@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 JH

I'm sure Thomas means well with his multiple complicated posts but all of this is totally unnecessary.

Both sites are serving the same URL

You can't put a rel=alternative because there is nothing to point to.

Just put a self-referencing canonical. I said that 2 hours ago!

That is all.

Regards Nigel

The URLs are identical it is just the content that is served that may be slightly different.

Since you can only specify one canonical for each URL it makes no difference. Just self-reference and that is it.

If you had to different URLs then it would be an issue where you woudl need a rel=alternative so there is nothing to worry about.

Regards

Nigel

You are right - you could only use teh rel=alternate if there was an m. version or similar

Regards

Nigel

Then there is no problem simply putting a self-referencing canonical. There is in effect no mobile version as there is a single URL so no need for a rel=alternate.

It's an even easier solution. Well, there isn't a problem in the first place.

rel=alternate is only necessary if you have two different URLs! The fact they are the same takes away the problem.

Regards

Nigel

Hi India

It is unusual to keep both domains if you really want to move site but yes, you can do cross-site canonicals.

So place ON EVERY page of the old site a canonical to the corresponding page on the new site.

The old site will disappear from SERPS and the new site will appear.

Warning

The problem you will have is that the new site will not inherit any of the backlink equity you have built up on the old site. For that, you will need to do a page by page 301 redirect in htaccess on the old site.

I hope that helps

Regards Nigel

Hi JH

This is very straightforward.

Use the following annotations:

1. On the desktop page, add a  rel=”alternate” tag pointing to the corresponding mobile URL. This helps Googlebot discover the location of your site’s mobile pages.
2. On the mobile page, add a link rel=”canonical” tag pointing to the corresponding desktop URL.

It is that simple and doing this will not create duplicate content

More here: https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/separate-urls

Regards Nigel

Hi spacecollective

As long as you tag the sites correctly then you will not have a problem.

Add Hreflang tags to the pages. They can be identical pages on the same server in if you wish but this is how I would do it. As long as they are separated like this.

website.com for the US
website.com/en for the UK

Any other country would then have its own directory.

This avoids you having to mess with the various country TLDs like .co.uk or any other you'd wish to set up.

Then add Hreflang tags to tell Google which country is targetted and the relationship between each one.

 https://moz.com/learn/seo/hreflang-tag

(The first part en is the language and the second, the country)

The combination of search console and Hreflang tags is enough for Google to know that there is no duplication.

You would move UK users on to the gb version and US users would see the .com. It would all resolve pretty quickly as you are telling Google the alternative country versions in the Hreflang tag.

I hope this helps

Nigel

Carousel Projects

Hi Roman,

I work with a lot of e-commerce companies and I have to say from one SEO to another this is great advice!

Best Regards

Nigel

Hi Molly

There is no logical reason for you to do this unless the .org was live and listed somewhere so you would lose traffic. You suggest that the .org needs to be 'set up' so this is my suggestion.

If it is set up already then 301 each page on the .org to the most relevant page on the .com. If there is no relevant page then 301 to the homepage. Do this in htaccess, not on the pages themselves.

If the domain you are redirecting from is https then you will need an SSL on the server for that domain.

If there is a .org then it is most likely doing the main .com some damage anyway through duplication so 301ing is the best thing to do.

If there is no .org set up, don't bother.

Regards

Nigel

I think you are taking that rather too literally.

For example, as I said the .com could be the one targeted with an hreflang="x-default. A person in the UK would, by definition be served with the .com/uk version.

You wouldn't put a hreflang="x-default on the /uk homepage.

Regards

Nigel

Hi Becky

I can see chairs:

https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs

But the paginated versions above are not in there. (can you see them?)

All you need to do is remove this directive for pages without a page 2: rel="next" href="https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=2" > as there is no page 2 for chairs.

Regards

Nigel

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