Advice urgently needed on best practice for handling multiple product categories on Magento website
-
I have an ecommerce site built using Magento and urgently need advice on best practice for handling multiple product categories (where products appear in more than one category on the site creating multiple URLs to the same page).
In April this year, based on advice from my SEO who felt that duplicate content issues were causing my rankings to be held back, I changed about 25% of the product categories to 'noindex, follow'. This has made organic traffic fall (obviously) as these pages fell out of Google's index. But, contrary to what I was hoping for, it didn't then improve rankings - not one iota, nothing - which was the ONLY reason why I did this. This has had a real negative impact on sales, so I'm starting to think this was actually an a terrible idea.
Should I change them back?
And to ask a wider question, what is best practice for this particular scenario?
-
Hi,
If there already is a canonical link then you can edit it using the layout update code I first mentioned. If you do not need to canonical to another page you can just leave it as it is (self referencing).
As to if you want to do it or not, this really depends on how big of a problem it is for your search efforts and how many cats/products you will need to manually adjust. I would think that if you keep track of them in an excel and remember to check when you are updating that with a couple of hundred categories/products (of which only maybe a couple dozen or less might have to be manually edited?) then you should be able to manage it ok.
Good luck!
-
Thanks, I have regenerated the xml sitemap. Fingers crossed it doesn't take too long to see the pages fall back into the index!
As it happens, my developer has since emailed back to say that there is a canonical link for each category but it points to itself. Is that a problem?? He can't tell me.
Thinking about it, I'm unsure about manually adding a canonical link for each product/category. I'm concerned about errors creeping in over time, with URL changes, etc. With hundreds of products, I think it won't be too difficult for this to happen. Plus, the XML is automatically generated, so don't think the URLs will match. Have you had encountered these problems before?
-
HI,
For the canonicals if they are not being added automatically at the category level then you can still do it just removing the first part of the above that removes the old url, so like this:
<reference name="head"><action method="addLinkRel"><rel>canonical</rel>
<href>http://www.domain.com/canonicalUrl</href></action></reference>The above will add a canonical tag to whichever category page you add it to (in the layout update box).
The fetch as google does not reindex your site, it just previews how google sees the site. Make sure all the category pages are included in your sitemap and resubmit the sitemap to GWT. You can then see how many pages in the sitemap are indexed and that number should go up as google recrawls the site and finds the noindex tag removed.
-
Thanks for taking the trouble to answer. I have now made all categories 'index, follow'.
No canonicals are automatically added to category pages, so can't use this technique. Thanks for the suggestion, though.
Should I 'Fetch as Google' in WMT? If so, is it best to add the URL for every single category that I've updated? Or, just wait?
Appreciate your help, Lynn.
-
Hi,
I would do it all at once, nothing unusual about it and google may not see the change on all pages at the same time anyway.
For the rankings it is really impossible to say, you might get lucky, you might have to be patient, its not exactly like starting over again, especially if you have a couple of existing external links but....
For the canonical tags, there is a way to do it depending on your setup. Have you got canonicals being automatically added to the category pages as well as the product pages? If yes then you can overwrite them on a case by case basis by putting the following code in the 'custom layout update' box (this works for both products and categories actually).
<reference name="head"><action method="removeItem"><type>link_rel</type>
<name>http://www.domain.com/oldurl</name></action></reference><action method="addLinkRel"><rel>canonical</rel>
<href>http://www.domain.com/new-url</href></action>You will need to identify the canonical url being inputted into the code, add it to the oldurl bit above to remove it and then put in the new canonical url you want. Needless to say, it pays to be sure about what you are trying to achieve and why before implementing this setup on a lot of pages.
Hope it helps!
-
The website uses Magento version 1.4. which actually does have the canonical link back to the base URL feature. This was in place already before I started even messing around with making these changes.
I will revert the categories back to 'index, follow'. Some questions about this:
- Is it best to do it all at once (or will this look odd/'unnatural' somehow from Google's perspective)
- How long will it take for these pages to re-rank? They were made noindex in April, so would it be like starting again as if these were totally brand new pages?
Another SEO has recommended another approach, which is to identify the 'best' URL (from SEO point of view) and add the canonical link to the rest. Is there a way to implement/manage this easily in Magento? I can't seem to find a solution online on this.
-
That Yoast plugin is only developed up to Magento version 1.4 which is pretty old now. The good news is you can get some of this functionality out of the box now at Admin -> Configuration -> Catalog -> Search engine optimizations. If you set the use canonical meta tag link on products to yes then all product pages are given a canonical link back to a base url with no category in it. Baring a more advanced paid module or custom development, this is going to be your best bet.
Certainly change your category pages back to index, follow. Depending on your setup and how many common categories/products you have any duplicate content issue you have would usually be on a product more than a category level anyway. For category pages look at getting some good descriptions and other unique content on them. Check out this video for more details.
-
Change them all back to INDEX, FOLLOW and use Canonical plugin by yoast.
