@Stevejcr @nb2e4fg

I'd strong advise not using tags that are rankable, especially if they replicate the sub-categories! No index them.

Also no index tags and categories in your blog. They can also damage inline pages.

Nigel

@nb2e4fg

Hi There,

Pleasure - glad you found it useful. To answer your queries

1. Like I said it depends on the search volume:

Woosculp Dog (0 searches per month)
Woodsculp Elephants (0)
Woodsclup Safari (0)

So if this is the case and my searches are correct I would put them all on one page. At a push, if there are a lot, have an ajax filter as I described in the original post, so that users can slim the page down to just the animal they want. Same for Safari or frankly even season. It doesn't matter because all the 'juice' will be directed at Woodsculp.

If there are other brands with more searched for subcategories then you need to make a decision. Remember you will have all these animals on the page so the combination of Woodsculp+Animal will make it rankable, plus you will have the SEO text so you can mention them in there.

2. If you are going to have subcategories because they are searchable, (and my research is in the wrong country maybe?) Then the category would be Woodsculp Elephants (plural) There will be plenty of occurrences of the term Elephant (singular) on the page. It's also grammatically incorrect to name a page of elephants, elephant.

3. It doesn't matter how you display the category page. I prefer a top or sidebar, but some themes have categories in blocks on the page. It can be like this but I prefer just products in the main body of the page with sub cats/filters away to the top or side (plus in the menu)

4. You can put brand and sub-cat in the URL if you like (If you are having sub-cats because they are searchable) - but only if they will never move. Nothing worse than finding a product in one category then having to move it and change the URL. NEVER have a product in multiple categories with different URLs! One product/one URL

allthingsnature. com/woodsculp/dogs/ws012-woodsculp-scottie-dog

You will just make trouble for yourself down the line if products move category.

This is fine too

allthingsnature. com/product/ws012-woodsculp-scottie-dog

Personally I think the URL slightly helps SEO so having woodsculp and dog in there is great!

allthingsnature. com/product/woodsculp/dogs/ws012-woodsculp-scottie-dog

• Note 'dogs' not dog in the URL

You can remove the 'product' and 'product-category' slugs in WordPress using Premmerce, but do it before you launch - DO NOT do it after, or if you do, prepare for a ranking hit after you 301 them!

**actually you mentioned you are restructuring so you will have to 301 all the changes from original structure to what you are doing here (Brands, Cats, Products) . This will take time - up to 6 months to get them all ranking properly. You must do this otherwise you'll have a mess, so crawl the site using Screaming Frog and extract all URLs. Then make the changes and when you launch use a bulk redirection plugin to do them straight away. Don't leave it otherwise you'll get a mass of 404s (not found)

5. Sites are better for SEO with one product in one category, however, you can get away with some product being in 2 or 3 different categories. Just note that Google will see that and the clearer you can make the structure for Google, the better

If 'Woodsculp Pets' is the higher category (as opposed to Woodsculp on its own), broken down into subcats, Dogs, Elephants etc, then I don't see a problem (If there are enough searches for the sub cats)

Many sites have Gender, Category, Brand. Others just Category and Brand

So for example you could have a category view:

Wooden Animals
Dogs
Elephants

and a Branded View

Woodsculp Pets
Dogs
Elephants

We did this for a shoes website. In each case there is one URL for each product. See the two images.

https://carouselprojects.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Brand-Hierachy-600x318.png

Yes, noindex sale, best sellers etc - they just cause problems.

Good luck!

Nigel Carr - Retail SEO Specialist
Carousel Projects

@nb2e4fg

There are two ways of handling this imho and it all depends how strong the brand and the sub categories are. It depends if people actually search for the subcategories.

Your primary aim is to rank for the brand 'Woodsculp' because that presumably is the most frequently searched word used to find the brand.

So the first way is like this

Woodsculp
> Dogs
>Elephants

So the main page will be Woodsculp with every model listed.

You then put a sidebar in to point to a subcategory page of Dogs or Elephants.

The sub-category route would be.

allthingsnature.com/woodsculp

allthingsnature.com/woodsculp/dogs

allthingsnature.com/woodsculp/elephants

• If Safari is also a 'thing' then create a subcat for that as well, but don't for Summer 2022 - that's not required. Just have them all on one page.

This would allow the subcategories to rank as well (If You Need Them To).

Note this risks the subcategories affecting the ranking of the main brand which is quite common with branded products. It depends how strong searches are for the dogs and elephants or whether they just search the brand.

The second way is using an Ajax/Filtered way of listing,

The filter sits in exactly the same place, maybe a side bar but goes to a non-ranking filter version of the page like this

allthingsnature.com/woodsculp

allthingsnature.com/woodsculp?sub-cat=dogs

allthingsnature.com/woodsculp?sub-cat=elephants

The canonical (What Google sees) for all three would be allthingsnature.com/woodsculp

This means you don't set the subcategories to rank because Google doesn't read after the ?

