Use Nonindex or Canonical on product tags of a e-commerce site
-
I run a e-commerce site and we have many product tags. These product tags come up as "Duplicate Page Content" when Moz does it's crawl. I was wondering if I should use Nonindex or Canonical? The tags all go to the same product when used so I figure I would just nonindex them but was wondering what's the best for SEO?
-
Hi Emmett
So good to hear! For reference, here's what I recommended to Emmett...
I would just goto the category pages creating duplicate content issues and add some text. Here's an example from an Inflow article I often reference (http://www.goinflow.com/duplicate-content-ecommerce-seo/
"Category pages on eCommerce websites typically include a title and product grid. This means that there is no unique content on these pages. The common solution to combat this is to add unique descriptions at the top of category pages (not the bottom, where content is given less weight by search engines) that describes what types are featured within the category. There is no magic number of words or characters to use, however the more robust the content is, the better chance the page will be able to maximize traffic from organic search results (due to long-tail keyword traffic). A benchmark of 100-300 words is common. It’s important to understand screen resolutions of your visitors and ensure that the product grid is not pushed below the fold on their browsers. Doing so could limit user discoverability of the product grid upon visiting the category page.
Tip: Intro descriptions on category pages offer a great opportunity to build deep links to related sub-category pages, related article content that may exist on the site, and popular products that deserve attention and link equity."
If you have the opportunity to do so, try that out. You're developing unique content for that page and also giving the user a bit of perspective to really "sell" them on your products.
Again - glad to hear this worked! Let me know if you need anything else!
-
So adding description did work. If you have multiple product tags that comes up as duplicated pages, just a description to the tags and that will fix everything.
Cheers!
Emmett
-
Thanks for the update, Emmett. And best of luck to you! Looking forward to some even better news soon!
Christy
-
Sounds great Emmett! Let me know if you need anything else and how everything goes!!
-
So Patrick came to the conclusion to add a description to the each product tag page which is good for SEO and a good marketing technique. I add the descriptions and I'm just wait 48 hours to do a new crawl test. I'll update you as soon as it's a confirmed solution.
Cheers!
Emmett
-
Hi Emmett, have you been able to sort this out yet? We'd love an update, thanks!
Christy
-
AH! Just saw it! Sorry for my delay! I will respond here in a few! Thanks Emmett.
-
Hey Patrick,
I sent you a message with a link to the website and the product page. Let me know what you think.
I appreciate your time!
-
Guys, please could you let me know the outcome of this as well. I realise the necessity of the canonical tag regarding the categorization of pages but this tag issue is a concern to me so I would really appreciate the findings.
-
Hi Emmett
Could you shoot me a private message and let me take a look? I think I am following what you're saying, but without a real life example, I don't know how much help I can be. I still stand by canonicalizing your main product pages, in my example...
www.example.com/products/blue-lowrise-skinny-jeans
...for the other two pages...
www.example.com/collections/frontpage/blue-lowrise-skinny-jeans
www.example.com/clothing/womens/blue-lowrise-skinny-jeansSo, these two pages above would have...
...in their . But again, if you could pass me a link or URL, I can see what's going on and be of more assistance!
Hope this will help you a bit better! Thanks so much!
-
Yeah it's like that. I'll elaborate my situation better with your example:
Product 1 URL: www.example.com/products/blue-lowrise-skinny-jeans
Product Tag 1: www.example.com/product-tag/women-jeans
Product Tag 2: www.example.com/product-tag/blue-jeans
Product 2 URL**:** ww.example.com/products/blue-regular-fit-jeans
Product Tag 1: www.example.com/product-tag/women-jeans
Product Tag 2: www.example.com/product-tag/blue-jeans
When you go to one of the product tags webpage, both products come up on the webpage.
Since both these products show up in the same product tag webpage and I can only use one URL per canonical tag, how do I determine what canonical URL to put in the product tag code? Would I just pick a product and associate a tag to it? For Example, Use Product 2 URL as the canonical tag for Product Tag 2 and Product 1 URL for Product Tag 1?
-
Hi Emmett
For each product, do URLs look something like this when it comes to tags...
www.example.com/products/blue-lowrise-skinny-jeans
www.example.com/collections/frontpage/blue-lowrise-skinny-jeans
www.example.com/clothing/womens/blue-lowrise-skinny-jeansIf that's the case, you will want to put a canonical tag on these pages for the page you want to appear in search and rank. The reason you are doing so is because you have three different URLs for the same product. You want search engines to know this is not duplicate content.
Does this make sense? Or am I not following along correctly? Let me know, as I would love to get you where you need to be! Thanks!
-
Thanks for the quick response!
I'm still a little confused. The way the site is setup is that we have many different products that share the same "products tags" (so each product tag is linked to multiple products). Each product has many products tags (about 10 per product). I'm not sure how to use a canonical tag on a tag that is associated to multiple products, or on a product that is associated to many tags.
Do you have any suggestions?
-
Hi there
Emmett - do not noindex. Use a canonical tag on these tagged pages - you can learn more here.
You can also categorize parameters in Google Webmaster Tools.
Hope this helps a bit!
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
-
Linking to one of my own sites, from my site
Hi experts, I own a site for castingjobs (Site1) and a site for selling paintings (Site2). In a long time, I've had a link at the bottom of Site1, linking to Site 2. (Basicaly: Partnerlink: Link site 2). Site1 is for me the the only important site, since it's where Im making my monthly revenue. I added the link like 5 years ago or so, to try to boost site 2. My question is:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KasperGJ
1. Is it somehow bad for SEO for site 1, since the two sites have nothing to do with each other, they are basically just owned by me.
