Query on Site Architecture
-
Hi All,
When I check on my ecommerce site in one of the architecture tool in that my Ecommerce Homepage interlink with 765 pages whereas when I check few competitors and big brands then there homepage linked with 28 pages, 33, 47, 57 etc not like my site 765 pages.
Do I am wrong anywhere? Can you please check the screenshot of mine & one of the competitor's site architecture?
Because as per me site architecture also play good role in google organic ranking.
-
It's not a good or bad thing if you have 27,000 pages that Google has indexed on your site. What's important is, how many of your pages has Google indexed, how many of those are duplicates, and how many of those are unimportant pages?
To find how many of your pages Google has indexed:
- Make sure that you have an XML sitemap that includes EVERY PAGE on your site.
- Submit that to Google Search Console.
- Check back in a day or so, and Google Search Console will show you how many of the pages on your XML sitemap are in their index.
If you only have 5,000 pages on your site, but Google shows that you have 27,000, then you're probably dealing with duplicate pages, or tags that are built by your site and have gotten out of control.
To find out if Google has indexed duplicate versions of your pages:
- Use Google Analytics' Search Channel report (Acquisition All Traffic Channels Organic, then change the Dimension to Landing Page) to download a list of all pages on your site Google or Bing has sent visitors to.
- Create a new column, stripping out portions of the URL that can change without changing the content of the page. Some common offenders:
- Parameters
- Different categories earlier on in the URL
- www vs non-www
- https vs http
- Now, find the duplicates in the "unique" column. I like using the countif function for this.
- For any page that's got duplicates, find a way to fix those! It varies by the problem, but the answer is generally to 301 redirect all versions to one canonical version.
To find out if you have too many tags, because they're autogenerated
- Use an internal tool, like an XML sitemap creator, to figure out how many tags you have
- Compare that to the number of tags actually bringing you traffic
- Check to see if you're creating tag pages that are the same content as your category pages
- Check to see how many tag pages you have with fewer than five products matching - those probably aren't great pages!
Going through these steps should let you know if your site is well optimized - again, it's not the total count that matters!
Good luck!
Kristina
-
There's no magical number of internal links that you want to strive for, though in general, you want to maximize the number of internal links to your homepage and other important pages, and link to the most important pages on your site from your homepage.
I don't want to toot my own horn too much, but I did put together a guide on SEO internal linking (which is really site navigation) a couple of years ago: https://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/site-navigation-for-seo/ It still holds up, since site structure is forever.
In case you don't want to dive into that, here's what I'd recommend for internal linking for ecommerce sites:
- Put your logo in the upper right hand corner of every page on your site, and use that to link back to the homepage. It's a really common navigational tactic, and it tells Google what your homepage is (in case it's not simply www.yoursite.com)
- Use a top navigation bar that's on every page. In the top navigation bar, link to your shopping categories.
- Use a side navigation to list subcategories when a visitor is working within a category.
- Make sure to include breadcrumbs when you're on a product page.
- Limit the number of links on any given page to below 200 (bigger sites do more, but that's because they can get away with it)
Really, that should do 99% of the SEO organization you want to do within your site.
Good luck!
Kristina
-
Hi Joe,
In my case when I type "site:websitename.com" in Google search? it is showing 27000 where in rest all competitors 9k, 12k, 15k and 50k + Here I am talking purely for ecommerce site.
What I find is that there category pages are interlinked more i.e. 500+, 600+ etc
Any suggestion?
Thanks!
-
Most of the time, you'll get really high numbers if you have 765 pages in your site and the home page is accessible in the navigation from every page. It's like this for 99.9% of sites, where the home page is accessible from every page.
I think that simply, you have 765 pages on your site, and they only have 28 or 33.
Is that the case when you type "site:websitename.com" in Google search?
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
-
Moz Crawled My Site. Now What?
Hey everyone! So Moz crawled my site and I passed it over to my dev team who's curious about what they should prioritize. Curious what everyone's thoughts are. Here are the issue types: Duplicate Content - Missing Title - Duplicate Title Tag - Redirect Chain - Title too long - Description too short - Missing Description - Missing h1 - Thin Content - URL Too Long - Has meta noindex Would love any assistance! Thank you!
Technical SEO | | inksoft_mm0 -
Site hacked in Jan. Redeveloped new site. Still not ranking. Should we change domain?
