Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi friends,

I have to face a big challenge. My client has an online store with about 250 products. The store is based on a web service provider whose CMS gives critical duplicate content issues. My client is considering to rethink the store from scratch and choose a CMS that offers more guarantees. I have two options:

• Starting the store from scratch with new domain and make redirects (whole domain or page to page?)
• Maintaining the domain, careful to keep the current structure of the URL, which is currently pretty bad

I hope you could help me. Thanks in advance.

Hi John,

There is a plugin that allows you to edit permalinks for single posts, so you can decide what kind of permalink structure you want for each post from now. Here you have the link:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/permalink-editor/

However, as Marcus says, if your redirects are well done (and redirect plugin lets you do it), you don't have to worry about it.

Sergio

Hi John,

If you look at SEOmoz PRO Dashboard On-page Resports, one issue they consider as Low Importance Factor is 'Minimal Subfolders in the URL'. They explain it as follows:

<dt style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">Explanation</dt>

<dd style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">

The quantity of subfolders in a URL appears to correlate to rankings. URLs with fewer trailing slashes perform better than those with more. Additionally, search engine representatives have recommended that excessive, subfolders in a URL string may be a signal that the page is very deep in a site's structure and may be less valuable/worthwhile to crawl, index and rank.

</dd>

<dt style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">Recommendation</dt>

<dd style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">

Rewrite the URL to include no more than 3 subfolder levels (4 trailing slashes following the domain name)

</dd>

However, I agree with Marcus. Think about your users and your website needs. Forget about Google and its way of crawling, indexing an so on. If you see a good performance from your users, what is bad?

Consider the following:

• Is your traffic good for your expectations?
• Is your traffic increasing through time?
• Do your users interact?
• Is your website well considered by your users?

If all your answers are YES, then keep on going. You´re doing very well.

If not, consider if minimizing subfolders could improve your website's experience (at all stages).

Hope it helps.

Sergio

I think this is a good opportunity for making experiments:

• Try to re-write content on one of these sites and keep untouched the other one. You can always say the same with different words.
• Try different keywords for each specific page on one site and another and monitor them. This way you can evaluate the suitability of each keyword.

Obviously, due to those legal reasons, I imagine there is no chance to use redirections from one site to another, so the best option is to generate different content for each site.

Hope it helps.

Sergio

If you go with Scenario 1 you will give your shop domain the following benefits:

-If frequently updated, fresh content (remember: freshness is something Google likes so much)

-Improved internal linking

-All resources in the same domain: products, relevant info, etc.

-Great landing pages

-Posts are more likely to be shared than products, so take advantage of social media to publicize your store through the blog.

One final note: you are planning to build your blog with WordPress. I'm absolutely in love with WordPress, but PrestaShop gives you the chance to use own modules to have this feature. I give you some examples:

http://addons.prestashop.com/en/content-management/1213-blog-module.html

http://www.themes-prestashop.com/es/modulos-gratis/31-prestashop-blog.html

http://www.buhoc.com/prestashop/es/modulos-gratuitos-prestashop/44-modulo-blog-prestashop.html

Hope it helps.

Sergio

In my opinion, web architecture has a lot of importance for SEO. You must keep your site as flat as possible. I see your website has 3 levels deep for a product page. That's OK. Furthermore, your website looks very intuitive.

I'm doing SEO for a supplements store too. So I want to share with you how I've considered optimize the website:

1. Divide your keywords in categories: main, secondary, category specific, product specific and branded in               my case.

2. How I distributed my keywords:

-Homepage: main + branded (company name)

-Nav Menu pages: main + secondary

-Brands pages: main/secondary + branded (brand name)

-Categories pages: category specific + main/secondary

-Products page: branded (product name) + category name/branded (brand name)

I can tell you that with this method, the vast majority of our products are positioned in the first page for their names. A big number of categories in first page too. And we have only 3 levels deep for a product page too!!!

The more levels you include, the more disperse the link juice.

If, from a business point of view, you need more categories for making internal navigation more specific, then do it. But if you only looks for SEO benefits, consider the following:

Is it necessary to lose user's experience quality to gain more traffic? What will happen with these new users when they find the new navigation structure?

Hope it helps.

Sergio

Only a plus to Adam's response: remember to design custom 404 pages. It's a good idea to include links to pages you want to rank, a search box or a list of featured pages (post, categories, etc.) At least, it may help to keep users staying in your website.

Hope it helps.

Sergio.

Imagine that one of the keywords your homepage ranks for is your brand name. If you look for some of your services (subpage) and you make a search using a keyword containing a branded keyword within, probably your first result is your homepage.

Your homepage would be ranking for this branded keyword very well. Moreover, if your homepage has a lot of backlinks using your branded keyword as anchor text, then, making a search for finding a subpage using your branded keyword is a bad idea, as your homepage is ranking better than any other subpage in your site.

Hope to be helpful.

