SEO impact classifieds website
-
Hi, I'm part of an organization running a classifieds platform in Spain. (Mercadonline.es) We are hit by Google penalties since a few weeks, possibly caused by numerous errors we are experiencing. Most frequent errors are 404's and duplicate content (titles tags etc) since the nature of our website is dynamic. Many ads change daily, are added or removed, causing Googlebots (and others) to flag us and not being able to see our more unique content. Until what part of our platform should we be indexed? Since we have +34,000 pages indexed (mostly due to internal filter pages) I would need a systematic solution for us to display relevant and unique content, with enough usage of keywords that can bring us back up - we are actually ranked <50 on google for most of our main keywords. It is costing us precious time and money since we can only aquire our visitors (adwords etc) and not being to attract any organically.
I can go in more detail with someone who can give me a bit more direction.
Your answer is much appreciated!
Ivor
-
Ivor,
i think i counted correctly:
- above the content main section
- right next to your own ad (which Google also counts as Ad)
- Mid content in between the audi's (the page i looked)
- at the bottom of the left side bar.
So you actually have 5 ad blocks on your site. Then again, the first ad block should not be that high on the page. Delete the above the content one, and the bottom left sidebar one and add some content before using the block next to your own ads. That might work for you. But at this moment you are violating Google's policy on using ads (IMHO)
I would defiantly add more content, more text less ads. Maybe 1 or 2 ad blocks on at least a 1000 words ? I never measured a ratio that works. Maybe a good idea to do that sometime.
As for the errors, can you give a few examples of the pages that are duplicate, I will look into it a bit further.
Regards
Jarno
-
Hi Jarno,
We don't have more than 3 blocks per page, since we always follow Google Adsense guidelines. Perhaps you counted wrongly since there is one block that is our own ad space (anuncio top). And every time we receive warnings of this nature we would adjust immediately. But perhaps we would need to add more text/content instead of only links and ads, in order to respect the ratio?
I think the big problem is also our duplicate content. (see screenshot) and I would have to see how we can canonicalize this...
-
Hi Jarno,
Thanks for your swift response. I will look into it asap and revert possibly with comments and other questions.
Kind regards,
Ivor
-
Ivor,
what I would do is make sure you update your sitemap.xml daily and also have Google scan it every day (add it by hand in your webmaster tools or use another tactic). That way you are constantly telling Google where all the pages are. Besides that I would recommend having the right structure for pages that no longer exist so they give a correct 404's and make your pages canonicalized for content (but only if you indeed have unique content). 34000 pages are hard to inspect for problems but you would have to start somewhere.
I also noted that you have a lot of adsense blocks and other ads blocks on the pages. Google Adsenses insist that you use no more then 3 ad blocks on 1 page. If I look at your page I see at least 4 blocks. So I would drastically dial this number down and keep them as low as possible on the page. You now have one above the main content (http://www.mercadonline.es/ads/coches/9909). I would never do this. Start with content (maybe 3 or 4 paragraphs before you introduce you first ad block. I work with adsense a lot and I know the policy of Google on this. This might be why you got hit by the penalties. Panda and Penguin both look at the quality of a page and the ration between ads and content.
Hope this helps you some.
Regards
Jarno
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
-
Should we reinstate the old website?
In a nut shell we had a great site that performed well and grew month on month but it perhaps looked a bit dated. A decision was taken to build a new site and the job given to a PR agency for some reason. All the titles, H1 tags, page content and url structure was changed and now the site has drop 50% of organic traffic. I've been tasked with trying to rebuild rankings but so far it's not going well. A snapshot of the old website still exists and i'm very tempted to have it reinstated in the hopes that our traffic will recover. What are your thoughts?
Technical SEO | | etienneb0 -
Do subdomains negatively impact SEO
If we want to eliminate one of our domains and consolidate it with our main domain by the subdomain approach, would that negatively impact our SEO? Example: change www.xyz.org to www.xyz.abcd.org, Thanks, in advance, for your feedback.
Technical SEO | | Shirley.Fenlason0 -
Mobile SEO for mobile site
Hey there! I own a desktop website and just now finishe building a mobile site ( not a responsive design one) and I wish to start ranking my site on mobile serch result page. due to the automatic redirection from desktop website to the mobile site im confused: where should link to in order to SEO my mobile site? should i link to domin.com and assume the link juice is passing on? or should i link to m.domim.com?
Technical SEO | | logophone0 -
Duplicate Title - Shopping Website
My website is showing with errors due to duplicate titles, these errors add up to over 150 errors. The problem is a lot of my products are similar, just in different lengths, colors etc. For example
Technical SEO | | adelemaree
http://www.ugg.org.au/en/classic-candy-short-australia-ugg-boots/48-classic-candy-short-australia-ugg-boots-blue.html
http://www.ugg.org.au/en/classic-candy-button-short-australia-ugg-boots/31-classic-candy-button-short-chocolate.html
http://www.ugg.org.au/en/classic-candy-button-short-australia-ugg-boots/28-classic-candy-button-short-black.html How can I avoid this error without having to merge all my products and colors into one page? As that would make my catalogue look too small! Thanks in advance0 -
Does Bitly hurt your SEO?
I often use bit.ly or Google URL shortener in links when other websites post my articles so I can track clicks. However, I am thinking this may HURT my SEO given that it is taking away a back link to my website. Is that logic correct ? If so, what is a good way to be able to track clicks if a website posts your article without jeopardizing the SEO value?
Technical SEO | | StreetwiseReports1 -
Seo on a dk site
hi my client has asked if we can seo their dk site , my question is does all link building and article submission have to be in danish
Technical SEO | | Westernoriental0 -
URL content format - Any impact on SEO
I understand that there is a suggested maximum length for a URL so as not to be penalized by search engines. I'm wondering if I should if should optimize our ecommerce categories to be descriptive or use abbreviations to help keep the URL length to a minimum? Our products are segmented into many categories, so many products URL's are pretty long if we go the descriptive route. I've also heard that removing the category component entirely from a product URL can also be considered. I'm fairly new to all this SEO stuff, so I'm hoping the community can share their knowledge on the impact of these options. Cheers, Steve
Technical SEO | | SteveMaguire0 -
Does ViewState affect SEO Rankings
We are redesigning our website and looking at our large data in the viewstate hidden field. Our thoughts are to move to bottom of page but our developers are stating this is an old myth and no resent documentation if it improves our SEO. Does ViewState (big data in hidden fields ) effect SEO in any way? If ViewState (hidden field) is present at the end of HTML document instead of near the start of HTML document then will it increase our ranking in search engines? Does Google or any other engine read the hidden fields? or do they ignore them? Can you point me to some valid documentation to back this up? Feed back is appreciated. Cathy
Technical SEO | | SEO-Team0