Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hey K.

Happy you found value in everyone's response here.

For your URL, I see your structure resemble a blog structure with your subfolder being "learn" instead of "blog". So if it is, your final URL that you described is fine (learn/buying-guide-for-inline-skates).
As a counterpoint, if you had this content as a hub page (some form of content pillar/topic cluster) for example, it would've been a good possibility to just change the URL structure since you have many Buying Guides. Different types of content, different ways to put it on your site. 
Like so: /buying-guide/inline-skates

At the end of the day, the structure needs to be logical and reflective of where your content is. I think you got it right anyway.

For the execution part;

1. I would not recommend using the "crawl as Googlebot" function in search console. It would be way too time-consuming for you, and it is not really designed for that kind of work.
2. Instead, update your sitemap with the final URLs and send it again via SearchConsole / Bing Webmastertools.
3. Also, don't forget to go ahead and change the internal links pointing to the old URL to point directly to the new ones or else you'll just have a bunch of 301's crawled by Google. Make it seamless.
4. Monitor. Monitor. Monitor.

Hope that helped!

And to add to that, Moz has a great resource on how to write them (emphasis mine);

• Keeping URLs as simple, relevant, compelling, and accurate as possible is key to getting both your users and search engines to understand them.

• URLs should be definitive but concise.

• When necessary for readability, use hyphens to separate words. URLs should not use underscores, spaces, or any other characters to separate words.

• Use lowercase letters. In some cases, uppercase letters can cause issues with duplicate pages.

• Avoid the use of URL parameters, if possible, as they can create issues with tracking and duplicate content. If parameters need to be used (UTM codes, e.g.), use them sparingly.

Source - https://moz.com/learn/seo/url

Hi Meredith

Updating and optimizing title pages and meta description is a big part of on-site SEO so do not worry about tweaking them a little bit.

As a general rule, If you have confidence that a title is truncated on the SERPs because of its character limit, or that it doesn't convey efficiently the topic you are addressing in your page, you really should change it. Of course, be mindful of putting your keywords without appearing too spammy.

If I were you, I would look up the keyword I'm trying to rank for, see what's ranking and write a title that expresses what the page is about while keeping the user intent in mind.

I'd suggest you extract your titles (moz or screaming frog) so that you can easily revert back if you see your ranking/sessions drop after changing them.

Hope this helps!

PS: Don't be afraid to try out things - that's how you'll know if certain changes can or won't impact results.

Hello !

I am facing a problem concerning a client's website that has been developped using filters that create parameters - there are no categories. This means that, no matter what I choose as a filter, the page title, desc and my H1 stays the same.

In a beautiful, unicorn rainbow filled world - I could just tell them to restructure their site with new categories/sub categories AND with filters.

For SEO purposes and to find a temporary solution until we can change the architecture, what would be the best choice?

1. Should we create individual pages that serves the same content as the catalog, but with rewritten URL, Title, Description and canonical?
   ie: http:/domain.com/catalog/?brand=moz canonical to http:/domain.com/catalog/brand/moz ?

   I noticed indeed.com does that (https://ca.indeed.com/SEO-Specialist-jobs vs https://ca.indeed.com/jobs?q=SEO+Specialist&l=)

2. Should we dynamise the content depending on which filters has been selected? Of course, some filters are real filters that wouldn't attract or add any value (such as order by)

Thanks for your input!

Hey Chris!

Thanks a lot for your time. I did send you a PM the day after your original post, I will send you another :).

Thanks a lot for your additionnal advice. You're right about managing client's expectations and its crucial. You're pointing out some valid points and I will have to ponder about how I approach this whole situation.

Charles,

This is exciting! If I have suggestions for the tools, I will let you guys know.

Québec is indeed a great city, we are pretty proud of it! We usually organize the InboundMTL event in Montreal. We could hit you up along with some hubspot speakers and/or other agencies. Would you visit as a guest speaker or conference attendee?

Keep up the good work Rand, we are big fans!

Hey Rand!

Let me first congratulate you and your team for that awesome product that you guys succesfully delivered with time & budget constraint.

