Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I would possibly look towards a different strategy.

Rather than deleting a page once a product is sold I would leave the page live for a while and put a sold sign on it and offer a selection of similar properties to view. After say 3 months then 301 the page back to a category page higher in the hierarchy. Or don't 301 it at all, perhaps Noindex the page after a given time frame?

I'd much rather present my visitors with a Sold sign and a list of similar properties than potentially lose them to a 404.

Don't think search engine, think visitor

Hope that helps

Aran

There appears to be a fundamental issue with the eay your search results link to your products.

Is this store based on Cubecart. I had a similar issue a while ago whith CC and I managed to fix it by changing the code on the search results page to build the full path to the product rather than the shorter URL without the category folders.

One way would be to ensure that products carry a canonical tag pointing to the actual page URL?

Checkout the guide below to Canonical Tags.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps

Though I would recommend fixing the issue at the root and modifying the way the search links to products.

Don't quote me on this but Google has been heading this way for quite some time, has it not?

Remember keyword stuffing, content farms, dodgy link practices?

As long as we build websites that

1. Function correctly
2. Have good unique content
3. Are easy to use

We are on the right track and have little to worry about.

I'll carry on with my current strategy of putting the effort into content and doing my damnest to get people to notice it and perhaps give me a link, +1, tweet, like or bookmark.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

My pleasure. I'll do almost any thing to get a thumbs Up! Im so close to the magic 200 (again).

This link http://scratch99.com/website-management/make-money-online/smart-pricing/avoid-smart-pricing-show-adsense-only-to-search-engine-visitors/

This is basically doing the same thing and should show you a decent example of how to do it (except they are doing it to tailor adverts to search traffic).

looking over the code on that page, they use an array of values, you could simply replace the values with values such as Google, Yahoo, Bing (ot an exhaustive list by all means!).

Hi,

I assume you want to do this in code at runtime so you can tailor the page dependant on where the vistor comes from?

In PHP there is a function $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'], this will send the referring url of the visitor. However it is not very reliable and there are many instances where it will contain nothing or incorrect information.

You would then check the contents of the functio results for indicators that they come from a natural search. I.E the referrer contains Bing, Yahoo, Google. This will not differentiate PPC traffic though.

Hope this sets you off in the right direction. (if it does thow a thumbs up my way )

Cheers

Aran

I had a similar requirement. After some thought I decided to code my own solution for my site.

I wrote a module for my Cubecart Site that recorded Carts as they were populated and then flagged the carts that were checked out successfully thus leaving me with carts which were abandoned prior to check out.

I got some startling data that jump started some UX testing on my add to cart and browsing processes. After some analysis and chatting to customers I managed to sort a lot of issues and my abandonment rate decreased significantly, though I still see a fair few, however I think a certain amount are unavoidable.

Good Luck.

As Matt says, its nothing new. Google are once again looking to do away with cruddy sites that focus on SE interaction and not user interaction.

I don't think so, however I have written my own link management software that on acquisition adds an enty into a database then its crawled regularly to determine the links status. This gives me a supposed acquirement date.

Ive run your site through the Page Speed tool here and you get 94/100 (which is awesome!).

No idea on the JS sorry

I'd be more than happy with 94/100!

A well organised natural site structure and navigation system will ensure that page rank 'flows' all the way down to product pages.

No need for including products on sitemap (though you can include them in your XML sitemap).

Hi,

Personally I see no benefit of having such a indepth HTML site map, its very unlikely that a user is going to scroll through hundreds of almost identical looking lines of products to find what they want. I think a huge sitemap as showin in your examples only serves to confuse people and make it difficult to find what they want (the opposite of what a sitemap is actually for!)

Listing the site structure down to category level/sub category levels is plenty.

Here is an example of a HTML sitemap done well http://www.argos.co.uk/static/StaticDisplay/includeName/sitemap.htm

Hope that helps

Regards

Aran

Hi Kandice,

Check out https://seogadget.co.uk/inspiring-sitemap-diagrams/

There are some fantastic tools listed on there. Though I know all of them require a fair bit of work to get exactly what you want. Visio is impressive, though not online (nor free!), but it is fairly straight forward to produce good looking visual sitemaps, it'll even connect straight to the site, suck in the sitemap.xml and then plot it for you.

Happy reading!

Regards

Aran

Hi Mark,

If I understand correctly, you want to change your menu structure, which in turn will change th subsequent pages?

If the menu changes are going to result in page names changing (im talking filename changes) then yes you may want to 301 redirect the old pages to relevant new ones.

301's are not complex, but can cause MAJOR issues if not done correctly. There are a number of plug ins for Wordpress that ma help manage the 301's check out

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-301-redirects/

Also, you may want to read up on HTaccess and 301's, but I would not recommend tackling your HTaccess until you KNOW what you are doing.

http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles3/spiders-301-redirect.htm

Hope that helps a little.

Good Luck!

Aran

To what end do you want to use the other sites for?

Surely, its easier to optimise one site than hundreds?

Will  rewriting the other sites benefit you and if so will the benefits outweight the amount of work required, or could that effort be applied elsewhere to beefit the main site?

