Should each physical store have its own ecommerce store on subfolders, or share a single national one?
-
Each store has its own subfolder (in my mind this hasn't actually happened yet
) on the main head office domain i.e. maindomain.com/localstore1 , maindomain.com/localstore2 etc.I am happy that this is the best structure for SEO purposes. I like the local SEO advantages to it as each store can have its own NAP and show its own inventory. However I am worried that each store having its own ecommerce site will lead to duplicate content issues.
So I am having a rabid debate with myself as to whether each store should:
a) have its own ecommerce website i.e. maindomain.com/localstore1/ecommercestore
b) have its own ecommerce website i.e. maindomain.com/localstore1/ecommercestore with each product and category page having canonical links to the corresponding page on the main ecommerce website i.e. maindomain.com/ecommercestoreÂ
c) just have one ecommerce website with local stock shown e.g. maindomain.com/ecommercestore/productpage shows in an inventory in a line (below the price or such like): " localstore1 (3 items) localstore2 (0 items)"
d) just chill, inventory stock-outs happen just don't worry about showing local stockAnd its not good to have internal rabid debates, so I'd like to ask the wider moz community. For bricks and mortar stores (branches or franchises) how would you set up ecommerce stores? Thanks.
-
Thanks Gregory, its a tricky question.
-
I too think that C is best, but instead of listing the inventory in ALL the stores perhaps you can have them select their local store and then just show the inventory level at that ONE store for the rest of their visit to your store (or until they select a new local store)
Showing the inventory at all stores may be a bit distracting on the page (bad for CRO) and may lead to lots of customer phone calls asking if you can have something from store A sent over to store B for them (which could be a pain in the butt)
-
I'm thinking c). That way I also get more traffic to the page which helps with CRO, remarketing etc. I don't have to worry about cannonical links and admin of many pages. Also having one SEO page for a product probably outweighs the NAP local SEO advantages.
Any thoughts?
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
-
Anyone Care to Share Some SEO Tricks for Competitive Industries?
[Insert word "hack" if you prefer that, but it's so overused that I'm using "trick" instead] I've been doing SEO for ten years, and I'm pretty good at covering my bases. For the client I'm seeking help with, here's what we're doing: strong and regular onsite keyword optimized content (both long tail and competitive keyphrases), good local SEO, high-quality guest posting on relevant local news sites and blogs, heavy community involvement and support, scholarships and sponsorships, lots of videos, all the social media, tons of competitive research and link building, ongoing website architecture analysis and tweaking, a systematized process for getting reviews, onsite chat, Google Search Ads, etc. This client has been around for years in a very competitive industry in a medium-sized American city. We do alright in the local pack for certain search terms, but overall his rankings are not good. For anyone who works in a super competitive industry, do you have any tricks you'd be willing to share? I don't want to steal your secrets, but I could use some advice. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | newwhy1 -
Different content on pages with the same URL--except one is at www and the other at www2
Hi! I have two pages with unique content on each. However, they have virtually the same URL--except one is a www and the other is a www2. As far as I know, both pages were meant to gain organic traction. How should this situation be handled for SEO purposes? Thanks for any help! ---Ivey
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nichiha0 -
Multi-Store SEO
I am currently developing a website which will have a multi-store function, i.e. one for US & ROW customers and one for UK & EU customers. The domain names will be along the lines of: Original domain: www.website.com UK & EU domain: eu.website.com US & ROW domain: us.website.com When a customer visits the website they will be redirected to one or the other depending on their location. Can anyone see any problems which this may cause in respect to SEO? I know there may be a duplicate content issue here also, how should I best deal with this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
SEO Considerations for merging two brand website into one