At the company I work for, we are using this tool for both english and french languages as most of our clients are situated in Québec, Canada. Since I do SEO in both languages all the time, how would you qualify your database for languages other than english (specifically French)? Are we looking at the same Accuracy? Are there problems related to suggestions & semantics?

Thanks a lot!

Hey Chris!

Thanks for that lenghty response. It is very much appreciated and so is your offer for help. Let me check with some people to see if I can share the company's name.
[EDIT] Sent you a private msg

One of the reason I want to test the waters is, to be real honest, I feel weird to recommend shaving 3/4 of their site on which they put a lot of money in. I guess it comes down to reassuring them that these changes will be positive, but in the eyes of the client, it may come off as bold.

Another thing is, it is an international business that have different teams for different country. For more than 20 countries, they are the only one to try and sell their product online. You understand many sets of eyes are directed at them and a lot is to gain.

Good day to you Mozers,

I have a website that sells a certain product online and, once bought, is specifically delivered to a point of sale where the client's car gets serviced.

This website has a shop, products and informational pages that are duplicated by the number of physical PoS. The organizational decision was that every PoS were supposed to have their own little site that could be managed and modified.

Examples are:

• Every PoS could have a different price on their product
• Some of them have services available and some may have fewer, but the content on these service page doesn't change.

I get over a million URls that are, supposedly, all treated with canonical tags to their respective main page. The reason I use "supposedly" is because verifying the logic they used behind canonicals is proving to be a headache, but I know and I've seen a lot of these pages using the tag.

i.e:

• https:mysite.com/shop/ <-- https:mysite.com/pointofsale-b/shop
• https:mysite.com/shop/productA <-- https:mysite.com/pointofsale-b/shop/productA

The problem is that I have over a million URl that are crawled, when really I may have less than a tenth of them that have organic trafic potential.

Question is:
For products, I know I should tell them to put the URl as close to the root as possible and dynamically change the price according to the PoS the end-user chooses. Or even redirect all shops to the main one and only use that one.

I need a short term solution to test/show if it is worth investing in development and correct all these useless duplicate pages. Should I use Robots.txt and block off parts of the site I do not want Google to waste his time on?

I am worried about: Indexation, Accessibility and crawl budget being wasted.

Thank you in advance,

Am I wrong saying that the french will be shown specifically for people in France? I mean, there are french-canadians, belgium, african countries, etc. I'm not sure it is necessary in this case? If the hreflangs are in place, I believe it should be enough.

Otherwise there is a strange thing happening with your URLs when switching languages with the top right tool. When you are on the homepage and switch languages, the URL doesn't change, but the content does.

When I'm on http://www.revolveclothing.com/content/hotlist in English
And switch to French = http://www.revolveclothing.com/content/hotlist
When I switch to Spanish http://www.revolveclothing.com/content/hotlist.

Would it be part of the problem? Maybe it is worth troubleshooting. If it's not clear which version is which.

If it's the French version that Google wants to show, it should be the http://www.revolveclothing.fr. Not the .com

Hello Ruben!

Not too long ago, I saw a hangout with John Mueller who got the same question and gives a logical answer. Here's the URL at timestamp 46:06 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_xnKznRNCc&feature=player_embedded#t=2766

I'd transcript if I had the time, but it will take you a couple of minutes. It essentially says that even though it is embedded, it won't access that block of content because maps.googleapis.com/robots.txt blocks it. If I understood wrong, please let me know!

I had the same problem where part of my content was coming from the pins INSIDE the map, but since it was blocked, it couldn't reach the content itself. Had to do a workaround

Hope it helps!

EDIT: Just jumping back in to say that you should look back at your site. Seems like Google can correctly crawl its own map and the content served through it. Our site has no more problems related to this. November the 15th I still had issues, but today I've tested multiple times and it looked okay.

Croy

Hi Meredith

Updating and optimizing title pages and meta description is a big part of on-site SEO so do not worry about tweaking them a little bit.

As a general rule, If you have confidence that a title is truncated on the SERPs because of its character limit, or that it doesn't convey efficiently the topic you are addressing in your page, you really should change it. Of course, be mindful of putting your keywords without appearing too spammy.

If I were you, I would look up the keyword I'm trying to rank for, see what's ranking and write a title that expresses what the page is about while keeping the user intent in mind.

