Wordpress SEO for ecommerce store
-
I have been working on a wordpress ecommerce website and want to check that I am doing something correctly so hope someone can help. The Wordpress theme did not allow for an introductory content so the developer built a content page Instead to work as a front end category page so there was more flexibility. I have set the product categories to follow- no index and set the content page as the canonical version and optimised the content page.. question is - is that the right thing to do?
-
Hi Allie! Did you work this out? We'd love an update.
-
Hi Dan - I have found that you can access the default product categories by using the internal search - so thanks for highlighting that possibility
-
Hi Allie
Yes, that sounds correct. You basically don't want to default category pages indexed, because you have custom ones now.
Also - if you don't even want users to find the default category pages at all (because it might confuse them etc) I would also make sure they are not linked to or otherwise accessible. There's no need for users to find them and for Google to be even crawling them. This might not be technically possible depending on your theme, and it won't be a huge detriment, but something to think about if you have control over it.
-
Hi andr,
haha all good I re read my question back and I was unclear in the fact that on the theme the product categories by default do not allow text on the page. If the developer had used short code to replicate the products in that non indexed category to show on the content page is that the correct thing to do. I hoped it was but starting to second doubt myself tbh
-
Hi Allie,
I think I understand what you are saying.
Just to clarify, are you asking if optimising the canonical page the right thing to do? It sounds to me like what you are doing is correct. No-indexing the category pages will help prevent duplication, or you could also canonical those back as well.
-Andy
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 there any SEO issues we should be aware of on Gutenberg?
We are launching a new website and switching to WP 5.0 Gutenberg. Are there any issues we should be aware of related to SEO with the new platform?
Technical SEO | | AegisLiving0 -
Some SEO 2016 questions
Hello MOZ Community, I have some questions where the following is still working for seo in 2016: Is an exact keyword in the domain still a good start? If a domain contains the most important keyword does one still need subfolders with that keyword in the url? Do you need multiple subpages so the main url becomes stronger? Is linkbuilding still the number one factor? Thank you for your thoughts!
Technical SEO | | mhenze0 -
Coming soon SEO
Hi, I was wondering what is the best practice to redirect all the links juice by redirecting all the pages of your website to a coming soon page. The coming soon page will point to the domain.com, not to a subfolder. Should I move the entire website to a subfolder and redirect this folder to the coming soon page? Thanks
Technical SEO | | bigrat950 -
Recommendation for SEO plugin for Wordpress
Dear Moz Community, Could I pick your brains on SEO plugins for WordPress? Our web developer has installed an SEO plugin called Yoast, and I am not quite sure of it's efficiency. The problem we have at the moment is that the Page Title is not updating on Google the way we anticipated. To solve this issue we unchecked forced rewrite under the title options, but this had no effect. For instance our name on Google appears as Man Van London all the time, despite any amendments we make it always has Man Van London at the start of the title. ( website: www.manvanlondon.co.uk) If Yoast is the best SEO plugin for wordpress, is there any solution to fix this issue? Or is anyone familiar with another plugin? Does anyone suggest to not use plugin's at all? Thank you for your time. Looking forward to your wisdom. Monica
Technical SEO | | monicapopa0 -
How a change in IP address affects SEO?
Our domain is pretty mature, has several quality backlinks - ranks well for our key terms - but we need to change our IP address because we use a cloud provider and it's a shared IP that has had a security breach. How will this affect rankings? www.layer7.com
Technical SEO | | Layer7Tech0 -
Will invalid HTML code generated by WordPress affect SEO efforts?
Hi all, I'm new to SEOmoz and SEO in general really. I run a small but well regarded freelance website and graphic design business, and until very recently had an employee who handled the SEO side of things. I'm now looking to step into this role myself and hopefully learn the in's and out's of SEO. I've no doubt there will be much to learn, but the SEOmoz tools and it's community seem excellent and helpful. My question then is basically, if WordPress generated HTML code can have an effect on SEO, when it's reported as invalid by tools such as the W3C HTML validator? I'm used to hand coding the majority of my websites for clients, where creating valid HTML and CSS code is something I can do with relative ease. A new client however wants to use WordPress - for ease of updating the site content themselves. The client does however consider any potential SEO implications to be a very important factor in choosing a hand coded vs. WordPress based website. I am aware that WordPress itself is just a means of generating HTML code, and that to the search engines there is no difference between this and the hand coded websites I usually produce. However if WordPress is generating HTML that is being reported as invalid, would this make the search engines penalise the site? On a second note, will the search engines look negatively on a WordPress site where it is being used as a standard website, and the content may not be updated as frequently, as say, a blog? Thanks for your time, and I look forward to hearing your suggestions.
Technical SEO | | SavilleWolf0 -
Good Seo Titles
Hi. Mybsite is www.theprinterdepo.com and I am trying to find a good template for my product/page titles. Many users search our products by the product model: something like Q2121X. Some other users search by: hp 1320 printer or just 1320 printer. They will almost never search for hp 1320 new, or hp 1320 refurbished. My website is developed in magento, and we have a SEO plugin in which I can put a template for the URL and also a template for the product title. I was thinking for title and URL. title + condition + productmodel However many users search for: "refurbished printers" and maybe its better that our products say something like this: HP 1320 Refurbished Printer, instead of: HP 1320 Printer - Refurbished - Q2121X Please let me know your suggestions.
Technical SEO | | levalencia10 -
Site forwarding - seo friendly or not?
Recently i decided to change my domain name - and although i have written several useful and working .htacess files with 301 redirects, this one became more complicated by the fact that I went through TWO domain name changes, before settling on the second one. Having seen some issues with the browser not being able to interpret correctly the .htaccess file, i temporarily suspended the .htaccess file, and opted instead for site forwarding. I don't know the mechanics behind site forwarding, or whether it is seo friendly or just a method for ip addressing, a sort of pseudo domain name server record change.
Technical SEO | | highersourcesites
I let it lie for a few weeks, until the dust settled, and yesterday put back the basic .htaccess file, with a 301 redirect, which directs the original domain name to be forwarded to the new one ( also it has a conditional in place to solve canonical issues). It works fine. But right now i am not seeing the link juice, the domain age, the domain page rank that it has. It has gone to zero, when it used to be three, sometimes four. I also made the change of address using webmaster tools. How long ( forever?) will it take to see my old page rank come back, even if it loses 10% from the change? And does site forwarding help or hinder seo ranking?0