Detailed Revisions of Articles coexisting with Automated Description Articles
-
Hello all,
think per instance in a comparator of cars, motorbikes, etc, where you have dozens of brands, types of cars and motorbikes like diesel or oil, 4x4 vs sport, etc
So, in one part of your site you are reviewing them in detail, explaining everything.
You also have a database with hundreds of models with several specs like top speed, length, engine, etc so you can automatically create an info page for these hundreds of models.
How would you make both of them live together in your website?
If you add the review to the automatted articles, then you would have an unconsistency as you cannot manually review all the products. On the other hand, doing it separetly will lead to a very, very similar title posts and urls (revision vs automated versions).
In my particular case, I just had the revisions until now and my site is developed in Wordpress. I had all the url posts below the home (mysite.com/review-of-car-x-of-brand-y) and now I am going to add the automatted ones and am thinking on place the automatted ones like WP Custom Posts and the url would be mysite.com/cars/description-of-car-x-of-brand-y. But still have the problem with categories, tags, etc, etc
Well, it is long question but what do you think about this?
-
Ok. I had always wondered how the index,noindes affects to the canonical. And also if the canonical post should be included in the sitemap or not (I think that not according to your last whiteboard friday but again not sure).
Per instance, I published the following post this morning checking what you said
http://www.comparativadebancos.com/mejores-depositos-bancarios-de-marzo-de-2011/
and with a rel=canonical to this that was published at the beginning of the month
http://www.comparativadebancos.com/depositos/marzo/
but then I have the first one in google
http://www.google.com/search?aq=f&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=mejores+depositos+bancarios+marzo+2011
Currently I rank very well for the reviews, so dont know what will happen with the canonical.
Thanks for your answers!
-
You probably don't need to worry about the noindex tag, just the rel=canonical should be enough to get the engines recognizing the right page (and I'm not 100% sure how the noindex might interact).
-
That would been even technically easier to implement I think.
Just the last thing, I am confused with the canonical here. What should i use in the blog reviews?
1. meta=Noindex,follow and rel=canonical to the product page
2. meta=Index,follow and rel=canonical to the product page
I dont know if I have to index those posts.
Thanks!
-
Hmm... I'm not sure I like that as much as getting the product page indexed and known by the engines as the canonical version. Perhaps you could produce the RSS feed/blog with the reviews, but use rel="canonical" on those pages to point over to the product pages which include the reviews? That would be a way to potentially have your cake and eat it too
-
HI Rand and thanks for your answer and your link.
I believe that is the way to go but the point is that my site is a blog based one and then I am going to introduce a comparator with a huge product database. Therefore, I still would like to display in my home my reviews that then are automatically sent in my daily mailchimp rss newsletter and to my rss suscribers. That was my point of having two separated posts.
Thinking about it, I think this could be a solution:
1. Use a custom taxonomy as Justin Tadlock recommends http://justintadlock.com/archives/2011/01/14/rethinking-how-news-themes-work
2. Display in the home just the posts with the "Review" property and using the dhtml script you said above or a "more text" hiding the "automatted content"
What do you think about this?
Thanks a lot
Antonio
-
Hi Antonio - a lot of sites, particularly in the e-commerce field, face precisely this issue. What I've seen be most effective is what Amazon, BestBuy and many others do, which is to create a single page for any product and include editorial/user reviews and more detailed information when it's available and when it's not, leave that area open for future additions of content. This way, you have a single version of any given page and you create a positive association with the crawlers and humans that some/much/most of your content/products will eventually get a good, rich description.
You can also use Saibose's suggestion in combination if you'd prefer having this content in separate, embedded "tabs" on the page that all resolve to the same URL. Check out a code sample and example of this in action here - http://dhtmlkitchen.com/scripts/tabs/tutorial/navigation.jsp
Best of luck!
Rand -
But I will always have more automatted than custom so i think that "vice versa" is not an option.
Anyhow, I don't really see how to do it in WP? Do you have any idea?
Are there any other suggestions in the room?
Thanks saibose for your advice
-
put the reviews in # for now till you have a good content base and then carefully do the flip to vice versa.
sorry, my bad, I meant, noindex for tags and categories.
-
What is exactly your proposal? To just have the automatted ones and in # the review or the opposite?
Anyhow, the point is that I might have 1000 automated posts and 100 custom posts. If I use the # the users wouldn't know how to reach those posts with the custom review.
The reviews can be up to seven or eight paragraphs so it would really make a difference between those which do have it and don't. Therefore, I had thought on doing it separetly, like two different kind of posts.
Finally, for categories and tags, did you want to say "noindex" instead of "nofollow"?
Thanks
-
what about adding a # in the URL? Have you thought about that? That will drive all the authority to the page you want to rank higher in search.
I dont recall the video, but there was a talk that search engines disregard the part of URL after #, but crawls them.(correct me if i mis interpreted the video, or didnt recall it correctly).
But, that should be a solution to your problem.
Further you can add nofollow to your category and tag pages, if you want faceted navigation and content duplication issues to be solved.