It would be helpful to indicate your URL and company name in order to evaluate this problem.

It's difficult to answer without data, but my first impression is that you can have a problem with title optimization. Does it contain that keyword? And your company name? How long is your title?

Please, send your URL for more accurate answers.

Always glad to be useful to the community.

Regards.

Sergio

In my opinion, web architecture has a lot of importance for SEO. You must keep your site as flat as possible. I see your website has 3 levels deep for a product page. That's OK. Furthermore, your website looks very intuitive.

I'm doing SEO for a supplements store too. So I want to share with you how I've considered optimize the website:

1. Divide your keywords in categories: main, secondary, category specific, product specific and branded in               my case.

2. How I distributed my keywords:

-Homepage: main + branded (company name)

-Nav Menu pages: main + secondary

-Brands pages: main/secondary + branded (brand name)

-Categories pages: category specific + main/secondary

-Products page: branded (product name) + category name/branded (brand name)

I can tell you that with this method, the vast majority of our products are positioned in the first page for their names. A big number of categories in first page too. And we have only 3 levels deep for a product page too!!!

The more levels you include, the more disperse the link juice.

If, from a business point of view, you need more categories for making internal navigation more specific, then do it. But if you only looks for SEO benefits, consider the following:

Is it necessary to lose user's experience quality to gain more traffic? What will happen with these new users when they find the new navigation structure?

Hope it helps.

Sergio

Hi Scott,

It depends if you want those new pages to be indexed fast. If you want them to be indexed as soon as possible, is a good idea to make a new sitemap because the next time bots crawl your web, they will find new pages easily and then can index them. If indexing new pages is not urgent for you, then wait.

Obviously, if you create a high number of pages which may be indexed per day, create a new sitemap each time you have a new page could be a hard work.

You have to stablish your needs, for example a new sitemap/day, or a new sitemap/10 new pages, etc.

If you use some CMS, like WordPress, there are some useful plugins that allow you automate this task.

I hope my answer would be helpful.

I agree with William. You must choose your theme based on your goals. Once you have your prefered theme, you have a huge list of plugins out there that can help you in your SEO tasks, but let me give you my favorites:

-WordPress SEO by Yoast (Andy and William are correct, it's the best): it lets you do a great on-page optimization, e.g. titles, meta descriptions, rel canonical, robots, etc.

-XML-Sitemaps: although Yoast plugin gives you the possibility of auto-generating a sitemap of your website, lately presented some operational problems. So, the best option is XML-Sitemap, where you can generate and send to search engines both sitemaps and compressed sitemaps.

-W3 Total Cache: SEO is not just about on-page optimization and linkbuilding, but website performance too. You need to pay attention to how your site appears to users: load speed, browser cache, javascript and css minifying, etc. This plugin lets you control all these variables (Warning: be careful, you must know what you do).

-PageNavi: this fantastic plugin helps you with the pagination of your website, one task that sometimes can harm your SEO efforts.

Apart from these plugins, there are themes that come pre-configured to support the optimization of your website. You need to use these frameworks and work with child themes:

-Thematic: made by Automattic, the WordPress Team.

-Genesis: by StudioPress.

-Canvas: by Woothemes; is not a framework itself, but comes with a bunch of SEO features; recently announced that the SEO features would be replaced by Yoast plugin.

Hope to be helpful.

Sergio.

Only a plus to Adam's response: remember to design custom 404 pages. It's a good idea to include links to pages you want to rank, a search box or a list of featured pages (post, categories, etc.) At least, it may help to keep users staying in your website.

Hope it helps.

Sergio.

Thanks for your help! Of course, I can feel free to change any element I consider it deserves to change, but, of course, that means more work for me for the same budget. The key is to convince him about my work in order to get hired to do more. Thanks again.

Hi John,

If you look at SEOmoz PRO Dashboard On-page Resports, one issue they consider as Low Importance Factor is 'Minimal Subfolders in the URL'. They explain it as follows:

<dt style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">Explanation</dt>

<dd style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">

The quantity of subfolders in a URL appears to correlate to rankings. URLs with fewer trailing slashes perform better than those with more. Additionally, search engine representatives have recommended that excessive, subfolders in a URL string may be a signal that the page is very deep in a site's structure and may be less valuable/worthwhile to crawl, index and rank.

</dd>

<dt style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">Recommendation</dt>

<dd style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">

Rewrite the URL to include no more than 3 subfolder levels (4 trailing slashes following the domain name)

</dd>

However, I agree with Marcus. Think about your users and your website needs. Forget about Google and its way of crawling, indexing an so on. If you see a good performance from your users, what is bad?

Consider the following:

• Is your traffic good for your expectations?
• Is your traffic increasing through time?
• Do your users interact?
• Is your website well considered by your users?

If all your answers are YES, then keep on going. You´re doing very well.

If not, consider if minimizing subfolders could improve your website's experience (at all stages).

Hope it helps.

Sergio