Our top ranking site in the UK was hacked at the end of 2014. http://www.ultimatefloorsanding.co.uk/ The site was the subject of a manual spam action from Google. After several unsuccessful attempts to clean it up, using Securi.net and reinstating old versions of the site, changing passwords etc. we took the decision to redevelop the site. We also changed hosting provider as we had received absolutely no support from them whatsoever in resolving the issue. So far we have: Removed the old website files off the server Developed a new website having implemented 301's for all the old URL's (except the spam ones) Submitted a reconsideration request for the manual spam action, which was accepted. Disavowed all the spammy inbound links through Webmaster Tools Implemented custom URL parameters through Google to not index the SPAM URLs ( which were using parameters) Our organic traffic is down by 63% compared to last year, and we are not ranking for most of our target keywords any longer. Is there anything that I am missing in the actions I have taken so far? We were advised that at this stage changing domain and starting again might be the way to go. However the current domain has been used by us since 2007, so it would be a big call. Any advice is appreciated, thanks. Sue - http://www.ultimatefloorsanding.co.uk/
Technical SEO | | galwaygirl0 -
How to create site map for large site (ecommerce type) that has 1000's if not 100,000 of pages.
I know this is kind of a newbie question but I am having an amazing amount of trouble creating a sitemap for our site Bestride.com. We just did a complete redesign (look and feel, functionality, the works) and now I am trying to create a site map. Most of the generators I have used "break" after reaching some number of pages. I am at a loss as to how to create the sitemap. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks
Technical SEO | | BestRide0 -
One site per location or all under and umbrella site?
I am working on a project where we are re-branding lots (100+) existing local business under one national brand. I am wondering what we should do with their existing websites, they are generally fairly poor and will need re-designing to match the new brand but may have some residual links? 301 redirect the URL to the national site, e.g. nationalsite.com/localbusinessA? If so what should I look out for? Do I need to specifically redirect any pages that have links to them to the same pages on the new site? Or should I give them a new standalone website that they link back to the national brand site? More than likely this will be hosted on the same server and CMS as the main site just the URL will remain Do I need to make sure that any old URL's that had links to them are 301'd to the new pages? Many thanks for you advice.
Technical SEO | | BadgerToo0 -
Have my site been penalised ?
Hi, I recently hired a link builder (who works for a digital marketing agency and wanted to earn some extra cash ) to do some link building for me on keyword Carpet Cleaner Hire Basically , May my ranking for this work has moved from 29 up to 13 , then down to 500 + and now up to 67 ?. It's been all over the place and I am worried that maybe google thinks its unnatural or to many links etc. I looked at some of the work this chap did and there was a log of bookmarks done , apparently to increase social awareness and some articles on random forums I never heard of but the articles didn't look to good and in my eyes were a little spammy.. I don't have any messages in WMT saying I have been penalised or anything but I am naturally worried that this chap may have caused damaged and that I was manually penalised. I have since asked him to stop immediately.. does this sound normal for the ranking to be all over the place in this manner when link building ? How can I tell if I have been manually penalized in any way ? What;s the general consensus ?. Should I contact google or leave it and see what happens ? Other keywords seems to be okay though. Any advice much appreciated. thanks Sarah.
Technical SEO | | SarahCollins1 -
Site dropped after article submissions
I have a site about back pain. The name is lower back pain relief. It has a lot of content on how to treat back pain with natural remedies. I paid for botw.org and yahoo directories as well as submissions from submit edge. My site was doing well within a few months. I was floating around at the bottom of page two for "lower back pain relief" and lower back pain. I found out about Unique article wizard. I started using that to write and submit articles. Now, my website is not ranking anywhere. I submitted a request for reconsideration to Google. They said no manual action had been taken. The question: How long does this penalty last? Is that website toast now? I think it was penalized for using the anchor text too much or adding too many links at once. It has been penalized for about 6 weeks now.
Technical SEO | | Naturalhealth150 -
Time on site
From what I understand, if you search for a keyword say "blue widgets" and you click on a result, and then spend 10 seconds there, and go back to google and click on a different result google will track that first result as being not very relevant. What I don't understand is what happens when (and this happens all the time, i did it today) you click on a result go to that page, find it (not?) relevant and then get distracted, phone call, or someone calls you into another room in the office. You end up accidentally leaving the tab open all day long, and never go back to the google search. So your time on site to google is what? infinity? there must be an upper cap here? at some point they must say, ok, the user is gone, time on site = our maximum = 5 minutes?!? Get me? any insight?
Technical SEO | | adriandg0 -
Site Relaunch
Hello, I recently launched my new site (Nov. 25, 2011) but still have the old site live because I still need old customer data from the old admin for customer service issues and I cannot delete the old front-end without deleting the old back-end!. I am seeing a lot of referrals coming from the old site IP address with many backlinks to the new site but dont know if this is actually hurting the new site due to duplicate content, ect .. Any input would be greatly aaaaaapreciated 😉 Thanks in advance, Byron-
Technical SEO | | k9byron0