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
-
Meta-description issue in SERPs for different countries
I'm working with a US client on the SEO for their large ecommerce website, I'm working on it from the UK. We've now optimised several of the pages including updating the meta-descriptions etc. The problem is when I search on the keyword iin the UK I see the new updated version of the meta-description in SERPs results. BUT when my client searches on the same keyword in the US they're see the old version of the meta-description. Does any one have any idea why this is happening and how we can resolve it? Thanks Tanya
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TanyaKorteling0 -
How Important is Meta Description on Non-Entry Pages?
If a page is never used as an entry page to your website -- in other words it's an obscure, relatively unimportant page that never ranks high enough in the search engines to be in the first few pages of the search results for any significant number of searches -- does editing the META Description really have any significant benefit? I guess the question could also be phrased as, does the Google Search Algo factor in the META Description tag, or is it only used for display purposes on the search results and doesn't affect ranking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SeoJaz0 -
Would changing permalink structure of 7,500 articles be good or bad?
Morning everyone, I'm the tech at a large men's lifestyle publisher and we're currently running the old /year/month/ URL structure in Wordpress. Now I've read countless articles about pro's and con's of month date vs post type formats (/2016/06/sample-post/ vs /sample-post/) and considering we produce both evergreen and daily news content we're stuck with making a decision. Currently we receive about 10,000 organic referrals per day (has been stuck at this for 12 months) but considering we have 7,500 articles, have 10 full-time staff and have been around for close to 7 years we think we're underperforming. Now providing we 301 redirect every old article to the new structure is there any other reason not to do this change? Any advice would be appreciated. Axps36D
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lucwiesman0 -
Automated Quality Content Acceptable Even Though Looks Similar Across Pages
I have some advanced statistics modules implemented on my website, which is very high level added value for users. However, wording is similar across 1000+ pages, with difference being the statistical findings.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi5
Page Ex 1: http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu/honolulu-condos/
Page Ex: 2: http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu/honolulu/metro/waikiki-condos/ As you can see same wording is used "Median Sales Price per Year", "$ Volume of Active Listings" etc etc....difference being the findings / results are obviously different. Questions: are search engines smart enough to realize the quality in this or do they see similar wording across 1000+ pages and p-otentially consider the pages low-quality content, because search engines are unable to identify the high level added value and complexity in pulling such quality data? If that may be the case, does that mean I ought to make the pages more "unique" by including a little piece of writing about each page to make them look more unique, even though it is not of value to users?0 -
Google Authorship. Is there a way to check all the articles by one author?
Hey guys, Is there any search query or website where I can get a list with all the articles by one author? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Felip30 -
How to auto generate a unique meta description?
The site I am working on is a code nightmare for starters. I'm editing a file called layout that controls the section of each page. The programmer from a while back got unique titles by putting this piece of code in: <title><?= $this->metaTag ?></title> In all the different controllers and stuff I can see where the title is the name of the product plus review or something to that effect. How do I do this for the meta description? Right now the meta description is static in the layout file, and so every page has an identical one. I was hoping there was a way to make the meta description automatically use the first 140 characters on the page or something. Something like this:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DanDeceuster0 -
What strategies to best use to boost rankings across long-tail articles on site?
Heya! I'm currently engaged in what appears to be a slightly unusual SEO task. I run a large, reasonably well-respected (but not global-standard, yet) site that I'm currently monetising through individual articles targetted at addressing specific search engine queries that I know have decent traffic. It's the EHow / Demand Media model, except with a focus on a single specific (video games) niche, and much, much better quality articles (sufficiently good that they attract a fair amount of praise - all the writers on the site are published authors and the quality's damn high). Most of our articles end up ranking with essentially no backup, but they don't rank high - usually 2nd or 3rd page of Google. I'm trying to determine what the most effective strategy would be for us to boost our article rankings with the least possible expense / effort (we don't have a huge budget). Our long-tail articles are mostly being trumped by articles with either a couple of external links to them or by other articles with no links but from a site with significantly higher Domain Authority (70+ to our 48).I'm working to improve our on-page optimisation, but it's already pretty good (an "A" report from the SEOMoz tools on most or all pages). So, I'm wondering what the best use of our time would be to increase traffic globally across the site. Strategies I'm considering: Focussing on building links to the homepage and to any other pages on the site, by asking for links from community members, doing linkbait articles, directory submissions, guest blogging, and so on. Long-term aim: increase our domain-wide MozRank and MozTrust. Build links to our long-tail articles specifically, most popular first. Get direct links from relevant blogs, press releases, social bookmarking, etc. Long-term aim: get to #1 on Google one page at a time. Something Else? I'm wondering what the big SEO brains here would suggest? Happy to provide additional details if it would help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cairmen1 -
Will changing domain registration details affect ranking?
Hi all, I've got a .co.uk site that I want to update the domain registrant account details for. The change will involve registering the domain to a limited company name rather than an individual and possibly changing the registered address. Does anyone know whether this could affect google rankings? I've heard of stories of sites losing their PR because the registrant details have changed and I don't really want that to happen! Thanks in advance for any help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeterAlexLeigh0