Is there something fundamentally wrong with our site architecture?
-
Hi everyone!
Could a few of you brilliant people take a look at the architecture of this site http://www.ccisolutions.com, and let me know if you see any obvious problems? I have run the site through XENU, and all of our most important pages, including categories and products, are no deeper than level 3. Everything deeper than that is, in most cases, an image, a pdf or an orphaned page (of which we have thousands).
Could having thousands upon thousands of orphaned pages be having a more hurtful effect on our rankings than our site architecture? I have made loud noises and suggested that duplicate content, site speed and dilution of page authority due to all those orphaned pages are some of the primary reasons we don't rank as well as we could. But, I think those suggestions just aren't sexy or dramatic enough, so there is much shaking of heads and discussion that it must be something fundamentally wrong with site architecture.
I know re-arranging the furniture is more fun than scrubbing the floors, but I think our problems are more about fundamental cleanup than moving things around
What do you think?
-
Thank you so much Peter. This is excellent advice and has dot fallen on deaf ears! As we move forward, not only with trying to make the current site better but also to redesign a site on a new platform that is easier for our customers to use, your advice is going to come in very handy. Thanks so much for taking the time to comment and advise!
Dana
-
Come back in two or three months after you remove the pages and let us know if anything happened.
-
Thanks again. Yes, we are definitely going to go for it. It makes complete sense.
-
If this was my site I would place that form under a tab.
If you get rid of the review/ratings page and the email to friend page that will decrease the size of your site by a lot of pages. That will give you a more compact site with a much higher content value per page.
If I dumped pages like these from one of my sites I would be hoping to see my rankings slowly climb a little higher.
I can't guarantee that... It is what I would do myself and what I would hope the result would be.
Good luck if you try it. I think that there is upside here and I think that the downside is about zero.
-
One final follow up question EGOL if you don't mind. We also have a link on all the product pages that goes to an "Email this Product to a Friend" request page on another URL. It's a very similar scenario as the "Rating/Review" request links. Are these causing a similar problem? I ask because if we are going to fix one we might as well fix the other at the same time. Let me know what you think.
Thanks as always!
-
Fascinating. It never ceases to amaze me that the better I get at SEO, the less I seem to know Thanks very much EGOL I very very much appreciate your explanation and help on this one!
-
My understanding is that pagerank flows into every link on a page. If the page has a nofollow link then the pagerank into that page is lost.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVOOB_Q0MZY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl0MBeKDXLY
These pages are not needed for the visitor either. One click less if the form is placed under the review/ratings tab that leads to them.
-
Thanks EGOL,
Is it evaporating pagerank simply because those pages exist as many separate pages with thin/duplicate content? Or would the "no follow" be evaporating pagerank? If so, how? I was under the impression that adding a "no follow" attribute retained the pagerank of the page on which the no followed link resides?
Thanks for any clarification you can provide. I am trying to get my ducks in a row before giving marching orders to our IT director.
Dana
-
That would evaporate a lot of pagerank.
I would place the form under a tab to reduce that loss.
-
Thanks EGOL,
I have spent some time discussing the "Review Request" page types that you referenced above with our IT director. Since we have these set as "disallow" in our robots.txt file, and it appears that none of these pages have been indexed, shouldn't we be able to accomplish what needs to be done by adding a "no follow" attribute to these pages?
-
Maybe do some re-architecting along with the cleanup.
I didn't walk thru the cart process but the site navigation at least has the look of something that's been patched and altered over time, for example: Main menu My Account and Login point to the same page so that kind of thing should be sorted, the navigation paths should be mapped and made simpler if possible.
The site could do with some copy editing. Might want to tighten up how everything is organized, and plan overall what pages are supposed to be ranking for what terms, the information seems spread around too much, it all seems a little scattered and in places a little verbose.
Here: https://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/CLA.cat, we have a mis-used "About Us" page offering additional services descriptions instead of talking exclusively about the company.
Services overviews should be found only on their own focussed pages designed to rank for their terms.
About page should be about the company itself: who's in it, reason for being, history, function within the economy, corporate responsibility ideas, market(s) served. That kind of stuff.
My take just checking quickly.
-
If I had a site with thousands orphaned pages I would be attacking them with an ax in both hands. If they serve no purpose they would have been redirected the same day they were orphaned.
Google can have a really long memory for orphaned pages - years for some that I have seen. So if these pages are thin content, or duplicate content I think that they would be putting a drag on your site if they are not causing a Panda problem.
If possible, I would also be putting links in the pdf documents that point to the homepage or a more relevant page of the website. Then any linkjuice that flows into them from your site or from other sites is put to good use. For pdfs that you don't own and can't edit I would be looking for a way to provide the same information where linkjuice can flow back.