The code above will disallow a directory called emailafriend. Use the following to disallow the two .asp files.

User-agent: *

Disallow: /EmailaFriend.asp

Disallow: /PhotoGallery.asp

Read more about Robots.txt here --> http://www.robotstxt.org/orig.html

Don't forget you can add your sitemap to your google / bing etc webmasters accounts.

I can see your reason for impatience!

Unfortunately there is no definite amount of time to wait before deciding something hasn't worked, though if Google has deep crawled your site since the changes and your still suffering, it may be time to look elsewhere.

There may be other factors in play.

Hows your link profile looking?

Has anything else change in recent weeks?

Have your competitors upped they're game on the run up to summer?

If your adding new content to you site regularly it may get discovered quicker if your site map is bang up to date.

PLus if your going to do a job, you may aswell do it properly.

Hmm, i think generic phrases such as 'Refurbished printers' should be tackled by and article or such content. Not product pages, other wise your going to potentially have lots of refurbished product pages all trying for a SERP for the same phrase. (i.e. competeing with yourself! (keyword canabalisation).

Personally I'd go for Title + Model + condition

(Thats assuming you only have one page per product model/condition).

If you have made quite a wide range of changes it may take a while for Google to index all of the new changes and allocate your new SERP. Be patient and hopefully things will look up.

I often see a small dip in my serps prior to gaining some good ground.

Could it be that you have been penalised in the layout update? http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/01/page-layout-algorithm-improvement.html

Your Q&A title reminds me of the R.E.M song "Losing my religion" (replace religion with positions...now sing...)

"That's me in the corner
That's me in the spotlight
Losing my positions
Trying to keep up with you"

Hi Ron,

You need to put the Tweet this syle buttons on your website and get people to share the page amongst there pages. There are plenty of ways to encourage people to share th content, but by far the most effective is to have some awesome content...perhaps you have recorded a song or covered a popular song, you could offer it as a free download when people tweet the page?

When Elbow covered beyonce's track Independent Woman the social sphere went crazy!!!

Do you have a youtube channel?

Google Webmaster Tools https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

An integral tool for any SEO campaign.

If the info in the table changes why have the menu linking anywhere?

Perhaps use an ajax call to change the value in the table? that would negat the need to have href elements linking to other pages and redirectig back to the same page.

Link Juice is so 2010. Link Love is the way forward

Surely not. Google is smart enough to ignore white spaces?

I'm not sure what your trying to accomplish with this, but one thing for sure, its a bad user experience.

In the eyes of a user, when clicking on your menu nothing happens.

I would say this is a bad thing...why bother having a menu where every option leads to the same location?

Hi from 1 degree C, overcast (but no drizzle yet) Blackpool,

As Alan says check you GWMT and move your title tag up in the head.

There may be something deeper going on though, I tried searching text from your deeper pages to see if those pages had titles in G serps. But alas I was unable to find the pages in the SERPs after copying and pasting the text. (Some only showed 4 results and yours was not amongst them).

I also Googled a number of your URLs and again I got stumped.

GWMT pronto and see whats occurring!

All in all your store looks the part. Your link profile is healthy. Site speed looks good. (75/100)

I'd tackle your content issues and see what happens from there.

Remove auto generated and duplicated content and create unique, relevant and interesting content (free of grammatical/spelling errors). Perhaps consider hiring a writer to re-write your product descriptions.

I'm guessing that Google is taking a harsh stand on the Grammar used in the product description. The description doesn't read well, there are many gramatical mistakes.

In addition to that the only other chunk of content on the page appears to be duplicate content. See the Google search below on a piece of the California Umbrellas text.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=+California+Umbrella+has+been+known+for+producing+high+end%2C+quality%2C+patio+umbrellas%2C+and+frames+for+over+50+years.+The+California+Umbrella+trademark+is+immediately+recognized+for+its+standards+in+engineering+and+innovation+among+all+the+brands+in+the+United+States.&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a

Spammy comments look like spam. Spam is bad. Bad is not good

Get rid. Not sure if carzilla supports comment moderation, but if it does activate it.

Also, try connecting with your target audience via social sites like facebook and twitter and engage them in conversation, tell them of articles and cool stuff on your blog, then you may get some natural comments.

Check the Spamhaus SBL and XBL black lists while your at it...

http://www.spamhaus.org/

From a usability perspective I'd look at the redirects as a 404 is some what off putting when your trying to buy. It could lead to visitors losing trust and ultimately sales.

In turn, if usbility is effected in such a way then doubtless the SEO will follow.

If you have matching products which have indexed pages with some page authority, then I'd take the time to redirect them.

Your compromise is not bad, it would save a mountain of time which can be devoted to other cool things and its certainly better than several thousand 404 errors!

I'm assuming your site is geared towards e-commerce?

if so you'll need the Google Analytics E-Commerce Tracking code implemented on your checkout. It essentially passes your shopping cart to Google when people check out. The data is then correlated against existing page view data to give you conversion info by page.You can set up some really good segments to track conversions by traffic source too.

