What to do about endless size pages

[94501]

I'm working on a site that sells products that come in many different sizes. One product may come in 30 sizes.The products themselves are identical, except for the size. There are collections pages that are all of several kinds of product in a particular size and then there are individual product pages of one product the specific size. Collections pages for widgets size 30 is the same content as widgets size 29. A single product page for gold-widget-size-30 is the same content as the single product page  gold-widget-size-29.

To make matters worse, they all have the same tags and very little written content. The site is in Shopify. Last month there were almost 400 pages that produced visits on organic, mostly in the 1 to 4 per month range, but all together about 1000 visits.

There are several hundred more that produced no traffic in organic, but are duplicate (except for size) and part of this giant ball of tangled string.

What do you think I should do?

Thanks... Mike

[94501]

Hi Nigel,

Thanks for the message. So, just to cap on this, I've got:

150 pages that got any kind of organic landing last month.

115 of those pages are 1 visit out 13000 visits

525 pages in the sitemap

4300 pages in Google's index

if you were me you would noindex/de-index all but about 50 that either have traffic or am working on it and then noindex/deindex/remove from sitemap 4250 pages?

How would I even get a list of everything in Google's index?

Just wondering about the actual process for fixing this.

Thanks! Best... Mike

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi Michael,

Yes - OK forget the brand pages - I had to make some assumptions from what you had written.

Cut it down and write contextually strong descriptive content 3-400 words at category & Sub-cat level.

I work with a lot of eCommerce sites that have fallen victim to pernicious tags, sizes and colours appending themselves to every version of a page.

It might look great having 50000 pages splattered all over Google but can you honestly say that they provide value and a good UX for the consumer?

Make each page sing for it's supper. Have a keywords or small group of contextually similar content for each page and add the written content and you will nail it.

Use MOZ Keyword explorer to provide you will the closely matched keywords,

I hope that helps,

Kind Regards

Nigel

[94501]

Hi Egol & Nigel,

Egol, I always appreciate your answers over the years - thank you!

The site has a Moz domain authority of 37. It's in a organic/product niche with Amazon, Nordstrom, and about a buzzillion other national brand retailers. It makes and sells only its own products.

When you say, "if you have a weak site and you need highly optimized pages to get the traffic, then I might keep things "as is," I get confused. As it is, we have an endless number of duplicate pages. Shouldn't I just pick my winners (adding content there), noindex/nofollow and de-index?

If so, what do I do about the ones that randomly produce in organic search now? Same thing and suffer the loss?

Nigel, super interesting post... thank you! I'm not sure I totally understood everything. The site is the brand, not a retailer of others brands. In any case, you're saying cut it way down?

Thanks!

Best... Mike

[Nigel_Carr]

Sorry but I think the opposite.

If you are a weak site with few back links and a low domain authority then you need to concentrate as much juice through as fewer pages as possible whilst retaining a strong fairly flat hierarchy. You don't have the option of doing nothing as you are cannibalizing your site in search.

I deduce from what you are saying that you have this problem.

Site/size
Site/Collection-1/Size
Site/Collection-2/Sub-collection-1/Size

So the size filter can be applied to any part of the site at collection level. You may also have

Site/Brand/Size
Site/Brand/Collection/Size
Site/Brand/Collection/Sun-Collection-1/Size

Then you will have maybe

Site/Sale/Size
Site/Sale/Collection-1/Size
Site/Sale/Colelction-1/Sub-collection-1/Size

On top of this problem you will have

Site/Brand/Product-1/Size-29
Site/Brand/Product-1/Size-30

Etc

I hope I am right!

Solution for Brands and Categories

it is better to have size as a tag and noindex/nofollow the tag group so that none of these extra pages get indexed in Google. This will make an enormous difference to your website slashing the number of pages with skinny content and visits right down.

You simply can not have these pages:

Site/Brand/Size

Competing with the main brand page ie

Site/Brand/

I don't know how many sizes you have but say there are 20, then it's like having 20 duplicates of the brand page, the category page, the category/sub category page.

Solution For Products.

Have one product page:

Site/Brand/Product-1

The sizes can then drop down on the page without changing the URL - the canonical on any size is thus

Site/Brand/Product-1

Some sites will append the tag for size thus:

Site/Brand/Product-1#size30

With the size as an attribute - everything after the # is not indexable as Google does not go beyond a #

It would also be prudent to do this for colour as well otherwise you will get mass duplication at colour level. That should also be treated as a tag or attribute that does not append to every version of a page.

I really do hope I have understood this correctly.

I repeat, You don't have the option of doing nothing as you are cannibalizing your site for search.

eCommerce site structure is core to my business.

Kind Regards

Nigel

[EGOL]

My answer would depend upon two things... 1) the strength of your website, and 2) the number and strength of your competitors.

If you have a really strong site and weak competition then I would have a small number of pages with a lot of products on each page.  It will probably rank well against the competition for even the very specific queries.

However, if you have a weak site and you need highly optimized pages to get the traffic, then I might keep things "as is".

We started out with the first option and that worked great for years.  Now the competition is getting fierce and we might go with a larger number of pages to keep holding them off.