Welcome to the Q&A Forum

LOL thanks!

Yes I understand that.  It is just a lot more work for us to do with our site map!  Thanks for your advice.

I see. but the rel="canonical" pages are good page.  I get the broken links and all that part but I guess i do not agree with rel="canonical" as much.  I can see their standpoint.  Do you do a lot with your site map and assign the different values to different pages?

PDF seem to not rank as well as other normal webpages.  They still rank do not get me wrong, we have over 100 pdf pages that get traffic for us. The main version is really up to you, what do you want to show in the search results.  I think it would be easier to rank for a normal webpage though.  If you are doing a rel="canonical"  it will pass most of the link juice, not all but most.

PDF seem to not rank as well as other normal webpages.  They still rank do not get me wrong, we have over 100 pdf pages that get traffic for us. The main version is really up to you, what do you want to show in the search results.  I think it would be easier to rank for a normal webpage though.  If you are doing a rel="canonical"  it will pass most of the link juice, not all but most.

Indicate the canonical version of a URL by responding with the Link rel="canonical" HTTP header. Addingrel="canonical" to the head section of a page is useful for HTML content, but it can't be used for PDFs and other file types indexed by Google Web Search. In these cases you can indicate a canonical URL by responding with the Link rel="canonical" HTTP header, like this (note that to use this option, you'll need to be able to configure your server):

Link: <http: www.example.com="" downloads="" white-paper.pdf="">; rel="canonical"</http:> 

Google currently supports these link header elements for Web Search only.

You can read more her http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394

Indicate the canonical version of a URL by responding with the Link rel="canonical" HTTP header. Addingrel="canonical" to the head section of a page is useful for HTML content, but it can't be used for PDFs and other file types indexed by Google Web Search. In these cases you can indicate a canonical URL by responding with the Link rel="canonical" HTTP header, like this (note that to use this option, you'll need to be able to configure your server):

Link: <http: www.example.com="" downloads="" white-paper.pdf="">; rel="canonical"</http:> 

Google currently supports these link header elements for Web Search only.

You can read more her http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394

Back in March 2011 this conversation happened.

Rand:    You don't want rel=canonicals.

Duane:    Only end state URL. That's the only thing I want in a sitemap.xml. We have a very tight threshold on how clean your sitemap needs to be. When people are learning about how to build sitemaps, it's really critical that they understand that this isn't something that you do once and forget about. This is an ongoing maintenance item, and it has a big impact on how Bing views your website. What we want is end state URLs and we want hyper-clean. We want only a couple of percentage points of error.

Is this the same with Google?

But why would they rank the page lower than the home page was ranked if they think it is more relevant?  And the linking is something that needs to be worked on.  Up to this point there has not been much done.  We are doing more social now though and that should help a little.

Yes we know we need to fix that, it is just a really big project!

Are you talking about the URL structure?

We were ranking on page 2 and number 4 for the key word motorcycle tires.  Google was ranking our home page jakewilson.com; however, we have been adding new content to our site and doing some internal linking.  We pointed some links about motorcycle tires to http://www.jakewilson.com/cl/52/Motorcycle-Tires and now that page ranks but on page 3 not 2.  Any thoughts?

That is easier said than done   We are working on pointing more signals to that page though.

We are trying to rank for the key word Motorcycle Parts.  We have moved up to page 2 over the past couple months; however, google is ranking our home page not our http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/s/49/61/Motorcycle-Parts page that is for motorcycle parts.  We are working on internal linking to help point the right signals too.  Any other thoughts?  ( we have new content written to put in as well we just have to wait for an issue to be fixed before we can put it in)

I have started doing that.  I started doing that about one month ago.  Google used to rank http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/cl/50/Tires-and-Wheels this page but has changed to the http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/t/44/86/176/742/Dirt-Bike-Tires-All.  We are working on getting some quality links to the page we want to rank too.  Any other thoughts?

We put rel=canonical on it.  Now there are several other reasons that we have way to many pages indexed.  Big project coming soon, I hope!

We are trying to figure out why google is ranking the wrong page for the key word motorcycle tires.  We have a few ideas but are not sure yet.  If you do a search for Motorcycle Tires you will see site on page 2 or top of 3; however, the page will be going to our dirt bike tires page (http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/t/44/86/176/742/Dirt-Bike-Tires-All) not our Motorcycle page (http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/t/49/-/181/750/Motorcycle-Tires-All) any thoughts?

We think we know why but want others opinions too.

How did it turn out?  And Mark have you done much with internal search?

I am looking into this a lot too.  Our company has 1.2 million pages indexed in Google.  That sounds good except that 1.03 M are from our search results pages.  I am advising we do not keep all the search result pages index; the issues is we are making a lot of money off of them.  What did you find worked best for you? what did you decide to do?

just read your article

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world

The Indexation “Cap”

Similarly, there’s no set “cap” to how many pages of a site Google will index. There does seem to be adynamic limit, though, and that limit is relative to the authority of the site. If you fill up your index with useless, duplicate pages, you may push out more important, deeper pages. For example, if you load up on 1000s of internal search results, Google may not index all of your product pages. Many people make the mistake of thinking that more indexed pages is better. I’ve seen too many situations where the opposite was true. All else being equal, bloated indexes dilute your ranking ability.

