Magento technical SEO issues
-
Hi This is lots of questions and don't expect full answers but if anyone can help or put me in touch with some who can that would be great
so here are 3 issues we have from some auditing our site
Firstly on pages like https://www.tidy-books.co.uk/shop-with-us/sort-by/price/sort-direction/desc so any pages where there is a sortby the cananoical link doesn't seem to be working correctly.
So for here it is https://www.tidy-books.co.uk/shop-with-us/sort-by/price/sort-direction/desc"/>
but should be https://www.tidy-books.co.uk/shop-with-us"/>
secondly with have a lot of duplicate title tags mainly caused from the blog and the above problem see-> http://prntscr.com/b2t9xe
but regarding the blog we have an issue where 2 canonical appearing for example this page
https://www.tidy-books.co.uk/blog/page/19/there are 2 canonical links appearing
https://www.tidy-books.co.uk/blog/page/19/"/>
we want it to be this
https://www.tidy-books.co.uk/blog/"/>Thirdly
Our mobile usability issues have gone up a lot see- > http://prntscr.com/b2tado
I can see what the issue is that this folder https://www.tidy-books.co.uk/skin/frontend/tidybooks/default/images/ was being crawled by google and contains lots of 'index of' pages. I've disallowed directory in robots.txt as shown here -> http://prntscr.com/b2tbc5is that correct?
any help would be great
Just to let you know
we use magento v1.7
we use SEO suite ultimate extension
and we use fishpigs wordpress extension
thanks
-
Hello,
The source code on those pages have a Robots Index,Follow tag. This should be noindex, follow. They also have two rel = canonical tags, which point to different URLs, thus conflicting with each other.
Really I would have to log into the back-end to see what's going on, but I'm guessing one of the rel canonical tags is being added by Mageworks or Yoast and the other is default from Wordpress. You may require some custom coding to the blog template, and I recommend working with a developer if you can't figure it out on your own. There are lots of Wordpress developers on sites like Upwork and Guru who could probably get this done for you for a minimal investment.
-
Thanks Everett for you response to be honest I think I'm going to separate these questions out on different post as suggested as they concern different elements.
For question 1 - we use a separate layered navigation module by Mandev so I guess by first port of call is to speak to them. Mageworks refuse to deal with that side. There are a ton of options available, plus all sort-by options are NOINDEX, FOLLOW Robots Meta Header.
For question 2 - We do use yoast plugin and I have noindexed all relevant bits causing issues but whether it's an integration issue between Magento and wordpress I'm not sure as I can see no referencing to yoast in our page source code. Below is example for some of the duplicate tags we are getting, I have noindex pages using yoast in wordpress however the code is showing index follow. Also you will see the 2 canonical links as well and no mention of yoast.
Duplicate title tags
|
The Tidy Books UK Blog
|
Displaying 30 of 37
|
-
Hello Geraldine,
I'm going to rephrase your questions here just to make sure I understand them correctly.
1. Your Sort-By URLs are using self-referencing rel= canonical tags.
When I looked into this issue I found that some of these pages no longer exist and produce a 404 error page. Example:
https://www.tidy-books.co.uk/childrens-bookcases-shelves/sort-by/position/sort-direction/desc/l/letters:5I did find some that I was able to access and verified the problem above. You should contact MageWorks to ask if there is a way you can fix this with the SEO plugin you're using. If not, I suggest adding a disallow statement in the robots.txt file for the /sort-by/ folders to keep them from being accessed and indexed. Then I would go into Google Search Console (GSC) and remove that entire directory from the index, as described here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663419?hl=en .
2. You have duplicate title tags, mostly caused by the blog and the sort-by URLs discussed above.
If you're not using the Yoast SEO plugin for Wordpress you should be. Without seeing the report and knowing exactly what those URLs are with duplicate title tags, I can't help answer this question very well. Common examples are Tag pages and paginated Category pages. I usually advise blog owners to disallow the Tag pages in the Robots.txt file and removing the directory from Google SERPs using GSC URL Removal Tool, as described above.
3. Image directory pages are causing mobile usability errors in GSC and you have blocked them from being indexed.
Because those index pages do not need to be accessed in order to render the page, I don't see any problem with blocking those in the robots.txt file. However, you do NOT want to block anything that needs to be accessed in order to render the page so I would advise you to use the Robots.txt tester tool in GSC to make sure your Robots.txt code is not inadvertently blocking those image files as well, such as https://www.tidy-books.co.uk/skin/frontend/tidybooks/us/images/eco.png . As long as you aren't blocking access to the actual image files, only to the directory pages, your solution is OK.
It would be better to serve an error code on those pages though. Best practice is to not allow folder index pages to be loaded like that. Otherwise, it creates a bit of a security risk. Often webmasters will show a "403: Forbidden" code on those URLs.
I hope this helps. Please feel free to respond with any updates or clarifications. Hopefully others will chime in now that your issues are broken up into component parts. In the future, you'll get better responses by asking three different questions instead of lumping them all into one. This is because someone my know how to help with one of your questions, but not the others, and are less inclined to answer the one they can help with because they can't answer the others.
Good luck!
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
-
Barba Plugin and SEO
Hello, community! My client wants to use the barba.js plugin for their new site. What are the implications for SEO?