Hello fellow Mozzers, We have two websites for two similar brands at my place of employment, the two brands currently serve slighly different products but could be held quite happily under one branded site. As part of a potential group merger into one sole brand, we will have to create one joined up website which will then feature all our products. The newly merged site will also have more scope to allow us to expand our product range where as currently one brand is kind of specific to a particular market due to its name. So as part of the Merge, I have to consider the potential implications for our search traffic, as this is an integral part of our business. Brand A - older, more authorative, great content, good organic positions - top 10 for pretty much all terms we favour. Brand B - younger, but has more marketing scope due to name, still good site and lots of content. Unfortunately Brand B has more in terms of potential lifespan, but is currently the less authorative of the two sites we run. it has lower DA and PR according to my Moz Analytics, a lower number of quality links and less content. In order to give the Brand B website the boost that is needed and in effect replace Brand A in the serps which has great organic positions, I need to make sure all bases are ticked for an action plan. So far this is what I have. Transfer all exisiting Brand A web pages to Brand B website. Rel canonical all Brand A pages to now point to Brand B websites new pages. 301 redirect all pages on Brand A to Brand B during the transfer. Once 301 redirects are in place then request external sites to actually repoint to Brand B website for any links. Update xml Sitemaps Update any content that mentions Brand B to now be Brand A. resubmit sitemaps to Webmaster tools Update all social profiles Update all local search profiles and listings Update all review sites with new brand name / merge any with both brands On a supplementary note for customer information, looking to also keep the older Brand A Home page up for a short time to help people understand the transition rather than a complete redirect which to our demographic could confuse and alienate people. Will also look to send a mass email to roughly 400K people informing them of the move abd how it affects them. I have no doubt there will be some glaringly obvious additions, any further advice would be much appreciated. Hope you are all well. Tim
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TimHolmes1 -
One word Keywords
Hey as you know that as a seo we are, we always optimize keywords which are at least 2 words, and lets say I'm trying to optimize a page for terms like "man clothing, man london clothing, man great collection, man stylus collection" and as you can guess I optimize this pages for this keywords by inputting them into title heading tags and body.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | atakala
So my question is , what if google takes "man" phrase from my 2 words keywords, and pretend as a my keyword. (I mean what if google thinks my keywords is man because as you can see in all of the keywords "man" is in all of them.)
And what if Google thinks the density of "man" probably would be %20 which is astronomic number.? Sorry for my bad english.0 -
Two Week eCommerce Site Migration - how to handle visibility
Good day All, We have a eComm site with over 100K pages and migrating to a new site design, new CMS and with a new URL structure for top level URLs only. Product URLs not changing (thank goodness!). We have outlined our strategy for redirects, indexation, 404s, etc. The missing piece of the puzzle is that we're only allowing 10% visitors to see new site at launch and increase visibility over two week; therefore, my question is do we not allow indexing of new site until 100% visibility to all users? How do we manage the redirects for limited visibility? My gut says don't bother for such a short period of time and block new site from SEs until 100% visibility. Since the site would be blocked how are redirects managed? Should we be using a 302 initially then switch to 301 or use a 503 code to indicate "hey, maintenance happening - come back later" with a time frame? Hope that's clear and any tips greatly appreciated. Cheers, WMCA
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WMCA0 -
Removing unnecessary categories in Ecommerce
We're working on a website built in WooCommerce that has 12 products. Each of the products have URLs like this www.website.com/products/product-name. We're thinking about removing the /products/ so that they keyword is as close to the left as possible, but came across this page from WooCommerce saying that it could be a bad thing: http://docs.woothemes.com/document/removing-product-product-category-or-shop-from-the-urls/ Your thoughts? Thanks for the help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Stryde0 -
Subdomain or Subfolder for Locations?
I have a client who is ranking #1 for every term related to "bathroom renovations (main city)". They have now started to take on dealers/franchisees in neighbouring cities, and each location would now like to be ranking for THEIR cities. Is it better to use bathcompany.com/location or location.bathcompany.com? Considerations: The site has the address and phone number of the main location listed in the header, so if we do /location you will still see the main NAP. Using /location, If someone browses beyond the location landing page, they will venture into pages that target the main city (ex. "Bath Remodelling (Main City)") Using a subdomain will mean that we will need to duplicate content such as their image gallery, and we will have to create new content for their service pages or risk duplicate content. (ex. "shower remodelling (city)") Questions By using /location they will benefit from the strength of the subdomain, while using a new location-based subdomain will this mean we will have to start from scratch in terms of domain authority / link-juice? Will the NAP in the header affect the ranking of these location pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATMOSMarketing560