Hi Alex

These are parameters that sit after the main URL and often include 'sort' 'page'.  (They can also be created in some eCommerce pages as 'products' but these should be dealt with a mod-rewrite to show properly constructed URLs with category name and title). There are a number of ways with dealing with them:

1. Google search console - you have to be very careful messing with the rules in parameter handling but for some, this is the way.

• 'sort' then you can tell Google that it narrows the content on the page - you can then choose to let Googlebot decide or block the URLs - I often block them as they just create skinny and duplicate content.
• Pagination - 'page' you can tell Google that this paginates and then let Google decide. Look at rel/prev tag on those pages as well.
• Attributes - like size and colour - I generally block those as they just create skinny duplicates of main categories
• Others - like Catalog - it depends on what platform you use but there could be other parameters being created - I block most of them as they create useless URLs

2. Robots.txt

You can use this file to block the indexing of these pages depending on the parameter by excluding them from being followed by the search bots. Once again be very careful as you don't want to accidentally block indexing of useful areas the site.

https://moz.com/learn/seo/robotstxt

3. Canonicals

If you are able a great way of dealing with attributes like size and colour is to canonicalize back to the non size specific URL - this is a great way of maintaining the link juice for those URLs which may otherwise be lost if you blocked them all together. You add a rel=canonical tag pointing to the non-parameter version.

https://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization

4. As a last resort you can 301 redirect them but frankly, if you have dealt with them properly you shouldn't have to. It's also bad practice to have live 301 redirects in the internal structure of a website. Best to use the correct URL.

There is more reading here:

https://moz.com/community/q/which-is-the-best-way-to-handle-query-parameters
https://moz.com/community/q/do-parameters-in-a-url-make-a-difference-from-an-seo-point-of-view
https://moz.com/community/q/how-do-i-deindex-url-parameters

Regards

Nigel

Hi Obi

Yes - a rather annoying new feature of MOZ which says that a noindex is an error when it clearly isn't. You have done exactly the right thing to avoid a ton of duplicate content. Just ignore the warnings.

I can understand the ethos - but are you going to go through thousands of tags and canonicalise them? no, me neither. I have seen huge success no indexing tags on massive websites. It instantly sorts out the problem and frankly I never even click on tags - they just take up space in Google for no reason.

Regards

Nigel

I agree with Robert. So of course with the Clarks examples pages may be:

Clarks Boots

Clarks Sandals

Clarks Slippers

And each of those pages would be different. Filled with contextually rich content surrounding those terms.

"It won't put you on the 1st page" - I don't agree with this. I have many clients who have been hoiked up to page one by adding contextually relevant content to a key phrase (Brand + Category) constructed the page. If you _are _the brand and you construct pages like this (With 300+ words contextual content) you will be No. 1 or 2 in Google, never mind just on the front page.

Just search 'Carousel Projects SEO'

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 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 Ramjam

I have read a lot about HTML5 - but nowhere is there a direct comparison between the SEO rank in SERPS of an article separated by HTML5 tags vs an Article on a unique page marked up correctly.

My feeling is that given an article in the middle of a multi article single blog page and an article placed on its own page that the latter would rank much higher. However, I have no evidence to show you as there does not appear to be any.

If you still feel that this is a viable route to go then read this:

https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/the-truth-about-multiple-h1-tags-in-the-html5-era--webdesign-16824

Then place an article on the same page with others marked up correctly with HTML5 Headers, Article & H1 tags and one on its own unique page. See which rank higher.

Maybe this is a question we should put directly to Rand and ask him to do a whiteboard Friday on it. Every bit of SEO advice I have ever read has been about creating unique pages with their own defined content so this goes against all of that!

Regards

Nigel

Hi David

That's great news!

As a matter of interest, where did they block it? as it's not in the Robots.txt - was in in htaccess.txt?

Regards

Nigel

It's a pleasure!

Hi Christina

I don't know how your site is set up but I can see that for some reason you are blocking access to the cgi-bin

If that directory contains files that execute php or other permissions then that may well be your problem. It's the only directory you are blocking and since I haven't seen other Robots.tx blocking it, then I would hazard a guess that this is the root of your problem.

Robots.txt

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/

Sitemap: http://www.wychwoodflooring.com/sitemap.xml

Regards

Nigel

Hi Bankable

It used to be that whenever I touched a page there would be a fall. I'd messed with it and Google didn't like it! Now I find that any changes that add value rise in Google and quite quickly too! Pages that I edit are picked up very quickly, literally as often as Google passes by and re-indexes a page. You can get an idea of how frequently that is for these pages by searching for them then clicking on the green arrow right of the URL to see when they were last cached (See Image). Could be up to 4 weeks, but I find that the higher the page is up the hierarchy, the more frequently it gets crawled.

When you say Domains I think you mean URLs?

For on page content I would recommend you stick to 300 words+ and make sure that the content you are adding is focused around a single keyword or a small group of contextually similar keywords and short phrases. Don't splurge content between different pages - make sure the writing is focused.

I see little difference in changing 10 pages in one day or 10 pages over 10 days so go ahead and if you can improve on what's there quickly then do it.

Regards Nigel

QEnwn

Hi Ramjam

It sounds like you have all of your blog posts on one page and that the header for each post is an H1. This is really bad from an SEO point of view as the resulting page is huge and splattered with conflicting keywords. Google would have no idea how to rank the page and for what.

The best way to run your blog is to have a single page for each post - this is the only way that you can properly separate content and to write about properly themed and separate subjects. Then you can add appropriate META tags for each page (Title & Description) and focus on a single focus keywords or very tight selection of contextually similar keywords. Also remember that when you add images to name them the focus keyword to further help with the SEO of the page.

You can still use H1s on that page but keep them keyword focused and don't duplicate content across pages. You will find that each blog page will be listed in Google. Note: ensure that tags are turned off and categories are properly optimized when you do this as this can add duplicate content URLs.

I hope that helps

Regards

Nigel

Carousel Projects

Of course every single area is not going to be listed so the best way would be to search for the closest nearby city - in this case Sydney and adjust by population,

So if Sydney had 10,000 searches for carpet cleaning and 20x higher population than Manly then one would assume a search volume around 500. The assumption being that the search will not differ so greatly for towns and cities in close proximity.

I hope that helps

Regards

Nigel

Hi There

URL length is not used as a ranking factor. The guideline is that they mustn't be overly long without reason, otherwise they can look spammy.

If your URLs are:

Site/Category/Sub-Category/Brand/Product Name

Then I see no problem whatsoever. MOZ didn't used to warn on URL length - I generally ignore it and tell my clients not to worry about it.

Regards Nigel