Canonical URL's for Magento • Yoast (sorry if links not allowed)
Some products on our site appear in six categories and we have no issues with duplicate content whatsoever using the above.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Deleting Tags Properly - Advice Needed
I have over 18,000 tags. Needless to say, most of them are relatively useless to the user and generate no traffic, while cluttering the site. (I use Wordpress.) My plan is to delete tags, but I want to do so safely as to not accumulate website errors. (Tags pages are noindexed.) What process should I take here? Here was my basic plan (any help is appreciated). 1. Find irrelevant tags that are connected with hardly any posts. 2. Go into the post, and remove said tag. 3. Now, with a tag having a 'count' of 0, I go into Tags, and delete it. Safe, right? But now it seems those tag pages just turned into 404s "Uh-oh...Page not found!" Where do I go from here? Create 410's? Thanks Mike
Technical SEO | | naturalsociety0 -
Question on URL wording and structure best practices
We're mapping out some URL structures and trying to figure out what would be best for separating folders for articles and videos regarding wording in the folder say: www.site.com/category/article/name-of-article/id#/ ---- www.site.com/category/video/name-of-video/id#/ vs. www.site.com/category/a/name-of-article/id#/ ---- www.site.com/category/v/name-of-video/id#/ Second option came about the ''shorter is better' way of thinking. Downside I see to it is if the link would be copied and pasted somewhere probably would be best for a user to make it clear they are clicking into an article or a video, don't think just an 'a' or a 'v' would be very telling in that scenario. Would it be better for search engines to make it clearer with the whole word in there? Any other pros and cons to each? Not sure what's the best route here.
Technical SEO | | SBRMarketing0 -
Geographical targeting with Magento
We have a Magento store, with multiple stores/domains setup. There is only really one reason that we have the multiple domains; we use an automatic GEOIP store switcher to send a customer to the right store, so that they pay the proper shipping, see the proper pricing etc, and a couple small differences in the design templates. But all the content is identical. So we have: domain.com (main website)
Technical SEO | | maartenvr
domain.ca (where most other countries are directed to based on GEOIP)
domain.eu Since the content is the same, what is the best strategy here? I looked at several options: 1. Custom canonical urls, making each page on the .ca and .eu use canonical url of the .com
2. Completely block the .ca and .eu from robots.
3. Leave it the way it is0 -
301 Clean-Up - Best Practices & Procedure?
Hello Again, I have taken over managing a website for about 2 months and have fixed a whole heap of problems. Im now turning my attention to the URL rewrites as there are ALOT of them. I have fixed the most problematic offenders that were blocking products and all sorts of mischief but I now want to clean them up. The website is on Magento, and there are 240 custom URL rewrites. Question 1: Am i correct that I should edit the links on my website so that they link directly to the new page instead of utilising the re-direct for best SEO results. Question 2: If my website doesn't utilise the URL rewrite (fixed in question 1) its only purpose is to transfer link juice from any external link the page had before. If this page didnt have any external inbound links then I can delete the URL rewrite as it serves no purpose. Question 3: If Q1 and Q2 are correct, what is the quickest way to check the inbound links to a page quickly so I can make a quick decision on if i should remove the re-write. Many Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | ATP1 -
What is the best way to handle links that lead to a 404 page
Hi Team Moz, I am working through a site cutover with an entirely new URL structure and have a bunch of pages that could not, would not or just plain don't redirect to new pages. Steps I have taken: Multiple new sitemaps submitted with new URLs and the indexing looks solid used webmasters to remove urls with natural result listings that did not redirect and produce urls Completely built out new ppc campaigns with new URL structures contacted few major link partners Now here is my question: I have a pages that produce 404s that are linked to in forums, slick deals and stuff like that which will not be redirected. Is disavowing these links the correct thing to do?
Technical SEO | | mm9161570 -
Same product in Multiple categories ecommerce store, best way to avoid duplicate content?
Hello All, Im building a magento store, with around 500 products. One thing is that I am going to have some products in Multiple categories. Do you think the best solution is to remove any category name from the url structure or would this devalue SEO? Also would the use of canonical links remove any duplicate content issues if the category name was left in. So overall what would get better results No category name in URL (e.g.phonename-model1.html) V category name in url (e.g. phones/phonename-model1.html / videophones/phonename-model1.html +using canonical links Any feedback or views would be great
Technical SEO | | voipme0 -
New website
Hello, How bad is going to be if I change my Joomla website to Wordpress? I can check the 100 best pages and redirect them to the new url with 301 but my website has 424 pages. If is this needs time, how long does it take to be in the same position? Is Google review my new website quickly? What about if I make my services more specific and the main topic is going to be smaller in pages? (Mpre social services pages vs. less pages about the main webdesign topic) I should change my website to WP but I am afraid because now I am in the 2. 🙂 Thanks! Regards,
Technical SEO | | Netkreativ
Misi0 -
Considering redirecting or canonicalization - Best Practice
Hi, I'm having a techinical problem and I would like advise on the effects this is having on my SEO efforts. My old site www.oldsiteexample.com (live for about 8 years) Directs to my new site www.example.com which is fine BUT When I type me new website into the tool bar both sides are found & do not direct to one domain; www.example.com & example.com (both the same site) What is the best practice here? Direct my new non www to my new www site considering my old website directs to the www. Advise & the SEO affects this is having my website would be greatly appreciated, thank you.
Technical SEO | | Socialdude0