Difficulty with Indexing Pages - Desperate for Help!
-
I have a website with product pages that use the same URL, but load different data based on what's passed to them with GET. I am using a Wordpress website, but all of the page information is retrieved from a database using PHP and displayed with PHP.
Somehow these pages are not being indexed by Google.
I have done the following:
1. Created a site map pointing to each page.
2. Defined URL parameters in Search Console for these type of pages.
3. Created a product schema using schema.org, and tested it without errors.
I have requested re-indexing repeatedly and these pages and images on the pages are still not being indexed! Does anybody have any suggestions?
-
Hey, David Butler . . . you are probably the only person who has looked at this issue, so I want to thank you again for your input.
I wanted to follow up about this. Since I am using Wordpress for the website, I used Wordpress's rewrite_rule function.
After confirming that it was working correctly, I deleted the old sitemaps and created new ones, then submitted them to Google.
Shortly after this, the pages were successfully indexed.
So from this experience I get the impression that using URL parameters doesn't necessary work -- I certainly am not going to use them in the future.
I am going to mark this issue as resolved.
-
Hi jacleaves,
I'm interested to see how this works out for you!
Please post an update after you've finished your work
Cheers,
David
-
Hey, David Butler,
I am at a loss when it comes to canonical tags -- I am trying to understand how to use them. However, in this case I thought it was set up correctly.
To better explain the website . . . all of the product pages use the same URL, which is http://amishdirectplaysets.com/playset-details/.
I programmed the pages to retrieve info from a database and display specific product information based on the parameters passed to them (?mfgID=A-1&catID=4). I cannot change the URL's to be anything different, as they are not actually different pages.
What I had read is that the canonical url should not include the URL parameters, so that is why they were just going to the same page. I created URL parameters in Google Search Console because I thought that would take care of this issue. However it is not.
So . . . what I have done (after reading your post) is gone ahead and changed the canonical URL to include the URL parameters.
Is that how I'm supposed to handle it in this type of a situation?
I am updating this response . . . after further investigation I can take care of changing the URL to something more search-engine friendly by using mod rewrite. I'll test it out.
-
Hi jacleaves,
The problem here is with your canonical tags (more info on canonical tags here).
This page: http://amishdirectplaysets.com/playset-details/?mfgID=A-1&catID=4
Has a canonical tag pointing to: http://amishdirectplaysets.com/playset-details/
The same thing is happening on all of your product pages.
I would change all of your product pages to use "SEO-friendly" URLs and have a self-referring canonical tag.
Eg. your example page: http://amishdirectplaysets.com/playset-details/?mfgID=A-1&catID=4
Would become: http://amishdirectplaysets.com/playset-details/a-1-standard-climber-vinyl-playset
And the canonical tag would point to: http://amishdirectplaysets.com/playset-details/a-1-standard-climber-vinyl-playsetCheers,
David
-
Hi Matthew,
Thanks for your quick response!
Here's one page:
http://amishdirectplaysets.com/playset-details/?mfgID=A-1&catID=4
My issue is none of the individual product pages are being indexed.
In response to your starting suggestions:
1. I am not blocking any resources.
2. I am not using noindex.
3. Page is being rendered successfully.
One more thing . . . I mis-spoke about how the content is generated. The content on this page is generated by PHP and NOT Javascript. So that is a non-issue. (I corrected this in my initial question.)
I appreciate your feedback. Please let me know if you are able to determine what else I could be missing!
-
Hi jacleaves!
Without your website URL it will be difficult to diagnose the problem as there are a few potential technical issues here. My main worries would be whether you're blocking indexation somehow and the fact you're displaying your content using JavaScript.
I'd start here:
- Check you're not blocking crawlers in your robots.txt file
- Check you're not using the noindex tag
I'd also try using fetch and render in Google Search Console (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6066468?hl=en) for your site pages to see how Google sees them. If googlebot isn't seeing your content, that's a strong hint there's a JavaScript crawling problem.
Also, strap yourself in and read this - https://www.elephate.com/blog/ultimate-guide-javascript-seo/ - it's THE guide for JavaScript SEO.
Let us know how you get on and we'll go from there!
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
-
Do uncrawled but indexed pages affect seo?
It's a well known fact that too much thin content can hurt your SEO, but what about when you disallow google to crawl some places and it indexes some of them anyways (No title, no description, just the link) I am building a shopify store and it's imposible to change the robots.txt using shopify, and they disallow for example, the cart. Disallow: /cart But all my pages are linking there, so google has the uncrawled cart in it's index, along with many other uncrawled urls, can this hurt my SEO or trying to remove that from their index is just a waste of time? -I can't change anything from the robots.txt -I could try to nofollow those internal links What do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cuarto7150 -
No Index thousands of thin content pages?
Hello all! I'm working on a site that features a service marketed to community leaders that allows the citizens of that community log 311 type issues such as potholes, broken streetlights, etc. The "marketing" front of the site is 10-12 pages of content to be optimized for the community leader searchers however, as you can imagine there are thousands and thousands of pages of one or two line complaints such as, "There is a pothole on Main St. and 3rd." These complaint pages are not about the service, and I'm thinking not helpful to my end goal of gaining awareness of the service through search for the community leaders. Community leaders are searching for "311 request service", not "potholes on main street". Should all of these "complaint" pages be NOINDEX'd? What if there are a number of quality links pointing to the complaint pages? Do I have to worry about losing Domain Authority if I do NOINDEX them? Thanks for any input. Ken
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KenSchaefer0 -
Help.. there was a html and php version of my home page on my server for about a week. Now lost all rankings!
