Is this CSS solution to faceted navigation a problem for SEO?
-
Hi guys. Take a look at the navigation on this page from our DEV site:
http://wwwdev.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/handheld-microphones
While the CSS "trick" implemented by our IT Director does allow a visitor to sort products based on more than one criteria, my gut instinct says this is very bad for SEO. Here are the immediate issues I see:
- The URL doesn't change as the filter criteria changes. At the very least this is a lost opportunity for ranking on longer tail terms. I also think it could make us vulnerable to a Panda penalty because many of the combinations produce zero results, so returning a page without content, under the original URL. This could not only create hundreds of pages with no content, there would be duplicates of those zero content pages as well.
- Usability - The "Sort by" option in the drop down (upper right of the page) doesn't work in conjunction with the left Nav filters. In other words if you filter down to 5 items and then try to arrange them by price high to low, the "Sort" will take precedence, remove the filter and serve up a result that is all products in that category sorted high to low (and the filter options completely disapper), AND the URL changes to this: http://wwwdev.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/IAFDispatcher regardless of what sort was chosen...(this is a whole separate problem, I realize and not specifically what I'm trying to address here).
Aside from these two big problems, are there any other issues you see that arise out of trying to use CSS to create product filters in this way? I am trying to build a case for why I believe it should not be implemented this way. Conversely, if you see this as a possible implementation that could work if tweaked a bit, and advice you are willing to share would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Thank you to Travis for pointing out the the link wasn't accessible. For anyone willing to take a closer look we can unblock the URL based on your IP address. If you'd be kind enough to send me your IP via private message I can have my IT director unblock it so you can view the page. Thanks!
-
Thanks David. Yes, we did this for Travis who responded above. Would you be interested in taking a look as well? If you private message me your username I can have my IT Director set up access for you.
-
If you set the site to display using an ip address and the username, that will allow others to view the site
-
Travis, if you are willing to take a closer look, I can have our IT Director allow you to view the page by unblocking just your IP address. If you send it to me via private message I'll have him do that. Thanks in advance!!
-
Ah I was afraid of that. Yes, only visible on our internal network. I am going to do a short video capture and also check with IT to see if I can get limited access so the page can be viewed externally. Thanks Travis!
-
The URLs don't resolve. Would love to take a closer look.
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
-
Are pages not included in navigation given less "weight"
Hi, we recently updated our website and our main navigation was dramatically slimmed down to just three pages and no drop down under those. Yet we have many more important pages, which are linked to once on one of those main three pages. However, will this hurt those other pages because they are not included in navigation (some of which were starting to get good traction in rankings)?
Web Design | | LuaMarketing2
Thanks!0 -
Mega Dropdown Menus affect SEO results?
Our e-commerce website http://www.autoidsavings.com has a mega multi-level dropdown menu on top that we wanted to re-design. The real problem is the Shop By Brand menu which hovers down to 4 level at most. Our options are: 1. Limit the dropdown menu to 2 levels total. (currently have 4 levels the most) 2. Completely remove Shop By Brand Menu and create a page like https://www.cdw.com/content/brands/?cm_sp=GlobalHeader--Products|Brands--Home My concern is that will either changes help or destroy our SEO results?
Web Design | | Mobile_ID0 -
/index.php/ What is its purpose and does it hurt SEO?
Hello Moz Forum, I am still in the process of cleaning up the lack of attention to detail and betrayal set by our soon to be ex-SEO company. You can see a previous question I ask regarding betrayal SEO. I am analyzing every page on our website and i am noticing this /index.php/ in most of our URLs. We want to leave our expression engine cms and convert to wordpress. I have been reading about index.php but most of it is over my head for now. What does concern me is the "layman's" findings i am seeing through analytics. Our main domain has two URLs. one that ends in .com and the other ends in .com/index.php/ The one that ends in .com has a higher page rank than the ladder. And there are other internal pages with the same two variations. Can someone please explain to me what is /index.php/ ? what are the benefits of it? what are the cons? What will happen to my site once we move to wordpress? As always, your comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Web Design | | CamiloSC0 -
Responsive design or mobile website for SEO
Because domains with a mobile version have better rankings in Google then domains with only a deskop version we're considering a mobile website. My web developer says that a m.domain.com is duplicated with the domain.com, and he recommends a responsive design. What is better for SEO positions in mobiles devices. A m.domain mobile website or a responsive design. What are influential factors?
Web Design | | remkoallertz0 -
Best layout pages for SEO
Dear all, what would be the ideal layout of a webpage for SEO? How would a homepage and landingspage look like? Thanks in advance! Best regards, Ben
Web Design | | HMK-NL0 -
Video SEO?
What is the best way to get SEO benefits from video? Which service is best? YouTube, Vimeo or any other? Or is best just to upload direct to my own site? But then how would I handle mobile devices i.e. iPad and iPhone? How does one go about marketing a video? Thanks
Web Design | | bronxpad0 -
Can including advertising slots have a negative effect on SEO?
Can including advertising slots at the top and side of pages have a negative effect on SEO? Can Google detect these advertising slots? Can they work our advertising pixels to page content pixels ratio? Any ideas, suggestions, comments and opinions are greatly appreciated!
Web Design | | Peter2640 -
How is link juice split between navigation?
Hey All, I am trying to understand link juice as it relates to duplicate navigation Take for example a site that has a main navigation contained in dropdowns containing 50 links (fully crawl-able and indexable), then in the footer of said page that navigation is repeated so you have a total of 100 links with the same anchor text and url. For simplicity sake will the link juice be divided among those 100 and passed to the corresponding page or does the "1st link rule" still apply and thus only half of the link juice will be passed? What I am getting at is if there was only one navigation menu and the page was passing 50 link juice units then each of the subpages would get passed 1link juice unit right? but if the menu is duplicated than the possible link juice is divided by 100 so only .5 units are being passed through each link. However because there are two links pointing to the same page is there a net of 1 unit? We have several sites that do this for UX reasons but I am trying to figure out how badly this could be hurting us in page sculpting and passing juice to our subpages. Thanks for your help! Cheers.
Web Design | | prima-2535090