Magento Layered Navigation & Duplicate Content
-
Hello Dear SeoMoz,
I would like to ask your help with something that I am not sure off. Our ecommerce web site is built with Magento. I have found many problems so far and I know that there will be many more in the future. Currently, I am trying to find the best way to deal with the duplicate content that is produced from the layered navigation (size, gender etc). I have done a lot of research so far in order to understand which might be the best practice and I found the following practices:
- **Block layered navigation URLSs from the Google Webmaster Tools (**Apparently this works for Google Only).
- Block these URLs with the robots.txt file
- Make links no-follow
- **Make links JavaScript from Magento ***
- Avoid including these links in the xml site map.
- Avoid including these link in the A-Z Product Index.
- Canonical tag
- Meta Tags (noindex, nofollow)
Question
If I turn the layered navigation links into JavaScript links from the Magento Admin, the layered navigation links are still found by the crawlers but they look like that:
|
instead of:
http://www.mysite.com/girls-basics.html?gender_filte...
|
Can these new URLS (http://www.mysite.com/# ) solve the duplicate content problems with the layered navigation or do I need to implement other practices too to make sure that everything is done right.
Kind Regards
Stefanos Anastasiadis
-
I'm not sure if you guys found a solution to this but I've used Mageworx with my Magento sites and it seems to handle everything I need. I do have to do some Mod-rewrites but nothing too much for a developer to handle.
-
From what I can gather about Magento is the Layered Nav can create seemingly endless URL's. Even if you were to use one of the modules created to make them 'friendly', you would still technically have reems of duplicate pages...right? All nicely re-written but effectively with the same titles and meta...
You may be able to put a wildcard disallow in the robots file for the parameter 'dir=' , which is associated with all the filters. I dont know how well this will work or if Google may on occasision ignore this or find a way into the layered pages anyway? Does anyone know? What if the spider entered the site through a direct link to filtered page...would the robots.txt file go by the way side in this instance?
You could in theory also use WMT to dictate that Google does not index pages with the 'dir=' parameter. Again, I am not sure as to the success rate using this.
Its one of those areas that has many open and unaswered discussions but nothing definitive anywhere to address the issue. Yet Magento is very popular and as you look at people sites who use it you can see they have some how found a way to sort this out. Id love to be a fly on the wall in their office!
-
Stefanos:
Hi! Did you ever find an answer to this question? I have a Magento install as well and need some advanced technical SEO. Are you working with a Magento consultant at all?
Thanks!
Lynn
-
Thanks a lot for your reply. I already know this extension but it is not what I am looking for.
-
I don't know if you stumble upon this Extension,
but it may resolve your problems.
http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/EcommerceTeam/extension/4420/layered_navigation_seo
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
-
Should I be worried about our 'Duplicate' content
Hi guys... I've just been working through some issues to give our site a little cleanup. I'm working through our duplicate content issues (we have some legitimate duplicate pages that need removing, and some of our dynamic content is problematic. Are web developers are going to sort with canonical tags this week.) However... There are some pages that are actually different products, but are very similar pages that are 'triggering' MOZ to say we have duplicate pages. Here an example... http://www.toaddiaries.co.uk/filofax-refills/filo-12-month-inserts-personal-size/fortnight-view-filofax-personal and http://www.toaddiaries.co.uk/filofax-refills/filo-12-month-inserts-personal-size/week-to-a-view-filofax-personal They are very similar refill products, it's just the diary format is different. Question: Should I be worried about this? I've never seen our rankings change in the past when 'cleaning up' duplicate content. What do you guys think? Isaac.
On-Page Optimization | | isaac6630 -
Magento Canonical & Default Robots Settings
Hello! I'm working with Magento 1.9 for an eCommerce site with several hundred products. Currently I understand it is best practices to use the Canonical tag, however I also have my default robots set to "Index, Follow". Will this cause an issue having product pages set to index, follow but also having a canonical tag included? What are some best practices regarding Magento default robots & canonical tags? Any help is appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | BretDarby0 -
Solve duplicate content issues by using robots.txt
Hi, I have a primary website and beside that I also have some secondary websites with have same contents with primary website. This lead to duplicate content errors. Because of having many URL duplicate contents, so I want to use the robots.txt file to prevent google index the secondary websites to fix the duplicate content issue. Is it ok? Thank for any help!
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh0 -
Why Moz is showing Duplicate Page Content Issues?
We have a Career Section on our website. For each job post, there is a separate link of "Apply Job". Now Moz's Crawl Diagnostic is showing Duplicate page content for such URLs. Here are two such URLs: http://tiny.cc/em9nyw http://tiny.cc/bq9nyw Can any one please suggest on this? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | chandman0 -
Duplicate Page Content Should we 301 - Best Practices?
What would be the best way to avoid a Duplicate Page Content for these type of pages. Our website generates user friendly urls, for each page..
On-Page Optimization | | 365ToursSafaris
So it is the same exact page, just both versions of the url work.. Example: http://www.safari365.com/about-africa/wildebeest-migration http://www.safari365.com/wildebeest-migration I don't think adding code to the page will work because its the same page for the incorrect and correct versions of the page. I don't think i can use the URL parameter setting because the version with /about-africa/ is the correct (correct as it it follows the site navigation) I was thinking of using the htaccess to redirect to the correct version.. Will that work ? and does it follow best Practices ? any other suggestions that would work better ?0 -
Events in Wordpress Creating Duplicate Content Canonical Issues
Hi, I have a site which uses Event Manager Pro within Wordpress to create Events (as custom post types on my blog. I use it to advertise cookery classes. In a given month I might run one type of class 4 times. The event page I have made for each class is the same and I duplicate it 4 times and just change the dates to promote it. The problem is with over 10 different classes, which are then duplicated up to 4 times each per month. I get loads of duplicate content errors. How can I fix this without redirecting people away from the correct page for the date they are interested in? Is it best just to use a no follow for ALL events and rely on the other parts of my site for SEO? Thanks, T23
On-Page Optimization | | tekton230 -
Offer landing page, duplicate content and noindex
Hi there I'm setting up a landing page for an exclusive offer that is only available (via a link) to a particular audience. Although I've got some specific content (offer informaiton paragraph), i want to use some of the copy and content from one of my standard product pages to inform the visitors about what it is that i'm trying to sell them. Considering I'm going to include a noindex on this page, do i need to worry about it having some content copied directly from another page on my site? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | zeegirl0 -
Problem with fresh content on homepage
On my site my homepage acts as sort of a landing page that is geared towards getting the customer sign up (almost like a PPC landing page aside from a few navigation options...about, blog, contact and the legal docs in the footer). My blog is geared towards other businesses in the industry and the like minded tech people. My problem:
On-Page Optimization | | JasonJackson
From a user perspective I don't feel that blog snippets would add anything useful to the homepage. However, I feel like I fresh content would help my SEO endeavors. Suggestions? Note:
Should be mentioned that all my social stuff is deeply integrated into my /blog so importing tweets, for example, is out of the question.0