I liked it thanks!

Just started here about 1 month ago.  We are thinking that it is the search causing this issue.  We should have it fixed in the next few weeks.  For example if you go to http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/search?term=dirt+bikes and then click on the first result. http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/p/43/53/210/1157/-/25928/Dirt-Tricks-KTM-Timing-Chain-Tensioner/dirt+bikes it has the search result as part of the url for tracking.  I am thinking this could be causing hundreds of thousands of urls.  We will turn this into a parametersso they can still track it but google will not index it.  Any thoughts on this, or maybe it is to far off topic.  Thanks for all your input.

of the first pair (ones like these ttp://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/c/43/53/160/Electrical   http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/c/43/72/221/Electrical) around around 15 in each Classification and there are 5 classification so 75.

of the second pair (like this

http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/m/43/53/2/ATV-Parts-KAWASAKI

http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/m/43/72/2/ATV-Accessories-KAWASAKI

)  about 17 per classification so 85.

Third level like (http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/v/43/72/10864/ATV-KAWASAKI/BRUTE-FORCE-300-2013 http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/v/43/53/10864/ATV-KAWASAKI/BRUTE-FORCE-300-2013)  there are about 1100-1300

I agree one URL would be best; however, they said how the system is set up not really possible right now.

There are only two page that are the same and they are the same here on the next leave down too.

http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/m/43/53/2/ATV-Parts-KAWASAKI

http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/m/43/72/2/ATV-Accessories-KAWASAKI

So you think if there are just two page that are the same it is nothing to worry about?  I know adding one or two paragraph of good content not just seo copy to  the http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/c/43/53/160/Electrical   http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/c/43/72/221/Electrical  Having one focus on parts and the other one accessories.  I know that is not my ideal situation but a possibility.  I would rather just have one URL like you suggested.

Thoughts?

Thanks for your input.

On our site we have some similar pages for example in our parts page we have the link to all the electrical parts you can see here http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/c/43/53/160/Electrical  and we have a very similar page going from our accessories page to electrical here http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/c/43/72/221/Electrical  We are thinking about putting rel="canonical" from the accessories electrical page to the parts one.  We would do this for several pages not just this one.

Thoughts???

I have read that one in the past and it seems different that a lot of other ones I have read.  Do you have any other examples like the one the have on seo moz? thanks,

Where did you read that at? I was not aware of that? Is it the same for analytics?

I have read some like http://www.seomoz.org/blog/mission-imposserpble-establishing-clickthrough-rates  This is over a year old now

and http://www.marketingprofs.com/chirp/2012/8504/paid-vs-organic-search-are-ppc-ads-winning-the-google-click-wars-infographic

Please let me know of some other good studies that have been done that show how the CTR continue to go down on commercial terms for most searches cause google is putting in more stuff.

We are currently having meetings about the bigger issues, but I need examples like this (individual pages) to explain the reasoning why we need to make changes.  This is a very big site and it will take some time to get the needed changes done.   Also they asked me directly about these pages.  I just enjoy getting other peoples feed back, so thank you.

I just started here a month ago and was not here when they put the website together so I am trying to figure out if we should just go with what google wants or try and help them pick the other one.  Also they have done this with several big key words so I am trying to figure out what the best thing to do is.   There are several pages with the All like the example.

Thoughts?

We are having an issue with getting Google to rank the page we want.  To have this page http://www.jakewilson.com/c/52/-/346/Cruiser-Motorcycle-Tires rank for the key word Cruiser Motorcycle Tires; however, this page http://www.jakewilson.com/t/52/-/343/752/Cruiser-Motorcycle-Tires is ranking instead and it has less links and page authority according to site explorer and it is farther down in the hierarchy.   I am wondering if google just likes pages that have actual products on them instead of a page leading to the page with all the products.

Thoughts?

Yes i used the tools and i got the same results you did.  My question is if I use some anchor text and point them to the second page from the first page and other relevant pages on the site will it help with the rankings?

Real example:

I want to have it rank for motorcycle tires, however, gogole is ranking http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/cl/50/Tires-and-Wheels the highest and also it puts

http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/d/12/Motorcycle-Tires

and http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/t/49/-/181/750/Motorcycle-Tires-All

before http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/c/49/-/181/Motorcycle-Tires and this is the one they wan to rank.  I started working here about 1 month ago and I am looking at ways I can get the target page to rank.  Right now it is now where and the non target page is ranking on page three.  Why does google pick that page over the target one?

We are submitting a press release today for a contest we are doing and it is actually news worth compared to a lot of things on PR web.  Our question is PRweb.com still worth using?   If we use them should we put an anchor text in it?  We have one link to our home page and one to the contest page and we were going to have one link to a different page.  But will linking to the third page with an anchor text be to much?