Technical SEO | | SimpleSearch0 -
Big SEO Changes
Firstly, this is quite extensive so thank you to anyone who answers some or all of the below! So this is quite a lengthy ordeal, and I'm going to start by saying that I'm no SEO expert (yet). I've paid for SEO for years and only on the odd occasion has it made any real difference. It has come to the point now where I've spent so much money on SEO over the years with practically no benefit that I can't afford to do it anymore, so I am teaching myself. So, back in July my website was hacked for a total sum of three weeks. My SEO/Hosting company at the time didn't do anything about it, let the hack sit there and didn't even take the site offline. It just so happened that at the time I was changing over to a new site at the time anyway, so I launched the new site (completely different in structure to the old one), did all of the relevant 301 redirects, and my traffic hasn't recovered since. I have gone from around 100-150 daily visits to 0-10. The descriptions, keywords, alt image tags, h1 & 2, meta data, etc. is all much better (a lot of it was empty on the previous site) on the new site than it was on the previous site so I was assuming it would be better, but it isn't. Anyone got any suggestions as to why this might be? Here are some specific questions: Canonical Problem? My site is ecommerce and lists some products in several categories, that has resulted in a high duplicate content rate. Is it expected/accepted by google that this would be the case for an ecommerce website or do I need to sort out some serious canonical urls to fix the issue? The site structure of my website could also be a problem, but I'm not qualified enough to know for sure. If you view a product/sub-category, then remove the category section of that link, the product will still appear. I don't know if this structure is good or not? i.e. if you click both links below, the link will appear all the same. http://thespacecollective.com/space-clothing/nasa-and-space-t-shirts http://thespacecollective.com/nasa-and-space-t-shirts Is this a problem for SEO? Duplicate Product Tag Problem? I have many duplicate product tags appearing on many products, should these be blocked in the robots.txt? i.e. http://thespacecollective.com/space-memorabilia/space-flown/apollo-11-flown-cm-meteorite-acrylic http://thespacecollective.com/space-memorabilia/space-flown/apollo-11-flown Site Code Structure When choosing the template I would use for my website I did not stop to consider if the code was SEO friendly, this on my part was due to my ignorance on the subject. Is the site structure SEO-friendly or is it hindering my efforts? Website: http://thespacecollective.com Again, thank you to anyone who takes the time to read/care about the issues facing a newbie. My only option now is to learn SEO myself (which is well overdue), so any advice/answers are appreciated!
Technical SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Mutiple domains with similar SEO
ok we have one main domain about our company which is about renting luxury and exotic cars. (PrestigeLuxuryRentals.com). We own other domains with similar keywords,meta,etc on the URL and SEO For example, we own domains like exoticcarrentalorlando/exoticcarrentaltampa, with same background and design as main site but, we have different content than main site to avoid duplicate. Keep in mind, all the other domain we own, all have same template with our companies name on it but, it doesnt have any content or link that pertains to main site. is this a problem?
Technical SEO | | prestigeluxuryrentals.com0 -
SEO for sub domains
I've recently started to work on a website that has been previously targeting sub domain pages on its site for its SEO and has some ok rankings. To better explain, let me give an example...A site is called domainname.com. And has subdomains that they are targeted for seo (i.e. pageone.domainname.com, pagetwo.domainname.com, pagethree.domianname.com). The site is going through a site re-development and can reorganise its pages to another URL. What would be best way to approach this situation for SEO? Ideally, I'm tempted to recommend that new targeted pages be created - domainname.com/pageone, domainname.com/pagetwo, domainname.com/pagethree, etc - and to perform a 301 redirect from the old pages. Does a subdomain page structure (e.g. pageone.domainname.com) have any negative effects on SEO? Also, is there a good way to track rankings? I find that a lot of rank checkers don't pick up subdomains. Any tips on the best approach to take here would be appreciated. Hope I've made sense!
Technical SEO | | Gavo0 -
What are the SEO implications of URLs that use a # in them?
I have several clients who have begun to ask questions about sites that are designed to look like a single page. When you click on a link, the URL changes but it uses a # before (i.e. http://www.kelloggs.com/teamusa**/#**/teamusa/athletes/kerri-walsh.html. What are the SEO implications of having a page set up this way? I noticed that Google has indexed this page but the indexed URL does not include a #. Is Google indexing a separate version of this page? Any insights would be really helpful! Thanks
Technical SEO | | VMLYRDiscoverability0 -
SEO Checklist
Ok I know that this would be a huge over-simplification but I am wondering if there is (at least a bird's eye view) a checklist of SEO do's and dont's? I checked to see if something like this existed but could not find one. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks~
Technical SEO | | bobbabuoy0 -
seo moz crawl diagnosis
Hi seomozzers, We are creating a brand new website for a client and I would like to run an seo moz crawl to fix what has been done wrong. So my question is it ok to run an SEO moz crawl with a dev URL? Are final URLs and dev URLs will give me the same results or not? Basically, Should I wait for getting the final URL or is it ok to run a crawl under a dev URL such as www.dev2.example.com or http://183.2564.2864? Thank you 🙂
Technical SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Basic SEO HTML
Hello Everyone, One place I am weak is coding for SEO. I need to get better. One question I do have is can anyone explain why it's important to place css and java script files in an external file? How do you do this and how do you know if it's already being done? If it has not been done on a site is it hard to go back and do? I understand this is important from a site load time issue Thanks, Bill P.S. Can anyone recommend a resource where I can learn proper html coding for SEO? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | wparlaman0