Hi -
I run a hobby related niche new / article / resource site (http://tinyurl.com/4eavaj4). One of the most critical components of the site is our product database. We don't actually sell anything directly - instead we monetize them by displaying relevant affiliate product feeds and price comparisons.
However since the Panda update was implemented in February my traffic (particularly my long tail, product related traffic) has dropped off considerably. I had about a 20% drop in overall traffic, but have made up some of the ground in the past week. However I want to know once and for all how I should structure my product related information as I have a ton of great content that is ready to be published in this section but want to be sure I structure it the best possible way from a SEO standpoint.
Here are a few different options I've come up with for displaying information about products on my site. For the purpose of these examples I am going to refer to all of the information that makes up my product pages collectively as "product profiles". Please let me know which is the best SEO wise (or if you have a better way of doing it let me know):
- Option 1 - Current Method - Divide Content Sections into different pages / urls
Example: http://tinyurl.com/4tpdlbl
This is how the majority of my product profiles are currently structured. I did this to improve load times and to keep the total number of links per page down. In addition to the core product profile subpages: "Product Details","Compare Prices", **"**Product Review", "Hot Auctions", and "Checklists", I have the Checklists area further segmented by subset, each of which is on its own page that is only accessible through the main Checklists tab of the profile.
- Option 2 - Everything on one url / page the old fashioned way, with everything available by scrolling vertically.
This would make the page go on forever though.
- Option 3 - Everything on one url / page, but visually segmented using css / javascript tabs.
Example: http://tinyurl.com/4kqhauh
I looked at the source code and all the page text is there, so it looks like it would be spider-able but you tell me. Or would another method of tabbing be better? My site is wordpress based so the functionality comes from a plugin.
- Option 4 - Use post tabs that are technically all on the same page, but make each individual tab be accessible through its own suburl, all of which share the same core canonical url.
Example: http://tinyurl.com/4bs9pjs
Clicking on any of the individual tabs will result in something like ?postTabs=2 being appended to the core url. Example: http://tinyurl.com/4gvgufc
Any input would be greatly appreciated asap!
Thanks
Mike