Any other pages are produced via tags which are no indexed. This gives all the strength to the main brand page.

The first way you would write 300 word+ SEO content for the brand page. Make it really comprehensive, Maybe a short description at the top of the page with call to action and a fuller description under the listings.

SEO Title

Woodsculp - Wooden Sculptures - All Things Nature

Description

Shop for Woodsculp Wooden Scupltures including wooden Dogs and Elephants - Free Delievery ....... Other Calls to Action

Then have subcategories with a little content - focusing on the fact they are dogs or elephants.

SEO Title

Woodsculp Dogs - Wooden Sculptures - All Things Nature

&

SEO Title

Woodsculp Elephants - Wooden Sculptures - All Things Nature

Again, check the search volumes - if they are non existed use method 2 - filter/Ajax

The filtered page way you would only write content for the main brand but also write about Dogs and Elephants so you can rank for both types . Also write about Safari so that will rank as well. Christmas - you could have a separate page but noindex it so it doesn't compete. Also for Sale items - you can have a page for Woodsculp sale but no index it.

That's what I would do but it depends on the strength of the sub categories.

I would not put products in multiple brand categories - that is why I ask how important safari and Christmas are.

I would not have 'release date' categories - that's just designed to mess up SEO! If you must then use a non indexing filter as above.

I would however have no problem having them in another type of category, say 'Wooden Animals'.

Nigel Carr - Retail SEO Specialist
Carousel Projects

@Socialdom said in Block Links From Spam sites:

links backlinking to your site

The correct way of doing this is to research each backlink thoroughly. There are various tools you can use to do this, each one will give you a list of backlinks and a score of their toxicity. The correct procedure is to:

1. Email the offending site and ask for the link to be removed. This is OK if a site has stuffed a link in the footer of their site without realising the damage it can do. I've had it with friends trying to help. Just ask them to remove the link, or maybe move it to a help page or better something related to your website content.

2. If you get no joy this way then it's OK to compile a disavow file and upload it to Google. just be VERY CAREFUL doing this as disavowing sites that have a positive effect on your rankings can cause s drop.

Read more here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en

The reality is that Google knows whether a link is spam or not and generally ignores them, and unless you have been involved in some dodgy link building all will be OK whatever.

If you have received a manual penalty then the proper process of research/disavow must be done thoroughly, but few websites suffer this indignity these days.

Just do things properly, build links organically, and your site will be fine. Use the disavow tool sparingly (if at all), replacing each txt file with a fill list each time you do it.

Hi MB

It's perfectly OK to rank articles and categories as long as you can justify them. For example, the primary keywords would be:

Category:  'Stock Market Training''

Article: What is The Stockmarket?

All well and good so far. You would make the primary keywords distinct and different for each and that would work well.

Once you introduce tags like Learn Stock Market - everything falls apart. They cut across and cannibalize the category and articles and so have no worth. It will ruin your efforts for the other two.

Write some compelling SEO text for the category page, up to 1000 words may do but check the competition and have just a short summary of each article on there with links to the articles.

No index the tags.  Trust me it's the correct way to go.

Nigel

Hi

You have to be careful creating city pages. make sure they are as unique as you can make them and add some local content. Treat them like you would any other page when SEO'ing them.

Ensure correct and on a one page one theme basis - forget the greater area and concentrate on the town/village. if you try and hoof the local area in as well you will destroy them all, especially if the local area has its own page.

Title
Description
H1
Alts
Local content

make sure it is in the form

City - Service - Company name

and not service first.

More here: https://moz.com/blog/do-you-need-local-pages

I hope that help

Nigel

Hi Shirapn

I think it is perfectly acceptable to use an accordion to 'read more'. However, according to Rand Fishkin, who did a study on this a couple of years back, the page with the hidden text will not rank as highly as it did with the page visible. They will not treat the hidden text with the same weight as it would if it were visible.

https://moz.com/blog/google-css-javascript-hidden-text

It is far better to have the text visible. One of the ways around this would be to have a couple of lines at the top of the page and then add the rest of the text under the category content.

I hope that helps - watch the above video - it's very clear.

Nigel

Hi Kingsplan

The problem here is that you would still have them pointing at your domain. Even if they 404'd, the links would still be hitting your site.

I would:

1. Ascertain if they are actually toxic - look at SEMrush or similar (anything over 65 toxicity is worth removing) - we have had a lot from 'the globe' recently. I have disavowed them for some sites but honestly, they don't appear to have done any harm to others.

2. Email the 4 or 5 domains and ask them to remove the links.

3. If you don't get a response after 2 weeks or so simply add those domains to the disavow file.

Regards Nigel

The reason we answered 'quickly' by the way is because we are in the UK -  you were still in bed lol!

