Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Who is correct - please help!
-
I have a website with a lot of product pages - often thousands of pages.
As each of these pages is for a specific lease car they are often only fractionally different from other pages.
The urls are too long, the H1 is often too long and the Title is often too long for "SEO best practice". And they do create duplication issues according to MOZ.
Some people tell me to change them to noindex/nofollow whilst others tell me to leave them as they are as best not to hide from google crawler.
Any advice will be gratefully received.
Thanks for listening.
-
@jlhitch
Managing a website with thousands of product pages can indeed present challenges, especially when it comes to optimizing for SEO while avoiding duplicate content issues. Here are some considerations and potential strategies:-
URL Optimization:
- Shorten URLs to make them more concise and user-friendly.
- Include relevant keywords in the URL, but avoid keyword stuffing.
- Consider organizing URLs hierarchically based on product categories and attributes.
-
H1 Optimization:
- Ensure that each H1 tag accurately reflects the content of the page.
- Keep H1 titles concise and relevant to the page's main topic.
- Avoid duplicating H1 titles across multiple pages, as this can confuse search engines and users.
-
Title Tag Optimization:
- Craft unique and descriptive title tags for each product page.
- Include primary keywords near the beginning of the title tag.
- Keep title tags within the recommended character limit to ensure they display properly in search engine results.
-
Content Differentiation:
- Identify areas of content overlap or duplication among similar product pages.
- Make meaningful distinctions between pages by highlighting unique features, specifications, or benefits.
- Utilize canonical tags to consolidate duplicate content and signal to search engines which version of the page is the preferred one.
-
Indexing Strategy:
- Consider the purpose and value of each product page when deciding whether to index or noindex/nofollow.
- Pages with unique content, high traffic potential, or conversion opportunities should typically be indexed.
- Pages with thin or duplicate content may benefit from being noindexed to avoid diluting the site's overall quality and relevance in search results.
-
Monitoring and Analysis:
- Regularly monitor site performance, rankings, and crawl errors using tools like Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, and third-party SEO platforms.
- Analyze data to identify patterns, trends, and areas for improvement in SEO optimization efforts.
-
Consult with SEO Experts:
- Seek advice from experienced SEO professionals or agencies who can provide personalized recommendations based on your specific website and goals.
- Consider conducting an SEO audit to assess the current state of your website and identify opportunities for optimization.
Ultimately, the decision to index or noindex/nofollow certain pages should be based on a careful evaluation of their quality, relevance, and impact on overall SEO performance. Balancing SEO best practices with the practical considerations of managing a large website can help ensure long-term success in search engine rankings and user engagement.
-
-
It sounds like you're dealing with significant SEO issues due to duplicate content and non-optimal URL, title, and header lengths. Instead of noindexing, consider consolidating similar pages or using canonical tags to point to preferred pages. This can reduce duplication and focus SEO efforts on key pages.
-
So, we would on a huge e-commerce website, thousands of products, always changing. Its massively time consuming, but every bit of text, must be written in a white hat way. unique, high quality, meets the guidance set out in Google E-EAT. Plus, so too must the meta titles, meta descriptions, its only way to enhance the SEO for each page. Duplicated text, or "content thin" text, and this will dilulte the power of the organic SEO across the whole website. does this help? We have more help on our Cardiff SEO website.
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
-
Track SEO performance for specific sub-directories
How can i track performance metrics for a group of subdirectories.
SEO Tactics | | Miradoro
I.e
domain.com/de/en_uk
domain.com/de/de_de
domain.com/at/en_uk
domain.com/at/de_de0 -
Page Title Displaying Wrong Company Name in Google Search Results
Currently, in some of our keyword search results, the wrong company name is showing up in the page title. We are a family of companies that all provide different modes of transportation. When we search up "Herc Air Charters" in Google Search Engine, the wrong operating company shows up in the page title (see screenshot, second result: "Lynden Transport" is our trucking company, and does not offer any air charter, this should say "Lynden Air Cargo"). Google decides what is best to put in these titles, so what would be the best way to ensure the correct company name is being displayed? Google Search Issue.PNG
Community | | RyanD.0 -
Does anyone know the linking of hashtags on Wix sites does it negatively or postively impact SEO. It is coming up as an error in site crawls 'Pages with 404 errors' Anyone got any experience please?
Does anyone know the linking of hashtags on Wix sites does it negatively or positively impact SEO. It is coming up as an error in site crawls 'Pages with 404 errors' Anyone got any experience please? For example at the bottom of this blog post https://www.poppyandperle.com/post/face-painting-a-global-language the hashtags are linked, but they don't go to a page, they go to search results of all other blogs using that hashtag. Seems a bit of a strange approach to me.
Technical SEO | | Mediaholix0 -
If I'm using a compressed sitemap (sitemap.xml.gz) that's the URL that gets submitted to webmaster tools, correct?
I just want to verify that if a compressed sitemap file is being used, then the URL that gets submitted to Google, Bing, etc and the URL that's used in the robots.txt indicates that it's a compressed file. For example, "sitemap.xml.gz" -- thanks!
Technical SEO | | jgresalfi0 -
Title tag not showing on google? Please Help!
I've read the FAQs and searched the help center. My URL is: http://www.webygeeks.comI have updated title tags of my client's website 10-15 days ago, still the title on google is coming as the company name 😞 Why so??Description is correct but title is incorrect, can you please recommend me something guys?Also, i am wondering why the google cache is showing date of september 5 and we have changed the titles around 10 - 15 days before that http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:P45GOiHRaIUJ:www.webygeeks.com/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk Really appreciate your suggestion.
Technical SEO | | lvp11380 -
Should I Parent/Child my Website Pages (need help with terminology too)
Hello I have a website that I am trying to SEO optimise.
Technical SEO | | NikitaG
The current structure of the site is that all pages are linked directly after the domain:
example: www.domain.com**/page01** www.domain.com**/page02** The website is however logically organised in the following form:
www.domain.com**/page01/page02** Sometimes the parenting goes to 3 levels: (please help me with the right term here) Domain
↳ Page001
↳ Page002
↳Page003 My question is: should keep the current structure, or is it worth the effort to re-link the website in a parented way. Are there any benefites to one or the other, and could you point to some video tutorials or documentation to read. BqoDAsx.jpg DMMIC5o.jpg0 -
I need help with a PHP canonical URL tags
I found a little difficult for me to do a canonical tag in my PHP. On-Page Report Card We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply. I don't know how to tidy my PHP Any suggestion.
Technical SEO | | lnietob0