Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Who is correct - please help!
-
I have a website with a lot of product pages - often thousands of pages.
As each of these pages is for a specific lease car they are often only fractionally different from other pages.
The urls are too long, the H1 is often too long and the Title is often too long for "SEO best practice". And they do create duplication issues according to MOZ.
Some people tell me to change them to noindex/nofollow whilst others tell me to leave them as they are as best not to hide from google crawler.
Any advice will be gratefully received.
Thanks for listening.
-
@jlhitch
Managing a website with thousands of product pages can indeed present challenges, especially when it comes to optimizing for SEO while avoiding duplicate content issues. Here are some considerations and potential strategies:-
URL Optimization:
- Shorten URLs to make them more concise and user-friendly.
- Include relevant keywords in the URL, but avoid keyword stuffing.
- Consider organizing URLs hierarchically based on product categories and attributes.
-
H1 Optimization:
- Ensure that each H1 tag accurately reflects the content of the page.
- Keep H1 titles concise and relevant to the page's main topic.
- Avoid duplicating H1 titles across multiple pages, as this can confuse search engines and users.
-
Title Tag Optimization:
- Craft unique and descriptive title tags for each product page.
- Include primary keywords near the beginning of the title tag.
- Keep title tags within the recommended character limit to ensure they display properly in search engine results.
-
Content Differentiation:
- Identify areas of content overlap or duplication among similar product pages.
- Make meaningful distinctions between pages by highlighting unique features, specifications, or benefits.
- Utilize canonical tags to consolidate duplicate content and signal to search engines which version of the page is the preferred one.
-
Indexing Strategy:
- Consider the purpose and value of each product page when deciding whether to index or noindex/nofollow.
- Pages with unique content, high traffic potential, or conversion opportunities should typically be indexed.
- Pages with thin or duplicate content may benefit from being noindexed to avoid diluting the site's overall quality and relevance in search results.
-
Monitoring and Analysis:
- Regularly monitor site performance, rankings, and crawl errors using tools like Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, and third-party SEO platforms.
- Analyze data to identify patterns, trends, and areas for improvement in SEO optimization efforts.
-
Consult with SEO Experts:
- Seek advice from experienced SEO professionals or agencies who can provide personalized recommendations based on your specific website and goals.
- Consider conducting an SEO audit to assess the current state of your website and identify opportunities for optimization.
Ultimately, the decision to index or noindex/nofollow certain pages should be based on a careful evaluation of their quality, relevance, and impact on overall SEO performance. Balancing SEO best practices with the practical considerations of managing a large website can help ensure long-term success in search engine rankings and user engagement.
-
-
It sounds like you're dealing with significant SEO issues due to duplicate content and non-optimal URL, title, and header lengths. Instead of noindexing, consider consolidating similar pages or using canonical tags to point to preferred pages. This can reduce duplication and focus SEO efforts on key pages.
-
So, we would on a huge e-commerce website, thousands of products, always changing. Its massively time consuming, but every bit of text, must be written in a white hat way. unique, high quality, meets the guidance set out in Google E-EAT. Plus, so too must the meta titles, meta descriptions, its only way to enhance the SEO for each page. Duplicated text, or "content thin" text, and this will dilulte the power of the organic SEO across the whole website. does this help? We have more help on our Cardiff SEO website.
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
-
Why are my positions going down?
Good afternoon! I would like to know, what could be the reasons for a random decrease in positions of our online casino? A lot of pages appeared in Google Search at the end of June and after a few weeks most of them dropped to >100, some are still ranging but in TOP 70-85. As far as I'm concerned, there were no algorithm updates last two months, our website works fine, both internal and external optimazation is being performed.. The strangest thing is that the rating of the website is growing, but the positions are not 😞
Reporting & Analytics | | Violete
Here is a link to the project: https://flammcasino.club/
Can anyone suggest what I can do in this case?1 -
When to re-write and redirect a blog url?
What are best practices for rewriting (and then redirecting) blog URLs? I refresh old blog posts on our blog every month and many of them have URLs that are too long or could be improved. However, many of them also already get decent organic traffic and I don't want to lose traffic due to a URL redirect. Are there any best practices or "rules" I can follow when deciding whether to re-write and redirect blog URLs?