Have a look at

http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/gaTrackingEcommerce.html  <-- details of tracking code

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/advanced-google-analytics-tips-and-tricks <--setting up advanced analytics segments

Hope this helps

Aran

The purpose of the crumb trail to let users know where they are and provide an easy method to Navigate back along the path they have taken.

In which case, as a user there is a particular place I expect to see the crumb trail, usually at the top of a content block directly under the page header.

If its not user friendly I wouldn't expect it to be beneficial to SEO either.

Loving the design though

Hi Steven,

I like your site, its clean and fresh and user friendly. Not sure what you have done with regards to link building however it may be worth while to create some guest posts to put on to other blogs and get some nice links coming in.

Unfortunately, your competitors are well established with a long standing clean relationship with Google and some authority links. Try acquiring some links from some of your competitors link partners.

Good luck!

Cheers

Aran

Would a rewrite not be more fitting then a redirect?

Redirect is to transport the user from a old or invalid page to a new location, not to replace URLs.

I assume you want to change your ugly urls to pretty user friendly ones?

Check out http://www.seomoz.org/blog/url-rewrites-and-301-redirects-how-does-it-all-work

As Kieran pointed out you have quite a bit of duplicate cotent, thus I expect you have been pushed right back in the SERPs.

Also the lack of links to your site could be an issue as your site currently carries very little authority, especially when compared to your competitors. But this is a good thing (better to work with no links than hudnreds of bad links!).

I like the site, its nice a clean., but one thing i did notice was the lack of social integration. I recommend you incorporate some kind of social sharing (i did recently and its definitley helped my SERPs).

You could also create some social accounts on twitter/facebook etc (don't know if you already have) and start talking to your potential customers (theres always alot of footy banter!)

Consider writing some original articles on Arsenal and getting them posted on other fans blogs (with a link back to your site of course).

Your niche is great for the amount of people whom you can engage socially, on twitter, blogs, facebook etc...mine is a real nightmare (coat hangers, who wants to talk about them?). Use the social side of things to your MASSIVE advantage.

Hi,

In your pro dashboard check out Link Analysis. In particular check out the Domain Authority, Domain moz Rank and moz Trust. As you get more links these numbers will grow, the bigger the number the better.

Also, Clicking Links then See more  in Open Site Explorer...this will give you a run down of all the links that SEOmoz have found pointing to your site (along with some helpful metrics).

http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/mozrank

http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/domain-authority

http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/moztrust

These link will help you on your way!

I agree with Kane, in addition to the description, why not produce a transcript of any spoken words in the videos? (not everyone has speakers plugged in).

If its good enough for SEOmoz whiteboard fridays its good enough for me

Not sure if this is the right usage of canonical. Seems a bit cheaty

Hi Paul,

I would have thought that a 301 is going to be a little confusing for your visitors, as they may be browsing the Lancashire part of your site and find themselves redirected to the bedfordshire side. I'd personally prefer to write some content for Lancashire/Bedford.

Understood you don't want to share the URL, but as I have said, difficult to answer the problem without seeing it in context.

Cheers

Aran

Hi,

Can you provide examples of pages what contain duplicate content?

It's difficult to know how to handle them without seeing your site.

Have you tried the SEO plug in from Yoast?

http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/

"Link juice" is so 2010.

"Link Love" is the way forward...

Hi Noah's Dad!,

I've been following your blog!

Whilst I'm not 100% sure how to output Facebook comments to your pages. I have just installed Facebook commenting on my website (a very easy job of just pasting in some HTML with a dash of php to retrieve the current URL). Its great as people instantly recognise the comments box and seem happy, almost eager to leave a comment. Plus its not restricted to just facebook users, people can join in the fun with hotmail, yahoo, or AOL user IDs. Plus I believe more ways of authenticating are being added.

There is a plug in for word press (of course, cos theres a plug in for everything) http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/facebook-comments-for-wordpress/

Trouble is that the comments are out put into a iframe, thus Google doesn't pay any attention to them (incas eyour doing this for SEO benefit, which I assume you are). But there is a work around to out put the comments outside of the facebook iframe, though I'm still debating whether to do it as it involves hiding the content (otherwise it would appear twice, once in the Iframe and once outside of the iframe, making for a bad user experience), but since Google may frown upon hiding content on my page, I've stayed away for the time being. (unless someone else has a better idea).

Hope that helps in some way.

Regards

Aran

Hi,

I ran the Page Speed analysis from Firebug and your site gets a good 74/100. Not too shabby!

But on closer inspection I see that you have around 600k of images loading from within your style sheets.

You could try better optimising the images to reduce filesize. The main culprit is homebg.jpg which is a whopping 250k (maybe not massive, but I'm old school!).

You could also enable some form of server compression like Gzip (though I see your on Windows hosting) to further reduce load times (though it will increase server CPU activity).

Hope that helps

Aran

Agreed a Canonical tag will solve your Dupe content issue.

Though I think theres a deeper issue. I will hazard a guess that you already ahve a set of rewrite rules which allow the http://www.domain.com/venue/rosemarino URL to work?

A redirect may get you stuck in a loop if the venue.php is rewritten to /venue/rosemarino