There is only ONE URL that is the point.

If they share the same URL then you only have one page of code so ONE canonical

Regards

Nigel

Hi Tej

I am an eCommerce specialist and come across this question all the time.

It is far better having one core product with colour and size as attributes feeding off the one page. You then have, for example, a simple non-colour specific URL with the colour and the size as drop downs or swatches that the potential customer can choose from.

Doing it this way you can focus all of your writing efforts in producing a block of keyword rich and contextually strong product description. You do not need to think about the colours which may well come in and out of stock.

By doing it this way you don't split the ranking across the 5 colours (say) weakening every one of them in SERPS (Search Rankings) Imagine having to write 5 different descriptions to describe the colour variations. Yes!, it just ain't going to happen!

One super strong page with colour and size as attributes will outrank any other. With a bit of luck, your competitors will be doing it the one page/one colour way and you will smugly outrank them!

You will never rank well for one colour one page variation. The reason is that they are 90% the same content with only the colour, different. There is one thing that Google hates and that is duplication and while there is no physical penalty you are asking Google to choose one of the variations - the result is they rank none of them highly!

I hope that helps

Nigel

Carousel Project.

Hi Marc,

The answer to this question really depends on just how much effort you want to put into the two websites and frankly what your resources are. There are many companies that successfully run different operations, Zappos and 6pm is one example.

The upsides:

1. Different target market - allows for different branding appealing to separate segments of the market
2. Different pricing strategy - allows for one site to be a 'marketplace' and the other, a full price site.
3. Different locations - One may target England, say, the other Wales & Scotland.
4. Dominate Google - Both sites may appear at the top of SERPS if enough SEO is thrown at them - therefore increasing real estate in top 10.

So there are definite upsides to having a dual site approach.

The Downsides:

1. The work involved in building and maintaining two websites. You have already said that one of them is not responsive, so I assume that is the case because you either didn't have the time or the funds to make it so.
2. Ongoing operational operations - uploading of content and rewriting for the two sites, banners, product photographs, ALTs, promotions - keeping everything separate will be a daily challenge.
3. NAPS - presumably the name & address is identical for the two sites, what about the host and IP addresses?
4. Maintaining a balance of attention to the two operations and serving the niches they are targetted at.
5. Marketing costs associated with two separate sites and brandings.
6. Marketplace links to Amazon, Ebay etc and associated costs.
7. Socials - maintaining two separate groups of Social Media accounts.

I ran an online shoe store for many years and we set up a 'sister' site which focused purely on Women's fashion. I quickly found that we lacked the resources to run two websites and ended up redirecting all of the second site links back to the first - just because of all the headaches involved.

If I were you and reading the 'non-responsive' comment, I would can that site and focus all of your attention on to the one main site:

1. 301 redirect the whole site page by page to the main website so that you preserve any backlink juice that may be pointing to it.
2. Write great original content 300+ words at brand and category level.
3. Write great original content 150+ words at product level.
4. Make sure ALL support pages are fully written, and optimised.
5. Make sure all META is optimised in terms of character length and relevance.
6. Make sure your site speed is as good as it can be.
7. All image Alts are filled in
8. Merge Socials

Frankly without going on, just make sure you cross all the Ts and dot all the i's when it comes to SEO and I am pretty sure that the combined effort of running one great site will far outweigh the schizoid way you are doing it now!

There are of course other issues, resources - do you actually want two brands? along with all the marketing costs? is that sensible from a business point of view?

I hope that helps to give you some encouragement.

Regards

Nigel

Carousel Projects

Hi Laurie

That's kind of old school cloaking and when you add the 301 you have told Google that the content has moved to the new URL. I can't think why you would want to do this?

For me it's a big SEO no no - even if you have teh same content on two URLs you'd still suffer a drop in rankings due to duplication issues. So you would need to canonicalise, thus losing one of teh URLs.

Regards Nigel

Hi vtmoz

It's funny you should say "so they started calling themselves on the internet 'Moz SEO' " because Moz used to be called SEOMOZ and they changed to just MOZ so that they could concentrate on building the brand. There is evidence to suggest that if an article is written about a subject and your brand is linked from that article that Google will recognise the contextuality of the article and associate your brand name with that subject.

For example, one would expect that Nike and 'sports', 'sports clothing' etc would occupy the same space. In the same way - if your brand sold Tennis Rackets, for example, Google would begin to associate your brand name with that range of products.

In the same way, when we SEOs are optimising a page we will use Keyword Explorer. The tool would give us contextually relevant keywords to use alongside a brand name in order to strengthen the SEO of a page.

So if I were writing an article on Nike and I hadn't used the words 'sports', 'sports clothing', 'sports footwear' or even 'Phil Knight', then MOZ will suggest these as relevant keywords to use to strengthen the page's SEO.