2. Would it make sense to link from Site 2 to Site 1 indstead?0 -
Google Ignoring Canonical Tag for Hundreds of Sites
Bazaar Voice provides a pretty easy-to-use product review solution for websites (especially sites on Magento): https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/bazaarvoice-conversations-1.html If your product has over a certain number of reviews/questions, the plugin cuts off the number of reviews/questions that appear on the page. To see the reviews/questions that are cut off, you have to click the plugin's next or back function. The next/back buttons' URLs have a parameter of "bvstate....." I have noticed Google is indexing this "bvstate..." URL for hundreds of sites, even with the proper rel canonical tag in place. Here is an example with Microsoft: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zcxT7MRHHREJ:www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Surface-Book/productID.325716000%3Fbvstate%3Dpg:8/ct:r+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us My website is seeing hundreds of these "bvstate" urls being indexed even though we have a proper rel canonical tag in place. It seems that Google is ignoring the canonical tag. In Webmaster Console, the main source of my duplicate titles/metas in the HTML improvements section is the "bvstate" URLs. I don't necessarily want to block "bvstate" in the robots.txt as it will prohibit Google from seeing the reviews that were cutoff. Same response for prohibiting Google from crawling "bvstate" in Paramters section of Webmaster Console. Should I just keep my fingers crossed that Google honors the rel canonical tag? Home Depot is another site that has this same issue: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:k0MBLFcu2PoJ:www.homedepot.com/p/DUROCK-Next-Gen-1-2-in-x-3-ft-x-5-ft-Cement-Board-172965/202263276%23!bvstate%3Dct:r/pg:2/st:p/id:202263276+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | redgatst1 -
URL Structure For E-commerce Sites
Hi Guys, I was wondering what would be the optimal and best URL structure for sub-categories on a E-commerce site for SEO purposes. Example if my category was dresses and I had multiple sub-categories within dresses would 1 or 2 below be the better URL structure? 1) Domain + Category + Sub-Category be the most suitable URL structure: Sleeveless Dresses URL: clothingstore.com/dresses/sleeveless-dresses Midi Dresses URL: clothingstore.com/dresses/midi-dresses 2) OR would excluding the category be better Domain + Sub-Category like: Sleeveless Dresses URL: clothingstore.com/sleeveless-dresses Midi Dresses URL: clothingstore.com/midi-dresses Do you think it makes much of a difference, is shorter better and more effective in this case? E.g. Rand discuses in this article: https://moz.com/blog/15-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls that having the keyword in the URL serves as anchor text, so wouldn't having additional keywords dilute value in this case? Plus he mentions shorter URLs the better. Cheers, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright1 -
Risk Using "Nofollow" tag
I have a lot of categories (like e-commerce sites) and many have page 1 - 50 for each category (view all not possible). Lots of the content on these pages are present across the web on other websites (duplicate stuff). I have added quality unique content to page 1 and added "noindex, follow" to page 2-50 and rel=next prev tags to the pages. Questions: By including the "follow" part, Google will read content and links on pages 2-50 and they may think "we have seen this stuff across the web….low quality content and though we see a noindex tag, we will consider even page 1 thin content, because we are able to read pages 2-50 and see the thin content." So even though I have "noindex, follow" the 'follow' part causes the issue (in that Google feels it is a lot of low quality content) - is this possible and if I had added "nofollow" instead that may solve the issue and page 1 would increase chance of looking more unique? Why don't I add "noindex, nofollow" to page 2 - 50? In this way I ensure Google does not read the content on page 2 - 50 and my site may come across as more unique than if it had the "follow" tag. I do understand that in such case (with nofollow tag on page 2-50) there is no link juice flowing from pages 2 - 50 to the main pages (assuming there are breadcrumbs or other links to the indexed pages), but I consider this minimal value from an SEO perspective. I have heard using "follow" is generally lower risk than "nofollow" - does this mean a website with a lot of "noindex, nofollow" tags may hurt the indexed pages because it comes across as a site Google can't trust since 95% of pages have such "noindex, nofollow" tag? I would like to understand what "risk" factors there may be. thank you very much
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
How to make Link Building for the E-Commerce sites?
Hello everyone, I just ask one question: How to make Link Building for the E-Commerce sites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | backlinkmag0 -
Is a 301 Direct with a canonical tag Possible ?
Hi All, Quick question , Are we correct in thinking that for any given URL it's not possible to do a 301 redirect AND a canonical tag? thanks Sarah
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SarahCollins0 -
Best Practices for Pagination on E-commerce Site
One of my e-commerce clients has a script enabled on their category pages that allows more products to automatically be displayed as you scroll down. They use this instead of page 1, 2, and a view all. I'm trying to decide if I want to insist that they change back to the traditional method of multiple pages with a view all button, and then implement rel="next", rel="prev", etc. I think the current auto method is disorienting for the user, but I can't figure out if it's the same for the spiders. Does anyone have any experience with this, or thoughts? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smallbox0 -
When using ALT tags - are spaces, hyphens or underscores preferred by Google when using multiple words?
when plugging ALT tags into images, does Google prefer spaces, hyphens, or underscores? I know with filenames, hyphens or underscores are preferred and spaces are replaced with %20. Thoughts? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrooklynCruiser3