Page/Website Structure
-
Hello again Mozzers,
We have a category, lets call it widgets. Within widgets are about a hundred or so products. For usability my predecessor made the following layout
Widgets Main Cateogry - Links off homepage - (no content just links to the 3 sub-categories)
- Widgets by Resolution
---- About 20 subcategories
eg. 0.1 Resolution widgets
0.2 resolution widgets
- Widgets by Capacity
---- About 20 subcategories
eg. 1 capacity widgets
2 capacity widgets
- Widgets by Type
---- About 12 subcategoriesThis was a major improvement from a userbility perspective as it made a very complex product range navigatable by the major features or basic type. However, as you can imaging we now have 60+ very similiar pages all displaying very similiar products a nightmare for SEO. It also isnt ideal for user navigation as it take too many clicks to get to the products.
I propose the following fix, and i wanted your opinion.
Widget Main Category - Link from homepage (Consolidated with Widgets by Type)
-300 Words of content
-Links to the 12 Sub-type Catoregies (These are pages i can fill with content + products. This would give me a more ordinary structure of which I can focus each page to a keyword)The tricky part comes with incorporating the capacity and resolution options.
1 Browse Capacity Page
(20 sub categories all the same except capacity quantity & products)
1 Browse by Resolution Page
(20 sub categories all the same except resolution value & products)The owner want them, I was going to link from the main widgets page to each of these to give the customer the option. What I can't decide is how to deal with them from an SEO point of view. Should they be no-followed? canonicaled? Can there be any advantage to having so many pages covering slightly different variations or as i suspect it is dangerous to the overall health of the site.
To complicate things further, Canonical tags may not be an option due to an old magento version running that doesnt support them. Is there an alternative way around?
As always many thanks.
-
Cheers Everett.
You have definitely reset my thinking, id started to make it over complex for myself.
The content for the resolution / category pages will create a lot of duplicate issues due to the unavoidable similarities, i will take a combination of solutions provided here and try to consolidate resolution and capacity into broader categories that can be written about as you suggest with less overlap. I will look to no-index smaller categories that would be thin and cause issues but remain essential.
I will also stick to my plan and consolidate the "types of widget" onto the main widget page. This will move them a step up the hierarchy and allow me a wider scope of content on the main parent page.
All product urls are homepage.co.uk/product.html by default so shouldnt cause issue in multiple urls. I have also implimented automatic canonical tags on all cateogry and products to combat any accidental duplications.
-
OK Let's start again now that we know your hands are sort of tied - for now.
I would write some introductory copy for each category page and use it to help the visitor. For example:
Widgets Main Category
Add content to this page. Explain what to look for in a widget. How do I choose one? Should I shop by resolution, capacity, type? What are the differences between widget brands? Is one more "high end" and another more "entry level"? Where do I go from here?- Widgets by Resolution
Add content to this page. Explain the differences between various resolutions. What sort of resolution should I be looking for if I want to do This type of thing Vs That type of thing? What resolution do I need for the types of things I want to do? How can I get the best resolution for my budget?- 0.1 Resolution widgets
Add content to this page. What are 0.1 Resolution Widgets best for? What do they not do well? When should I go up to a higher resolution widget? Are these more entry-level? Are they designed to provide me with all of the features I need to get started with widgeting at a lower cost point? Show me the "value" of 0.1 widgets without making them sound "cheap". At the same time, if I need a higher resolution widget, point me to the next level up. - 0.2 resolution widgets
Add content to this page. What are the 0.2 resolution widgets good for? Why should I buy one of these instead of a less expensive 0.1 resolution widget? Do I need a 0.3 resolution widget, or will a 0.2 give me what I need? Should I be concerned with capacity and other options too?
- Widgets by Capacity So on and So Forth...
---- About 20 subcategories
eg. 1 capacity widgets
2 capacity widgets
- Widgets by Type
---- About 12 subcategoriesSo in the end you'll need to write about 55 pages of content for those three categories and their subcategories. You can probably knock this out in a week if you focus on this project. Just don't fill it with useless "SEO copy". Try to anticipate and answer a visitor's questions so they know what to do next.
Rel canonical (rel next prev doesn't seem to work well, though in theory it's supposed to) the paginated pages of each category or subcategory back to first page in that cat/sub-cat.
It is quite alright if the products listed in different categories overlap. Make sure that products which exist in multiple categories don't have multiple URLs going to them. This tends to happen when categories are put into the product page URL. If that is the case, we can discuss different ways to handle it, but I'll assume it's not an issue for now.
- 0.1 Resolution widgets
-
Im at the difficult point where developing filters etc are not a great option due to the age of our CMS. Before I can secure a greater budget I need to show results.
This rules out (for now) any mass changing of nav bars which are sadly a bit static. This means doing it via pure and fairly basic page structure at the moment. Hence my difficulty sorting out a normally fairly easy problem.
-
Lesley, the only problem with that otherwise good plan would be that those bolded pages don't seem to make good categories in-and-of themselves. For example, what's the difference between the "Widget" category landing page and the "Widgets by Resolution" landing page before any filters have been set?
ATP could you drastically reduce the amount of category pages by putting them into: Low, Medium, High Resolution options? Thus:
Widgets
- Widgets by Capacity (not a page, but a drop-down to select one of the below)
-
- High Resolution Widgets
-
- Medium Resolution Widgets
-
- Low Resolution Widgets
Then you could apply filters like price, color, rating... and use rel canonical tags to keep the filter URLs from being indexed on their own.
-
If I were doing the site the way I would more than likely do it is have your main bolded categories as actual categories. The for the sub categories that you have listed I would use a filtered navigation that is not indexed for them. One thing that would determine if I did that would be how many products are in the bolded categories as well. How many should be in the bolded categories? (when I say bolded I am talking about the ones you have in bold in your post)
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
-
How can I outrank a website whose brand is named specifically after a product / service (and mine is not!) ?
Hi everyone, I've been working hard on my on-page SEO lately so I can gain visibility for my website. The results have been great and I am now on top of the SERP for the services I propose. I think that my content is almost fully optimize and** I've respected all the best practices (both on-page and technical SEO)**. However, there is one problem I just can't deal with for I don't have the knowledge, hence this post. I'm pretty sure that this issue is quite common for SEO experts. Here the thing: I offer dental emergency services, which is my core business. I'm ranked 4th for that request in my area, which is good, but I'd like to rank 1st as** I have a better DA and content than the 3 websites outranking me**. Also, I'm the first result for any other related services such as "dental services" or "dentist". However, when it comes to the theme "dental emergency", I'm constantly outranked by the same 3 websites. I ran an audit on their website but **my content and technical SEO is way better **than theirs. I suppose that the only reason I'm behind them is because they used "dental emergency" in their **Brand name **and, therefore, in the Home page URL. Every time someone is looking up online for "dental emergency", these websites will be on top of the SERP as I think that Google is unable to know whether the users are specifically looking for their websites (aka Brand) or for "dental emergency" services. Here is an example of a competitor: https://www.urgencedentairedemontreal.com/ (urgence meaning emergency in French). His whole Brand name and URL have been built after the "dental emergency." service. On the contrary, **my Brand name does not mention "urgence". ** I see that as a trick that is confusing Google. The fact that my competitors named their Brand after a specific service I also offer is real pain for my SEO. I also think it's really unfair as I've put a lot of effort in designing a nice website with great UX and content. This is the kind of practice that should be penalized in my opinion. Please, does anyone know any way to resolve this issue?
On-Page Optimization | | AlexTL0 -
Single Page on my client's website is not crawling and indexing new changes. What could be the possible reason?
I made several changes on client's website on different pages, changed titles, add content on few pages, moved blog from subdomain to sub directory. Everything is crawled but there is one page on the website (not part of the blog) that isn't getting crawled in Google and picking up changes. The last crawl of the website is 2 days back whereas that page was last crawled on 30th sep. I just wanted to know the possible reasons and has anyone encountered this before?
On-Page Optimization | | MoosaHemani0 -
Area pages
As area pages are seen as trying to game google (see link below) is their a 'better way' to target multipe areas (100 odd)? https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2721311?hl=en Cheers
On-Page Optimization | | webguru20140 -
Impact of number of outgoing links on Page Rank of an optimized page?
What is the current best practice on preferred number of outbound links on a page you are trying to rank with: According to online resources form a pure page rank perspective a high number of outbound follow links can have a negative impact not only on child pages but also the page itself
On-Page Optimization | | thomaspro
http://pr.efactory.de/e-outbound-links.shtml Other resources suggest that particularly placing high quality outbound links on a page (nofollow) increases the trust and authority of a page Are there any other elements to keep in mind? Is the best practice to avoid any follow links on a page you want to rank well in Google for? Thanks /T0 -
Homepage title on pages/posts title
I want to see the title of the page/post. Right now it is indexing it like page name / homepage name site:forumlist.info Brief info about site
On-Page Optimization | | csfarnsworth
Build in wordpress
SEO Plugin "All in one SEO pack" Settings snapshot are available below http://i.imgur.com/G278Y1Z.png http://imgur.com/gb0YQUO http://imgur.com/fbXQgd1 http://imgur.com/atj3AS4 Anyone can guide me how to fix it?0 -
Local on-page SEO
If it feels like you are doing something wrong, then you 'probably' are... Local on-page SEO When optimising a page for local SEO, and trying tick all the usuals boxes, you find yourself adding words like 'golf clubs leeds' which sounds awful when part of a natural paragraph of text. Does Google recognise this poor use of grammar? We try to be as creative as possible, as not to offend the visitor, but it feels wrong... any advice? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | indicoll0 -
Ecommerce, Adding Content To Categories/Product Pages
In an eCommerce store, when is it appropriate to add quality category pages content and when is it more appropriate to add content to the actual product pages instead?
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
View all Page for Product Overview Pages
Hi everybody! We have an ecommerce site with product overview pages, where sometimes there are hundreds of products listed. Usually, we just display 30 and have a button where users can click to see 30 more - or all products listed at once. This is the overview page (as indexed in google): http://www.geschenkidee.ch/aussergewoehnliches.html
On-Page Optimization | | zeepartner
And this is the view-all page: http://www.geschenkidee.ch/aussergewoehnliches.html#all What should I do here? The product overview page will hardly generate more traffic by listing all products (because the overview page will rank for generic keywords, while the product keyword searches will be referred to the specific product pages themselves). I was originally thinking of using rel=canonical pointing to the view-all page. But this would just lead to longer load time. Should we just leave those overview pages or is there a best practice for how to deal with such pages? Thanks for your thoughts on this!0