I would also be after those review form pages, getting rid of them for a form on the product page under a tab. Those pages are linkjuice sinks, trivial content, duplicate content. I would get rid of them ASAP.
Here is an example
http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/jsp/product/ProductRatingRequest.jsp?product=ANH-GL2400-24
That's what I see in a quick look.
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
-
Best way to Load Responsive Images for Responsive Site?
Hello All, Can anyone suggest be best technique to load responsive images? We are developing responsive site so looking for good ideas from your side so that it load very fast. Thanks!
Web Design | | micey1230 -
Regarding rel=canonical on duplicate pages on a shopping site... some direction, please.
Good morning, Moz community: My name is David, and I'm currently doing internet marketing for an online retailer of marine accessories. While many product pages and descriptions are unique, there are some that have the descriptions duplicated across many products. The advice commonly given is to leave one page as is / crawlable (probably best for one that is already ranking/indexed), and use rel=canonical on all duplicates. Any idea for direction on this? Do you think it is necessary? It will be a massive task. (also, one of the products that we rank highest for, we have tons of duplicate descriptions.... so... that is sort of like evidence against the idea?) Thanks!
Web Design | | DavidCiti0 -
Curious why site isn't ranking, rather seems like being penalized for duplicate content but no issues via Google Webmaster...
So we have a site ThePowerBoard.com and it has some pretty impressive links pointing back to it. It is obviously optimized for the keyword "Powerboard", but in no way is it even in the top 10 pages of Google ranking. If you site:thepowerboard.com the site, and/or Google just the URL thepowerboard.com you will see that it populates in the search results. However if you quote search just the title of the home page, you will see oddly that the domain doesn't show up rather at the bottom of the results you will see where Google places "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 7 already displayed". If you click on the link below that, then the site shows up toward the bottom of those results. Is this the case of duplicate content? Also from the developer that built the site said the following: "The domain name is www.thepowerboard.com and it is on a shared server in a folder named thehoverboard.com. This has caused issues trying to ssh into the server which forces us to ssh into it via it’s ip address rather than by domain name. So I think it may also be causing your search bot indexing problem. Again, I am only speculating at this point. The folder name difference is the only thing different between this site and any other site that we have set up." (Would this be the culprit? Looking for some expert advice as it makes no sense to us why this domain isn't ranking?
Web Design | | izepper0 -
Managing website content/keywords for wordpress site
We are in the midst of redesigning our website and have been working with freelance blog/content writers to increase the unique content on our site. We are finding it increasingly difficult to manage the topics/keywords as we continue to expand. Googledrive and google spreadsheets have been our primary tools thus far. Can anyone recommend a good tool that would allow us to manage content and blog posts for our site?
Web Design | | Tom_Carc0 -
Critique a site I'm working on please
Hi guys, I have a list of things to do on this website that is longer than my arm but thought I would gather a few more thoughts on the site before moving on further with it. The site is here. It went live a couple of days ago for live testing. I have a news section coming very soon at theworkplacedepot.co.uk/news - it is in live testing now. One glaring issue for me is that some of the products simply aren't "buyable". What I mean by that is that the options are too vague and too vast - as an outsider I wouldnt have a clue what I was buying! Other issues: The banner at the bottom of the HP is a test - its design will be changing. The sitemap has some issues and will be addressed. There is no area yet to "log-in". However, critique for me pretty please! 🙂
Web Design | | MattJanaway0 -
Mobile Sitemap for Site with Media Queries
I'm doing SEO for a site. It uses Media Queries and the CSS to automatically resize the site for the screen size in use. I.e. the site detects the screen size of say an iPhone and the CSS knows which elements to hide for that screen size and still make it look good. This is great because it will automatically cut down the content to display nicely on small screens - obviating the need for a separate mobile site. What kind of sitemap should be generated since the urls are for desktop and mobile use? Yoast (sweet SEO) said it should have both regular and mobile style sitemap to get both the regular and mobile bots to visit, but didn't elaborate on how that sitemap should look. Do you have a recommendation for how exactly the sitemap should look? Should the sitemap have the urls all twice, i.e. once regular and once with the mobile indicator?
Web Design | | GregoryHaze1 -
Duplicate content on mobile sites
Hi Guys We are launching a mobile webshop later this year and have decided to use a subdomain for this. (m.domainname.xx). The content will be more or less identical with the one on the standard desktop site (domainname.xx), but im struggeling to find out if this will create dipplicate content between the mobile and desktop site. Does anyone have a solid answer for this one?
Web Design | | AndersDK0 -
Mobile Site Pages: Word Count Help
Hi there I am doing a mobile website for a client and they asked me what the dieal word count would be per page. They are SEO conciosu but we are not doing SEO on this site. I would just like to know a general rule of thumb. Regards Stef
Web Design | | stefanok0