Content Development | | Emily.R.Monrovia
Thanks!0 -
Unsolved SEO And Digital Marketing Training
Hi Everyone, I have a basic SEO and Digital Marketing knowledge and looking for a course /training which will teach me step by step SEO and tools need to use with hand on training. I have a website (https://gemslearninginstitute.com/) which I need bring in Google Packs and on the first page of Google. I have attended a few courses but none of them offered in depth knowledge with hands on training so whatever I do it is not producing results. Thanks
SEO Tactics | | fslpso0 -
Solved how to do seo audit
hello . i am a user that runs parsp website . i really need to know how to run a site audit to keep my job clean and my site works well ! i need help and i am a newbie in this job . thanks moz !
Moz Tools | | valigholami13863 -
Does anyone know the linking of hashtags on Wix sites does it negatively or postively impact SEO. It is coming up as an error in site crawls 'Pages with 404 errors' Anyone got any experience please?
Does anyone know the linking of hashtags on Wix sites does it negatively or positively impact SEO. It is coming up as an error in site crawls 'Pages with 404 errors' Anyone got any experience please? For example at the bottom of this blog post https://www.poppyandperle.com/post/face-painting-a-global-language the hashtags are linked, but they don't go to a page, they go to search results of all other blogs using that hashtag. Seems a bit of a strange approach to me.
Technical SEO | | Mediaholix0 -
Help: domain name change and Google News
Hi. I work for a regional news source, and our (separate) Spanish-language news publication recently changed its domain name. The publication lost its Google News inclusion. Most of their traffic came from Google News, so traffic tanked. They're trying to get back in. They reapplied but didn't get approved. They're now in the 30-day waiting period to reapply again. The website is run by a third-party company, which handled the domain name change in April (2015). That company has been running their site for a couple of years. Our in-house devs' hands are tied on helping, because we (at the mother company) don't manage their site. This third party has not been responsive. The Spanish pub folks have reached out to me to help them prepare for Round 2 of reapplication. I'm the mothership in-house SEO, but I've never experienced this situation before. Because everything seems to be in order besides the ham-handed changes, my best advice to them so far is: You'll have to wait until Google gets to know you again, unfortunately. Does that sound right? Any pointers out there for bringing their best possible A-game to the next round?
Technical SEO | | christyrobinson1 -
Help. Recently my organic traffic has dropped 40%. Any advice / ideas?
Lately my organic traffic has dropped significantly as well as my adsense revenue. The moz report says, for example, my traffic is down 40%, but I a still #1 for that keyword. Also, in the last week, suddenly my number of indexed pages doubled. We had done some page rewriting and maybe messed that up. We've fixed that though. Webmaster tools is still picking up all of our old pages and the new ones. Background: We recently launched our new responsive website in March. March income was about the same as February. April dropped off suddenly (maybe late march - no sure) When we changed site, we did do 301's for all the old pages to the new ones Any ideas or advice as to why my traffic and revenue has dropped off so sharply? Never submitted questions before - not sure if I am supposed to put urls here so if you just google Home Spelling Words - that's my website. Thanks everyone!!!
Technical SEO | | kimtastic0 -
Correct linking to the /index of a site and subfolders: what's the best practice? link to: domain.com/ or domain.com/index.html ?
Dear all, starting with my .htaccess file: RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | inlinear
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.inlinear.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://inlinear.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html
RewriteRule ^(.)index.html$ http://inlinear.com/ [R=301,L] 1. I redirect all URL-requests with www. to the non www-version...
2. all requests with "index.html" will be redirected to "domain.com/" My questions are: A) When linking from a page to my frontpage (home) the best practice is?: "http://domain.com/" the best and NOT: "http://domain.com/index.php" B) When linking to the index of a subfolder "http://domain.com/products/index.php" I should link also to: "http://domain.com/products/" and not put also the index.php..., right? C) When I define the canonical ULR, should I also define it just: "http://domain.com/products/" or in this case I should link to the definite file: "http://domain.com/products**/index.php**" Is A) B) the best practice? and C) ? Thanks for all replies! 🙂
Holger0