I wouldn't include them in the brand name but I would use them on a page. In this way, they become kind of 'baby anchor text' in that they surround the brand.

In order to strengthen that further, you might write an article that is submitted to a blog with a specific anchor text backlink which is not your brand name but the most relevant keyword. So if Nike wanted (and it does of course) to be found for the term 'Sports Footwear' then it would link back to its own page with that anchor text.

Very often when I am constructing Meta titles and heading for a brand page then I would use the subject after the brand as that is often the way someone may search for it in Google.

Example: I would title a page 'Clarks Boots' as the opening two words of the title and as the H1 on the page if I wanted that page to rank for the brand and the category. I would then fill the page with boot products along with a good 300 word + description of the types of Clarks boots, the gender, heels, ankle, mid, high and any other contextually relevant keywords.

I hope that goes someway to answering your question,

Regards

Nigel

Hi Michael

The problem you have is the very low value content that exists on all of those pages and the complete impossibility of writing any unique Titles, Descriptions and content. There are just too many of them.

With a footwear client of mine I no indexed a huge slug of tags taking the page count down by about 25% - we saw an immediate 22% increase in organic traffic in the first month. (March 18th 2017 - April 17th 2017) the duplicates were all size and colour related. Since canonicalising (I'm English lol) more content and taking the site from 25,000 pages to around 15,000 the site is now 76% ahead of last year for organics.  This is real measurable change.

Now the arguments:

Canonicalisation

How are you going to canonicalise 10,000+ pages ? unless you have some kind of magic bullet you are not going to be able to but lets look at the logic.

Say we have a page of Widgets (brand) and they come in 7 sizes. When the range is fully in stock all of the brand/size pages will be identical to the brand page, apart from the title & description. So it would make sense to canonicalise back to the brand. Even when sizes started to run out, all of the sizes will be on the brand page. So size is a subset of the brand page.

Similar but not the same for colour. If colour is a tag then every colour sorted page will be on the brand page. So really they are the same page - just a slimmer selection. Now I accept that the brand page will contain all colours as it did all sizes but the similarity is so great - 95 % of the content being the same apart from the colour, that it makes sense to call them the same.

So for me Canonicalisation would be the way to go but it's just not possible as there are too many of them.

Noindex

The upside of noindex is that it is generally easier to put the noindex tag on the page as there is no URL to tag. The downside is that the page is then not indexed in Google so you lose a little  juice - I would argue by the way that the chances of being found in Google for a size page is extremely slim, less than 2% of visits came from size pages before we junked them and most of those were from a newsletter so reality is <1% not worth bothering about You could leave off the nofollow so that Google crawls through all of the links on the pages - the better option.

Considering your problem and having experience of a number of sites with the same problem Noindex is your solution.

I hope that helps

Kind Regards

Nigel - Carousel Projects.

Hi Arun

It's certainly best practice to move to a root directory. As you say visitors are then coming to one domain, not a subdomain. All you need to do is page by page redirect through a 301. When you say they are being 'redirected to 301 code' this is perfectly OK. The 301 code just tells Google that the page has moved permanently.

It takes Google a short while to recognise the new pages as replacing the old ones and for that period you can see old and new in Google, causing a short period of duplication which could affect the rankings.

You just need to sit it out - by all means, do a Fetch in Search Console to help speed up the process.

Search Console>Crawl>Fetch as Google.

Regards

Nigel

Hi Becky

I have to agree with you there. The H1 should be a header for what is visible in the on-page content. These clearly are not. It won't confuse Google as it takes little notice of H2 but for me it's just a bad use of page elements.

Regards

Nigel

I think if you are going to ask a question like this them be specific what the problems are. We all spend a lot of time trying to help people and are then made to feel bad because we haven't understood the question.

Also, it's in a language I can't speak.

So post up a few keywords and the pages you expect to rank for and maybe we can see what the problem is.

Cheers

Nigel

Hi William

It looks like they have done this to deliberately target you. It doesn't make any sense as it wouldn't be great for them either. The fact is that you are the copyright owner and whatever people may say about copied content not affecting you, duplicate content does and you now both have a virtually identical page.

This is bound to affect you - duplicate content is a no no and whilst Google may elevate you above the other page- which sits in a directory it will still have an effect.

I would open a copyright dispute with Google - pretty simple to do: Here:

https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905?hl=en

Hit 'web search' and I have a legal dispute that is not mentioned above.

Get it removed.

Regards

Nigel

Hi Paul

Google knows not to crawl tel: links and this is not a problem. It's more an issue with the tool than SEO and will do you no harm.

If you really want to remove the warning you could use a bit of Java

Or nofollow them in Robots.txt

I have a site which is crawled by MOZ weekly with tel: links and they don't report them as problematic and the site ranks really well!

More here: https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/91883/how-can-i-stop-search-engines-from-crawling-tel-links

Regards Nigel