of backlinks for our old domain (33shake.com) on our own content via our YouTube channel (100+ videos) and also our podcast (64 episodes in, broadcast on 10 platforms). For maximum SEO benefit as we continue to restore domain authority, etc to 33fuel.com, are we best to leave these historical backlinks pointed at the old domain and let the redirects pick them up when people click? Or are we better off swapping all of these old historical backlinks so they point directly to the new domain? Any advice would be greatly appreciated, this is quite a maze we are now picking our way through! Warren
Technical SEO | | WP331 -
Best Nofollow Practice Facing +500 instances of affiliate links
Hi. I have a set of affiliate links on my website. That's 50 unique links in total. They are placed in a separate folder /go/, and are all nofollowed. My website has 100 pages. When doing a site audit I get a report with 50 affiliate links pr. page x100. That's a huge report. Is this really necessary? I can ofc. choose to ignore the automated reports, but I can't help but to think that there must be an easier way to keep track of it? Like, if Link 1-50 is located in /go/, they should automatically be nofollowed, regardless of where they are located on the root/sub domain. Bonus question: The format of the link is https://exampledomain.com/go/brandname I am wondering if I should add that "/" at the end of it. If yes, why? If no, why?
Technical SEO | | Dan-Louis0 -
Need 301 Advice with a Recovered URL from a Domain Typosquatter
I am new to a SMB and someone bought the plural version of our domain back in 2005 and has yet to let it expire. The domain was just renewed for another year so we finally decided to contact a lawyer and go through the domain name dispute process. This seems like a pretty cut an dry case and the lawyer is very confident that we'll have the domain within 30-40 days. Currently the plural version domain 303s to spammy web pages, shows shady ads and is just a malicious looking page in general. I am not savvy enough to know the exact complexities of what's happening on the backend but it's spammy. Knowing the history of the plural version domain, how would you treat it after we acquire it? Obviously, I wouldn't want to put our site in jeopardy by 301ing the plural version of our URL to our current healthy site but at the same time many customers might go to that domain by accident so eventually I'd like to 301 it. If it's any help, the plural version has a robots.txt that prevent G from crawling it..thank you in advance for your guidance!
Technical SEO | | ssimarketing0 -
SEO impact of AJAX category on Magento website?
I am designing a new category for my website. Instead of a grid or list view there is an additional (default) view that implements Owl Carousel. What this means for SEO is that there is going to be a lot of dynamically loaded content and I am not quite sure how to handle that. By default all the user (and Google) will see is product images. Once the product image is clicked more details are shown about the product. Are there any articles that any of you can refer me to on Googles recommendation for handling dynamic content? My initial thought was that with a decent site map and the other available views this wouldn't be a big deal, especially since my categories tend to bog down SEO with links and repetitive terms in the product name (i.e. Flavored This, Flavored That, Flavored Other Term) as well as I'm unsure if I need the "juice" passed through my category product links.. but I'll leave it to the community to confirm that.
Technical SEO | | bearpaw0 -
Ecommerce website: Product page setup & SKU's
I manage an E-commerce website and we are looking to make some changes to our product pages to try and optimise them for search purposes and to try and improve the customer buying experience. This is where my head starts to hurt! Now, let's say I am selling a T shirt that comes in 4 sizes and 6 different colours. At the moment my website would have 24 products, each with pretty much the same content (maybe differing references to the colour & size). My idea is to change this and have 1 main product page for the T-shirt, but to have 24 product SKU's/variations that exist to give the exact product details. Some different ways I have been considering to do this: a) have drop-down fields on the product page that ask the customer to select their Tshirt size and colour. The image & price then changes on the page. b) All product 24 product SKUs sre listed under the main product with the 'Add to Cart' open next to each one. Each one would be clickable so a page it its own right. Would I need to set up a canonical links for each SKU that point to the top level product page? I'm obviously looking to minimise duplicate content but Im not exactly sure on how to set this up - its a big decision so I need to be 100% clear before signing off on anything. . Any other tips on how to do this or examples of good e-commerce websites that use product SKus well? Kind regards Tom
Technical SEO | | DHS_SH0 -
Help! Need advice for a new HTTPS URL!
Hi. We have just launched a new website that is fully secure with the HTTPS url. You can still access the home page with an ordinary HTTP address. That is what we want to change. Should we forward the HTTP url to the HTTPS? Redirect? It is the same URL for both. http://www.parrotmoon.com Thank you for all ideas! Jay
Technical SEO | | theideapeople0 -
Duplicate content handling.
Hi all, I have a site that has a great deal of duplicate content because my clients list the same content on a few of my competitors sites. You can see an example of the page here: http://tinyurl.com/62wghs5 As you can see the search results are on the right. A majority of these results will also appear on my competitors sites. My homepage does not seem to want to pass link juice to these pages. Is it because of the high level of Dup Content or is it because of the large amount of links on the page? Would it be better to hide the content from the results in a nofollowed iframe to reduce duplicate contents visibilty while at the same time increasing unique content with articles, guides etc? or can the two exist together on a page and still allow link juice to be passed to the site. My PR is 3 but I can't seem to get any of my internal pages(except a couple of pages that appear in my navigation menu) to budge of the PR0 mark even if they are only one click from the homepage.
Technical SEO | | Mulith0