Feedback needed on possible solutions to resolve indexing on ecommerce site

[TopFloor]

I’ve included the scenario and two proposed fixes I’m considering.  I’d appreciate any feedback on which fixes people feel are better and why, and/or any potential issues that could be caused by these fixes.  Thank you!

Scenario of Problem I’m working on an ecommerce website (built on Magneto) that is having a problem getting product pages indexed by Google (and other search engines).  Certain pages, like the ones I’ve included below, aren’t being indexed.  I believe this is because of the way the site is configured in terms of internal linking.  The site structure forces certain pages to be linked very deeply, therefore the only way for Googlebot to get to these pages is through a pagination page (such as www.acme.com/page?p=3).  In addition, the link on the pagination page is really deep; generally there are more than 125 links on the page ahead of this link.

One of the Pages that Google isn’t indexing: http://www.getpaper.com/find-paper/engineering-paper/bond-20-lb/430-20-lb-laser-bond-22-x-650-1-roll.html

This page is linked from http://www.getpaper.com/find-paper/engineering-paper/bond-20-lb?p=5, and it is the 147^th link in the source code.

Potential Fixes Fix One: Add navigation tags to the template so that search engines will spend less time crawling them and will get to the deeper pages, such as the one mentioned above. Note: the navigation tags are for HTML-5; however, the Magento site in which this is built does not use HTML 5.

Fix Two: Revised the Templates and CSS so that the main navigation and the sidebar navigation is on the bottom of the page rather than the top.  This would put the links to the product pages in the source code ahead of the navigation links.

[TopFloor]

Thanks Matthew, while I am aware of duplicate content on this site, I wasn't aware it it specific to some of the pages that aren't being indexed.  I will do more research on this!

[Matthew_Edgar]

Hey,

It looks like you might have a duplicate content problem contributing here. For instance, you linked to: http://www.getpaper.com/find-paper/engineering-paper/bond-20-lb/430-20-lb-laser-bond-22-x-650-1-roll.html

And there is this duplicated page, that doesn't have the category directory structure for the URL.
http://www.getpaper.com/430-20-lb-laser-bond-22-x-650-1-roll.html

That duplicated page is indexed by Google. It also looks like the duplicated page is what is listed in your XML sitemap, not the page you have linked to from the paginated pages.

In spot checking some of the other product pages, it looks like there is a similar issue going on. I'd recommend altering your XML sitemap to reference the URL you want indexed. Or, since it looks like Google has already indexed the pages on your XML sitemap (some of them, at least), you may want to use the URLs that have been indexed (the ones without the category structure) instead of the URLs with the category structure.

In terms of your possible fixes, I think fix one makes more sense. The more direct links you can add to deeper pages of your site, the better. On fix two, moving the sidebar and header to the bottom of the code and controlling the design with CSS can present some problems in various browsers...in my experience, it usually is more pain than gain.

I hope that helps. Thanks!
Matthew