Our home page has disappeared from the Google SERPS completely. It won't even show for a search of our business name although other internal pages appear. Site appears in bing for our keywords but not for our business name. When I republished the site I got a message saying there was a php and html version of the site on the home page. I deleted this immediately but was then advised by another staff member that they had also got that message the week before but not done anything about it - so I think it was out there for about a week. Could this be the cause of the ranking drop? We have also done the following: Checked GWM for robots issue, manual action, crawl errors, blocked URLs - all good. Some crawl errors on other pages relating to broken links. All sorted and marked as fixed. Checked for duplicate content - redirected non www version of site to www Checked back links Removed video from home page that was temporarily unavailable when we did fetch and render Added canonical tag Added H1 tag that was missing Coding checked - all looks good There has been no change to the content of the page. We have fetched and rendered and resubmitted for indexing but it's still not coming back in SERPS it did for a short time the other day and then after a couple of days disappeared again Prior to all this it had ranked really well for our most important keywords for years. It's not a new site. The page is indexed as it comes up when doing a site: search. Please can anyone help? Nobody seems to have the answer and we don't know what else to do. The site is NSFW NSFW https://goo.gl/dwA8YB Main keyword sex toy party
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GemmaApril0 -
Why is Google no longer Indexing and Ranking my state pages with Dynamic Content?
Hi, We have some state specific pages that display dynamic content based on the state that is selected here. For example this page displays new york based content. But for some reason google is no longer ranking these pages. Instead it's defaulting to the page where you select the state here. But last year the individual state dynamic pages were ranking. The only change we made was move these pages from http to https. But now google isn't seeing these individual dynamically generated state based pages. When I do a site: url search it doesn't find any of these state pages. Any thoughts on why this is happening and how to fix it. Thanks in advance for any insight. Eddy By the way when I check these pages in google search console fetch as google, google is able to see these pages fine and they're not being blocked by any robot.txt.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eddys_kap0 -
Prioritise a page in Google/why is a well-optimised page not ranking
Hello I'm new to Moz Forums and was wondering if anyone out there could help with a query. My client has an ecommerce site selling a range of pet products, most of which have multiple items in the range for difference size animals i.e. [Product name] for small dog
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LauraSorrelle
[Product name] for medium dog
[Product name] for large dog
[Product name] for extra large dog I've got some really great rankings (top 3) for many keyword searches such as
'[product name] for dogs'
'[product name]' But these rankings are for individual product pages, meaning the user is taken to a small dog product page when they might have a large dog or visa versa. I felt it would be better for the users (and for conversions and bounce rates), if there was a group page which showed all products in the range which I could target keywords '[product name]', '[product name] for dogs'. The page would link through the the individual product pages. I created some group pages in autumn last year to trial this and, although they are well-optimised (score of 98 on Moz's optimisation tool), they are not ranking well. They are indexed, but way down the SERPs. The same group page format has been used for the PPC campaign and the difference to the retention/conversion of visitors is significant. Why are my group pages not ranking? Is it because my client's site already has good rankings for the target term and Google does not want to show another page of the site and muddy results?
Is there a way to prioritise the group page in Google's eyes? Or bring it to Google's attention? Any suggestions/advice welcome. Thanks in advance Laura0 -
Should we show(to google) different city pages on our website which look like home page as one page or different? If yes then how?
On our website, we show events from different cities. We have made different URL's for each city like www.townscript.com/mumbai, www.townscript.com/delhi. But the page of all the cities looks similar, only the events change on those different city pages. Even our home URL www.townscript.com, shows the visitor the city which he visited last time on our website(initially we show everyone Mumbai, visitor needs to choose his city then) For every page visit, we save the last visited page of a particular IP address and next time when he visits our website www.townscript.com, we show him that city only which he visited last time. Now, we feel as the content of home page, and city pages is similar. Should we show these pages as one page i.e. Townscript.com to Google? Can we do that by rel="canonical" ? Please help me! As I think all of these pages are competing with each other.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sanchitmalik0 -
Interlinking from unique content page to limited content page
I have a page (page 1) with a lot of unique content which may rank for "Example for sale". On this page I Interlink to a page (page 2) with very limited unique content, but a page I believe is better for the user with anchor "See all Example for sale". In other words, the 1st page is more like a guide with items for sale mixed, whereas the 2nd page is purely a "for sale" page with almost no unique content, but very engaging for users. Questions: Is it risky that I interlink with "Example for sale" to a page with limited unique content, as I risk not being able to rank for either of these 2 pages Would it make sense to "no index, follow" page 2 as there is limited unique content, and is actually a page that exist across the web on other websites in different formats (it is real estate MLS listings), but I can still keep the "Example for sale" link leading to page 2 without risking losing ranking of page 1 for "Example for sale"keyword phrase I am basically trying to work out best solution to rank for "Keyword for sale" and dilemma is page 2 is best for users, but is not a very unique page and page 2 is very unique and OK for users but mixed up writing, pictures and more with properties for sale.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Category Pages - Canonical, Robots.txt, Changing Page Attributes
A site has category pages as such: www.domain.com/category.html, www.domain.com/category-page2.html, etc... This is producing duplicate meta descriptions (page titles have page numbers in them so they are not duplicate). Below are the options that we've been thinking about: a. Keep meta descriptions the same except for adding a page number (this would keep internal juice flowing to products that are listed on subsequent pages). All pages have unique product listings. b. Use canonical tags on subsequent pages and point them back to the main category page. c. Robots.txt on subsequent pages. d. ? Options b and c will orphan or french fry some of our product pages. Any help on this would be much appreciated. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Troyville0