Use Internal Search pages as Landing Pages?
-
Hi all
Just a general discussion question about Internal Search pages and using them for SEO. I've been looking to "noindexing / follow" them, but a lot of the Search pages are actually driving significant traffic & revenue.
I've over 9,000 search pages indexed that I was going to remove, but after reading this article (https://www.oncrawl.com/technical-seo/seo-internal-search-results/) I was wondering if any of you guys have had success using these pages for SEO, like with using auto-generated content. Or any success stories about using the "noindexing / follow"" too.
Thanks!
-
I also want to know how to increase the Authority of my website. I have taken the Moz course to learn the SEO to give their services. Can you guide more?
-
Hi Guillaume_L
I'd presume your idea is fine, looks like a good idea! As long as you keep the number of URL parameters to one or two like outlined in the article you shared, or you'll end up with millions/billions of URL's. It'll also help keep your Page Titles/Descriptions shorter if you only have 1 or 2 parameters set up. I'd suggest noindexing any pages that have more than 2 parameters chosen.
Seems like you'll be doing something similar to what AirBNB are doing, so I think you should be good to go!
-
I actually found this link interesting: https://thecontentworks.uk/dynamic-pages-seo-friendly/.
It seems to me like generating dynamic content delivers a better user experience, and creates less risk of duplicate content/errors. It would be odd if Google penalized me for this.
-
Hi Guys,
I fell on this topic while searching a SEO friendly solution to a site I am currently building and would love to have your insights on this as it is directly related to having internal search results indexed on Google.
I am currently building an industry-specific small business directory (ex: Plumber) in Wordpress. The way I initially set it up is that when the user gets on the home page (ex: Find Plumbers in your area), they select the location they are interested in from a dropdown (ex: Miami) and the site returns a list of Plumbers that serve this location. I set up the results page as being an Archive that displays results linked to the search query, in this case, a location. The URLs of the search results look like www.company.com/plumber/?_location=Miami.
This said, I am not expecting people to find my home page on Google, but rather a specific location, which is an internal search result.
While everyone seems to agree that internal search results are not supposed to be indexed, my alternative would be to build a page for every location, which would create hundreds of new pages with duplicate content (I have a FAQ about how to select the best plumber on the same page below the results).
I also looked around and Yelp has a similar approach for the location results (ex: https://www.yelp.ca/search?cflt=plumbing&find_loc=Toronto%2C+ON)
Any thoughts on this use case?
Thanks
-
That's a great question. If you have pages that are generating revenue and ranking really well. I'd be hesitant to remove them from the index. Like the article mentions, Wayfair generates a huge amount of search traffic through these auto-generated internal search pages. If these are considered high quality and ranking well in Google, I would probably recommend leaving them alone.
If you want to trim some of these down, I'd use Google Analytics to find ones that aren't generating organic traffic/revenue. You could consider adding the "noindex" tag to those.
In general it is best practice to remove internal search pages from Google as they can contribute to a large amount of index bloat. However, I wouldn't reduce any that you see are performing well.
I'd be happy to take a look if you have any other questions!
-
I don't think that you should be looking at those from a SEO perspective. Why? If some people landed there through the search engines, this means that they have found the result in the SERP useful. This is much more important that the SEO. There are many who work for SEO, but do not manage to attract interest from those who search Google or other SE. So, keep and develop you internal search pages.
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
-
Create Page Titles from H1 using Yoast?
I'm working on a site that has 280 blog posts that have either been migrated from an old CMS site or created on the Dev version of the new WordPress site. We've written 280 unique meta descriptions so they don't truncate but it there a quick way I can export the current H1s and then import them into Yoast so they are set as the Page Titles? I've written unique Page Titles and meta descriptions for all the Service and Products page and just want a way to speed up the blog posts as their H1s are really good and what I would use as Page Titles anyway. Any help, greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Marketing_Today0 -
Should I deindex my pages?
I recently changed the URLs on a website to make them tidier and easier to follow. I put 301s in place to direct all the previous page names to the new ones. However, I didn't read moz's guide which says I should leave the old sitemap online for a few weeks afterwards. As I result, webmaster tools is showing duplicate page titles (which means duplicate pages) for the old versions of the pages I have renamed. Since the old versions are no longer on the sitemap, google can no longer access them to find the 301s I have put in place. Is this a problem that will fix itself over time or is there a way to quicken up the process? I could use webmaster tools to remove these old urls, but I'm not sure if this is recommended. Alternatively, I could try and recreate the old sitemap, but this would take a lot of time.
Technical SEO | | maxweb0 -
Banned Page
I have been using a 3rd party checker on indexed pages in google. It has shown several banned pages. I type the page in and it comes up. But it is nowhere to be found for me to delete it. It is not in the wordpress pages. It also shows up in the duplicate content section in my campaigns in moz.com. I can find the page to delete it. If it is banned then I do not want to redirect it to the correct page. Any ideas on how to fix this?
Technical SEO | | Roots70 -
What is the advantage of using sub domains instead of pages on the root domain?
Have a look at this example http://bannerad.designcrowd.com/ For each category of design, they have a landing page on the sub domain. Wouldn't it be better to have them as part of the same domain? What is the strategy behind using sub domains?
Technical SEO | | designquotes0 -
If a permanent redirect is supposed to transfer SEO from the old page to the new page, why has my domain authority been impacted?
For example, we redirected our old domain to a new one (leaving no duplicate content on the old domain) and saw a 40% decrease in domain authority. Isn't a permanent redirect supposed to transfer link authority to the place it is redirecting to? Did I do something wrong?
Technical SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Duplicates on the page
Hello SEOMOZ, I've one big question about one project. We have a page http://eb5info.com/eb5-attorneys and a lot of other similar pages. And we got a big list of errors, warnings saying that we have duplicate pages. But in real not all of them are same, they have small differences. For example - you select "State" in the left sidebar and you see a list on the right. List on the right panel is changing depending on the what you selecting on the left. But on report pages marked as duplicates. Maybe you can give some advices how to improve quality of the pages and make SEO better? Thanks Igor
Technical SEO | | usadvisors0 -
Secondary Pages Indexed over Primary Page
I have 4 pages for a single product Each of the pages link to the Main page for that product Google is indexing the secondary pages above my preferred landing page How do I fix this?
Technical SEO | | Bucky0
