35 Categories + sub-categories for online store, can it hurt SEO?
-
this is my online store http://www.furnacefilterscanada.com
I experiencing new site architecture for better buyer experience. I found this solution for setting up categories:
http://filtration-montreal.mybigcommerce.com
I ask this questions many times about my site architecture, I find this solution, using around 35 categories and sub-categories.
Is it O.K. or it can hurt SEO to have to many categories.
See example on this trial version of BigCommerce:
http://filtration-montreal.mybigcommerce.com
I will use the top horizontal menu for the most popular furnace filters sizes.
Also, I want to use this cascading dropdown option in the header
http://www.asp.net/ajaxLibrary/AjaxControlToolkitSampleSite/CascadingDropDown/CascadingDropDown.aspx
where I wiil setup 3 options to select:
filter width
filter lenght
filter depth
What is your opinions, I'm I on the right path?
Thank you,
BigBlaze
-
Ce n'est rien Jean.
I have a suggestion for you for a site to look at. I suggest it because they too have a lot of products to put online. Also, many of their products differ only by dimension. It might be helpful for you to study how they organize these thousands of products. This Website has one awards for marketing so it's a really good example of e-commerce marketing products that could be very boring, but they make them interesting:
Dana
-
Hi Dana,
Thank you for your precious help. I had many questions and you are always ready to help.
French is my native language, so I don't always get everything clear. For example, the Hub page was hard to figure out and I never really understand how I could creat one in BigCommerce.
Also, when talking about navigation and sorting, do you make reference to my Categories/Top menu ( navigation) and sorting ( DropDown menue)?
If you think you have any recommendation to give or positive advice on my online store, I will be happy to learn from you
Thank you,
BigBlaze
-
Hi BigBlaze,
In general, I think the architecture I see on your sample site looks perfectly acceptable to me. It looks like you are only going down to one subcategory after that, which is a good thing. I think when too many categories becomes a problem is when the categories go 3 and 4 deep with subcats of subcats of subcats. Once your content or products get buried that deep, it's hard for search engine bots to keep crawling. I think if you can keep you architecture as flat as possible and still make it easy for people to find what they seek, you will do just fine. I think adding the filter width, length and depth as sorting options is good. Just remember that there is navigation and then there is sorting. Giving your visitors several clear and even redundant ways to find things is good.
Hope that helps!
Dana
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
-
What to do about this subdomain for SEO?
This is a bit of an unusual structure and I'm having difficulty explaining the question so pardon my being a 'noob', haha. The website I'm working on has some content under Forums that is hosted on another domain. The main website is https://yournorthside.org.au/ and if you select under the main Nav > Forums > Lived Experience it will take you to https://yournorthside.saneforums.org/t5/Lived-Experience-Forum/ct-p/lived-experience-forum. So it's as if it's a subdomain. (notice even the appearance of the main menu changes, weird) Apparently, saneforums.org has a requirement for that content to be on that subdomain. So therefore it's not part of my sitemap and now crawled or indexed. My question is is this structure okay? What are the implications for SEO? Should I be looking to implement some type of no follow link or something? Or is it actually beneficial in terms of all their content gives us 'link juice'? Can you link me to any resources / articles that give further insight?
Technical SEO | | kelseyc0 -
Do subdomains negatively impact SEO
If we want to eliminate one of our domains and consolidate it with our main domain by the subdomain approach, would that negatively impact our SEO? Example: change www.xyz.org to www.xyz.abcd.org, Thanks, in advance, for your feedback.
Technical SEO | | Shirley.Fenlason0 -
What should I consider before setting up a sub domain?
Morning all! We've just been approached by IT. They've been asked to develop an online 'portal' where clients can upload and download materials. IT will be developing a portal that sits on the company network perimeter (hosted on our internal servers). The concept is that 3<sup>rd</sup> parties can get and update information in regards to progressing cases, the first use will be for agencies who will retrieve records via the portal and then post reports after a consultation. however I would like to have an automatic link to forward to the portal from the web address: oursite.com/dave We will look to create robot.txt and anything else to prevent from listings/indexes. Does any of the above mess with your SEO? The Directors have asked if they can have this on a sub-domain of our site. Is this wise? And, are there any major SEO considerations for my team to worry about? Better still, have any of you had to deal with this before? If so, what happened? All the best, John
Technical SEO | | Muhammad-Isap0 -
Do bad links to a sub-domain which redirects to our primary domain pass link juice and hurt rankings?
Sometime in the distant past there existed a blog.domain.com for domain.com. This was before we started work for domain.com. During the process of optimizing domain.com we decided to 301 blog.domain.com to www.domain.com. Recently, we discovered that blog.domain.com actually has a lot of bad links pointing towards it. By a lot I mean, 5000+. I am curious to hear people's opinions on the following: 1. Are they passing bad link juice? 2. does Google consider links to a sub-domain being passed through a 301 to be bad links to our primary domain? 3. The best approach to having these links removed?
Technical SEO | | Shredward0 -
New Forum: SEO considerations.
We're going to add a new forum to our website. We don't anticipate very large volumes of users. I read somewhere in The Art of SEO that forums should be 'built in bbPress'. I'm very much a programming novice so I'm still trying to get to grip with the basics of forums. I'd be grateful to know the main SEO considerations (however basic) that I should tell my web developer who is building the new forum.
Technical SEO | | JacobFunnell0 -
WordPress Question: Canonical field in Category Section of Yoast SEO Plug In
I've added the Yoast SEO Plug In for my word press blog. When I add a new category, there is a listing called "Edit Category". On this page there is a listing "Yoast WordPress SEO Settings." In this section, there are two fields in which I need guidance on what is supposed to be included. One: There is a field called "Canonical". What info is supposed to be entered in this field and how does it need to be formatted? Is it a URL. If so, what URL is supposed to go there? Two: Breadcrumbs title. What is the purpose of this field? (Isn't it OK to just use the category name as the breadcrumb title?)
Technical SEO | | EricVallee340 -
What are the SEO implications of using Interstitials?
Hi, I want to implement an interstitial similar to http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/defaultinterstitial.cms. Within few seconds it gets redirected to http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/. What are the SEO implications of having this sort of arrangement? Regards
Technical SEO | | IM_Learner0 -
How I can deal with ajax pagination?
Hello! I would like to have your input about how I can deal with a specific page in my website You can see my page here As you can see, we have a list of 76 ski resort, our pagination use ajax, wich mean we have only one url, and just below the list, we have a simple list of all the ski resort in this mountain, which show all the 76 ski resorts.. I know it's quite bad, since we can reach the same ski resort with two différents anchors links. Thanks you very much in advance, Simon
Technical SEO | | Alexandre_0