I'd suggest you extract your titles (moz or screaming frog) so that you can easily revert back if you see your ranking/sessions drop after changing them.

Hope this helps!

PS: Don't be afraid to try out things - that's how you'll know if certain changes can or won't impact results.

Hey Rand!

Let me first congratulate you and your team for that awesome product that you guys succesfully delivered with time & budget constraint.

At the company I work for, we are using this tool for both english and french languages as most of our clients are situated in Québec, Canada. Since I do SEO in both languages all the time, how would you qualify your database for languages other than english (specifically French)? Are we looking at the same Accuracy? Are there problems related to suggestions & semantics?

Thanks a lot!

I think it makes sense.

I just looked back at how you connect and you choose an Account - so far it ain't hard. The profile is a collection of all views found in your different Analytics Properties.

So let's say I choose my Account and the Profile dropdown gives me;

• "Raw DATA (UA-XXXXX-1)"
• "Filtered DATA (UA-XXXXX-1)"
• "Test DATA (UA-XXXXX-1)"
• "Raw DATA (UA-XXXXX-2)"

If I want to pull data that is filtered, I'll select the "Filtered DATA (UA-XXXXX-1)". Since Google just filters out the data, it can't really give Moz the raw data since the source is filtered and, therefore, "can't be reprocessed".

Am I understanding right Matt?

Croy,

Good day to you Mozers,

I have a website that sells a certain product online and, once bought, is specifically delivered to a point of sale where the client's car gets serviced.

This website has a shop, products and informational pages that are duplicated by the number of physical PoS. The organizational decision was that every PoS were supposed to have their own little site that could be managed and modified.

Examples are:

• Every PoS could have a different price on their product
• Some of them have services available and some may have fewer, but the content on these service page doesn't change.

I get over a million URls that are, supposedly, all treated with canonical tags to their respective main page. The reason I use "supposedly" is because verifying the logic they used behind canonicals is proving to be a headache, but I know and I've seen a lot of these pages using the tag.

i.e:

• https:mysite.com/shop/ <-- https:mysite.com/pointofsale-b/shop
• https:mysite.com/shop/productA <-- https:mysite.com/pointofsale-b/shop/productA

The problem is that I have over a million URl that are crawled, when really I may have less than a tenth of them that have organic trafic potential.

Question is:
For products, I know I should tell them to put the URl as close to the root as possible and dynamically change the price according to the PoS the end-user chooses. Or even redirect all shops to the main one and only use that one.

I need a short term solution to test/show if it is worth investing in development and correct all these useless duplicate pages. Should I use Robots.txt and block off parts of the site I do not want Google to waste his time on?

I am worried about: Indexation, Accessibility and crawl budget being wasted.

Thank you in advance,

This is exciting! If I have suggestions for the tools, I will let you guys know.

Québec is indeed a great city, we are pretty proud of it! We usually organize the InboundMTL event in Montreal. We could hit you up along with some hubspot speakers and/or other agencies. Would you visit as a guest speaker or conference attendee?

Keep up the good work Rand, we are big fans!

Hey K.

Happy you found value in everyone's response here.

For your URL, I see your structure resemble a blog structure with your subfolder being "learn" instead of "blog". So if it is, your final URL that you described is fine (learn/buying-guide-for-inline-skates).
As a counterpoint, if you had this content as a hub page (some form of content pillar/topic cluster) for example, it would've been a good possibility to just change the URL structure since you have many Buying Guides. Different types of content, different ways to put it on your site. 
Like so: /buying-guide/inline-skates

At the end of the day, the structure needs to be logical and reflective of where your content is. I think you got it right anyway.

For the execution part;

1. I would not recommend using the "crawl as Googlebot" function in search console. It would be way too time-consuming for you, and it is not really designed for that kind of work.
2. Instead, update your sitemap with the final URLs and send it again via SearchConsole / Bing Webmastertools.
3. Also, don't forget to go ahead and change the internal links pointing to the old URL to point directly to the new ones or else you'll just have a bunch of 301's crawled by Google. Make it seamless.
4. Monitor. Monitor. Monitor.

Hope that helped!