Feedback needed on possible solutions to resolve indexing on ecommerce site
-
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<sup>th</sup> 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.
-
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!
-
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.htmlThat 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
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
-
URLs dropping from index (Crawled, currently not indexed)
I've noticed that some of our URLs have recently dropped completely out of Google's index. When carrying out a URL inspection in GSC, it comes up with 'Crawled, currently not indexed'. Strangely, I've also noticed that under referring page it says 'None detected', which is definitely not the case. I wonder if it could be something to do with the following? https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ranking-index-drop-30192.html - It seems to be a bug affecting quite a few people. Here are a few examples of the URLs that have gone missing: https://www.ihasco.co.uk/courses/detail/sexual-harassment-awareness-training https://www.ihasco.co.uk/courses/detail/conflict-resolution-training https://www.ihasco.co.uk/courses/detail/prevent-duty-training Any help here would be massively appreciated!
Technical SEO | | iHasco0 -
Messy older site
I am taking over a website that doesn't have any canonical tags and spotty redirects. It looks like they have http://, https://, www and non-www pages indexed but GA is just set up for the http://non-www home page. Should all versions of the site be set up in GA and Search Console? I think so but wanted to confirm. Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | SpodekandCo0 -
Site's IP showing WMT 'Links to My Site'
I have been going through, disavowing spam links in WMT and one of my biggest referral sources is our own IP address. Site: Covers.com
Technical SEO | | evansluke
IP: 208.68.0.72 We have recently fixed a number of 302 redirects, but the number of links actually seems to be increasing. Is this something I should ignore / disavow / fix using a redirect?0 -
Google not indexing /showing my site in search results...
Hi there, I know there are answers all over the web to this type of question (and in Webmaster tools) however, I think I have a specific problem that I can't really find an answer to online. site is: www.lizlinkleter.com Firstly, the site has been live for over 2 weeks... I have done everything from adding analytics, to submitting a sitemap, to adding to webmaster tools, to fetching each individual page as googlebot and then submitting to index via webmaster tools. I've checked my robot files and code elsewhere on the site and the site is not blocking search engines (as far as I can see) There are no security issues in webmaster tools or MOZ. Google says it has indexed 31 pages in the 'Index Status' section, but on the site dashboard it says only 2 URLS are indexed. When I do a site:www.lizlinketer.com search the only results I get are pages that are excluded in the robots file: /xmlrpc.php & /admin-ajax.php. Now, here's where I think the issue stems from - I developed the site myself for my wife and I am new to doing this, so I developed it on the live URL (I now know this was silly) - I did block the content from search engines and have the site passworded, but I think Google must have crawled the site before I did this - the issue with this was that I had pulled in the Wordpress theme's dummy content to make the site easier to build - so lots of nasty dupe content. The site took me a couple of months to construct (working on it on and off) and I eventually pushed it live and submitted to Analytics and webmaster tools (obviously it was all original content at this stage)... But this is where I made another mistake - I submitted an old site map that had quite a few old dummy content URLs in there... I corrected this almost immediately, but it probably did not look good to Google... My guess is that Google is punishing me for having the dummy content on the site when it first went live - fair enough - I was stupid - but how can I get it to index the real site?! My question is, with no tech issues to clear up (I can't resubmit site through webmaster tools) how can I get Google to take notice of the site and have it show up in search results? Your help would be massively appreciated! Regards, Fraser
Technical SEO | | valdarama0 -
What is the best practice to re-index the de-indexed pages due to a bad migration
Dear Mozers, We have a Drupal site with more than 200K indexed URLs. Before 6 months a bad website migration happened without proper SEO guidelines. All the high authority URLs got rewritten by the client. Most of them are kept 404 and 302, for last 6 months. Due to this site traffic dropped more than 80%. I found today that around 40K old URLs with good PR and authority are de-indexed from Google (Most of them are 404 and 302). I need to pass all the value from old URLs to new URLs. Example URL Structure
Technical SEO | | riyas_
Before Migration (Old)
http://www.domain.com/2536987
(Page Authority: 65, HTTP Status:404, De-indexed from Google) After Migration (Current)
http://www.domain.com/new-indexed-and-live-url-version Does creating mass 301 redirects helps here without re-indexing the old URLS? Please share your thoughts. Riyas0 -
Supplementary Index
Hi - Is there a way of checking whether pages are in the supplementary index? Thanks
Technical SEO | | bjalc20110 -
What is the most effective way to migrate an ecommerce site?
I am about migrate a 1500 product ecommerce site from Netsuite to Volusion. The url structure is not going to be the same so I need to know the most effective way of redirecting the old urls to the new site. Is there an easier method than collecting the most popular pages and creating a 301 xml page and upload it once the site goes live?
Technical SEO | | BenRWoodard0 -
My site ranking
Hello, I have a website and working more than 1 year ago,I worked hard last year and paid alot to make guys write articles from my website to other forums so my keywords rank high and got good visitors, then I get in much care in SEO and found SEOMoz with is very nice,when I downloaded the tool bar it was a shock to find my website is almost zero although the big effort I had, I can do more but I need to guide what I exactly need to improve my website,I almost read alot of the beginner PDF and got good information to work with and can hire people to help too. I did a real big work sharing my subjects and i can see them in top#5 google but for other sites and now i found I am still zero 😞 adding my links inside also didnt help or counted. attached the statistics of the website and the competitors site to let me know which important things to take care to jump over. would be very thankful for detailed help, Best Regards 1_01308477251.png 1_01308477465.png
Technical SEO | | nesr_20200