Will Using Attributes For Landing Pages In Magento Dilute Page Rank?
-
Hello Mozzers!
We have an ecommerce site built on Magento. We would like to use attribute filters in our layered navigation for landing page purposes. Each page will have a unique URL, Meta Title and Meta Description. For example:
URL: domain.com/art/abstract (category is Art, attribute is Abstract)
Title: Abstract Art For Sale
Meta: Blah Blah Blah
Currently these attribute pages are not being indexed by google as they are set in google parameters.
We would like to edit google parameters to start indexing some of the attribute filters that users search for, so they can be used as landing pages.
Does anyone have experience with this? Is this a good idea? What are the consequences? Will this dilute Page Rank? Could this destroy the world?
Cheers!
MozAddict
-
Thanks for the heads up on robots.txt. I also think the attribute landing pages will not provide the same user experience as the layered navigation pages. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts on the matter.
Cheers!
-
I think it is possible to add 1000s of pages of unique content over time.
Excluding (I assume that's what you mean) the layered nav pages in robots.txt won't necessarily keep Google from indexing those pages, only crawling them. So you end up with something like this in the SERP - http://screencast.com/t/SPKDV09SM9 (Note the meta description.)
If you didn't want them in the SERP you'd need to add a meta noindex to the of the page as well.
I don't really like splash/doorway/gateway pages like those from a usability perspective. If I'm going to drive traffic to a page on my client's e-commerce site, I want that page to have active product on it. I realize you can do some Magento hoodoo and get product on static pages but it's not worth the effort in my opinion. You're better off focusing on conversions from your layered nav pages with unique content.
-
Thank you for your fantastic input!
I think your point on adding unique content to pages is great advise. This is something we aim to do, although it will not be possible on all the pages that will be generated, since the combinations will probably be in the thousands.
We are currently using rel prev next and rel canonical on the filtered pages for the purpose of using them as landing pages
Another potential route could be to robot.txt the layered navigation and create attribute splash pages as landing pages for important keywords. These pages would be manually created and contain custom meta titles/descriptions and on page content. These pages are not a part of the main catalogue search page, instead are separate pages. For example the URL for such a page would be domain.com/abstract-art instead of domain.com/art/abstract
What are your thoughts on this route? Which option is better in your opinion?
-
Hello! Great question; I've worked with Magento quite a bit and layered navigation can definitely be a bit tricky from an SEO perspective.
The most important thing to opening up some or all of these pages to Google for consideration, is having unique content on the page. This is not something Magento themes typically include by default but will be 100% necessary to get most if not all of these pages to rank well.
Most typically we add a static block to the top or bottom of the page to add uniqueness. Without it, all of the content on these types of pages are almost always 100% non-unique and from my experience Google ignores.
If your layered nav pages also use pagination, you'll need to make sure you follow best practices for using canonical and/or rel prev/next/view all to make sure Google isn't looking at your paginated pages as extra duplicated content.
And as a final reply, I think it can be a great idea with limited consequences as long as you follow the above advice regarding unique content and pagination. Additionally there's no worry regarding Pagerank or destroying the world.
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
-
Why is my landing page title tag being applied to the entire site?
I have a unique title tag for every page on my site but depending on what page a user lands on, that title becomes the title tag for the entire site. For example, if you come in from SERPs via the "Zach King: My Magical Life" page, the title "Zach King: My Magical Life" title will be applied to every page on the site even though they have unique title tags. This is the site: https://www.shelfstuff.com/book-shelf. Any ideas on how to fix this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | craigkleila470 -
Moz Pro > Links > Top Pages: many are images, useful?
My site is 10 years old, and has always ranked well for the variety of garden tools it sells. Looking at our Moz Pro > Links > Top Pages report I see that many of the "pages" are actually image URLs. And many of those are images we do not even use anymore (though they are still hosted). Question: As a way of gaining some link juice to deeper pages, what about 301 redirecting some of those old images over to appropriate pages? (example: redirecting old-weeding-hoe.jpg to the page garden-hoes.html) Would it be worthwhile? Would it be safe? Thanks for any and all input!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GregB1230 -
Is it best to 301 redirect or use canonical Url when consolidating two pages?
I have build several pages (A and B) with high quantity content. Page A is aged and gets lots of organic traffic, ranks for lots of valuable keywords, and has only internal links to this page. Page B is newer (6 months) and gets little traffic, ranks for no keywords, but has terrific content and many high value external links. As Page A and B are related to a similar theme, I was going to merge content from page B onto page A, but don't know which would be the best approach for handling the links going to page B. For the purposes of keep as much link equity as possible, is it best to us a 301 redirect from B to A or use a canonical URL from B to A?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cutopia0 -
Using hreflang for international pages - is this how you do it?
My client is trying to achieve a global presence in select countries, and then track traffic from their international pages in Google Analytics. The content for the international pages is pretty much the same as for USA pages, but the form and a few other details are different due to how product licensing has to be set up. I don’t want to risk losing ranking for existing USA pages due to issues like duplicate content etc. What is the best way to approach this? This is my first foray into this and I’ve been scanning the MOZ topics but a number of the conversations are going over my head,so suggestions will need to be pretty simple 🙂 Is it a case of adding hreflang code to each page and creating different URLs for tracking. For example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caro-O
URL for USA: https://company.com/en-US/products/product-name/
URL for Canada: https://company.com/en-ca/products/product-name /
URL for German Language Content: https://company.com/de/products/product-name /
URL for rest of the world: https://company.com/en/products/product-name /1 -
How to rank product pages?
Hi guys, Please advice me on something improving my product pages ranking. We are doing well for head terms, categories but not ranking for product pages. We have issues with product pages which I am think is hard to tackle. For instance we have duplicate products (different colors), duplicate content internally (colors) and from manufacturer websites. Product pages linked from sub-category i.e. Home > Category > Sub-Category (20 per page) using pagination for next 20 and so on. Product pages linked internally via widgets that says other Similar products, featured products etc. Another issue with our product pages is that we are using third party reviews platform and whenever users add reviews to product pages this platform creates an hyperlink to different anchors which is not relevant to product. Example - http://goo.gl/NUG652 Can somebody please give some advice on how to improve rankings for product pages. writing unique content for thousands of pages is not possible. Even our competitor not writing unique content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webmaster_SEO0 -
Will Google bots crawl tablet optimized pages of our site?
We are in the process of creating a tablet experience for a portion of our site. We haven’t yet decided if we will use a one URL structure for pages that will have a tablet experience or if we will create separate URLs that can only be access by tablet users. Either way, will the tablet versions of these pages/URLs be crawled by Google bots?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kbbseo0 -
On Page vs Off Page - Which Has a Greater Effect on Rankings?
Hi Mozzers, My site will be migrating to a new domain soon, and I am not sure how to spend my time. Should I be optimizing our content for keywords, improving internal linking, and writing new content - or should I be doing link building for our current domain (or the new one)? Is there a certain ratio that determines rankings which can help me prioritize these to-dos?, such as 70:30 in favor of link-building? Thanks for any help you can offer!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0 -
Why is google ranking me higher for pages that aren't optimised for keywords those that are?
I am finding that our homepage and other pages are being ranked higher against keywords that we have optimised other pages for. e.g Keyword: Luxury Towels Google Ranks our homepage http://www.towelsrus.co.uk at 20 for this and the page I am trying to rank for it is nowhere to be seen http://www.towelsrus.co.uk/sport-spa/luxury-towels/catlist_fnct498.htm Why is this and is this why our position for certain keywords fluctuates? How do I remedy this problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus0