Advice urgently needed on best practice for handling multiple product categories on Magento website
-
I have an ecommerce site built using Magento and urgently need advice on best practice for handling multiple product categories (where products appear in more than one category on the site creating multiple URLs to the same page).
In April this year, based on advice from my SEO who felt that duplicate content issues were causing my rankings to be held back, I changed about 25% of the product categories to 'noindex, follow'. This has made organic traffic fall (obviously) as these pages fell out of Google's index. But, contrary to what I was hoping for, it didn't then improve rankings - not one iota, nothing - which was the ONLY reason why I did this. This has had a real negative impact on sales, so I'm starting to think this was actually an a terrible idea.
Should I change them back?
And to ask a wider question, what is best practice for this particular scenario?
-
Hi,
If there already is a canonical link then you can edit it using the layout update code I first mentioned. If you do not need to canonical to another page you can just leave it as it is (self referencing).
As to if you want to do it or not, this really depends on how big of a problem it is for your search efforts and how many cats/products you will need to manually adjust. I would think that if you keep track of them in an excel and remember to check when you are updating that with a couple of hundred categories/products (of which only maybe a couple dozen or less might have to be manually edited?) then you should be able to manage it ok.
Good luck!
-
Thanks, I have regenerated the xml sitemap. Fingers crossed it doesn't take too long to see the pages fall back into the index!
As it happens, my developer has since emailed back to say that there is a canonical link for each category but it points to itself. Is that a problem?? He can't tell me.
Thinking about it, I'm unsure about manually adding a canonical link for each product/category. I'm concerned about errors creeping in over time, with URL changes, etc. With hundreds of products, I think it won't be too difficult for this to happen. Plus, the XML is automatically generated, so don't think the URLs will match. Have you had encountered these problems before?
-
HI,
For the canonicals if they are not being added automatically at the category level then you can still do it just removing the first part of the above that removes the old url, so like this:
<reference name="head"><action method="addLinkRel"><rel>canonical</rel>
<href>http://www.domain.com/canonicalUrl</href></action></reference>The above will add a canonical tag to whichever category page you add it to (in the layout update box).
The fetch as google does not reindex your site, it just previews how google sees the site. Make sure all the category pages are included in your sitemap and resubmit the sitemap to GWT. You can then see how many pages in the sitemap are indexed and that number should go up as google recrawls the site and finds the noindex tag removed.
-
Thanks for taking the trouble to answer. I have now made all categories 'index, follow'.
No canonicals are automatically added to category pages, so can't use this technique. Thanks for the suggestion, though.
Should I 'Fetch as Google' in WMT? If so, is it best to add the URL for every single category that I've updated? Or, just wait?
Appreciate your help, Lynn.
-
Hi,
I would do it all at once, nothing unusual about it and google may not see the change on all pages at the same time anyway.
For the rankings it is really impossible to say, you might get lucky, you might have to be patient, its not exactly like starting over again, especially if you have a couple of existing external links but....
For the canonical tags, there is a way to do it depending on your setup. Have you got canonicals being automatically added to the category pages as well as the product pages? If yes then you can overwrite them on a case by case basis by putting the following code in the 'custom layout update' box (this works for both products and categories actually).
<reference name="head"><action method="removeItem"><type>link_rel</type>
<name>http://www.domain.com/oldurl</name></action></reference><action method="addLinkRel"><rel>canonical</rel>
<href>http://www.domain.com/new-url</href></action>You will need to identify the canonical url being inputted into the code, add it to the oldurl bit above to remove it and then put in the new canonical url you want. Needless to say, it pays to be sure about what you are trying to achieve and why before implementing this setup on a lot of pages.
Hope it helps!
-
The website uses Magento version 1.4. which actually does have the canonical link back to the base URL feature. This was in place already before I started even messing around with making these changes.
I will revert the categories back to 'index, follow'. Some questions about this:
- Is it best to do it all at once (or will this look odd/'unnatural' somehow from Google's perspective)
- How long will it take for these pages to re-rank? They were made noindex in April, so would it be like starting again as if these were totally brand new pages?
Another SEO has recommended another approach, which is to identify the 'best' URL (from SEO point of view) and add the canonical link to the rest. Is there a way to implement/manage this easily in Magento? I can't seem to find a solution online on this.
-
That Yoast plugin is only developed up to Magento version 1.4 which is pretty old now. The good news is you can get some of this functionality out of the box now at Admin -> Configuration -> Catalog -> Search engine optimizations. If you set the use canonical meta tag link on products to yes then all product pages are given a canonical link back to a base url with no category in it. Baring a more advanced paid module or custom development, this is going to be your best bet.
Certainly change your category pages back to index, follow. Depending on your setup and how many common categories/products you have any duplicate content issue you have would usually be on a product more than a category level anyway. For category pages look at getting some good descriptions and other unique content on them. Check out this video for more details.
-
Change them all back to INDEX, FOLLOW and use Canonical plugin by yoast.
Canonical URL's for Magento • Yoast (sorry if links not allowed)
Some products on our site appear in six categories and we have no issues with duplicate content whatsoever using the above.
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 Handle Near-Duplicate Content?
Hello Dear MOZers, Having duplicate content issues and I'd like some opinions on how best to deal with this problem. Background: I run a website for a cosmetic surgeon in which the most valuable content area is the section of before/after photos of our patients. We have 200+ pages (one patient per page) and each page has a 'description' block of text and a handful of before and after photos. Photos are labeled with very similar labels patient-to-patient ("before surgery", "after surgery", "during surgery" etc). Currently, each page has a unique rel=canonical tag. But MOZ Crawl Diagnostics has found these pages to be duplicate content of each other. For example, using a 'similar page checker' two of these pages were found to be 97% similar. As far as I understand there are a few ways to deal with this, and I'd like to get your opinions on the best course. Add 150+ more words to each description text block Prevent indexing of patient pages with robots.txt Set the rel=canonical for each patient page to the main gallery page Any other options or suggestions? Please keep in mind that this is our most valuable content, so I would be reluctant to make major structural changes, or changes that would result in any decrease in traffic to these pages. Thank you folks, Ethan
Technical SEO | | BernsteinMedicalNYC0 -
Best practice to handle Wordpress Categories/Tags
Hello Mozzers, I am sure a lot of people here are using wordpress. How do you handle Categories & Tags? I came across that they produce a lot of duplicate content in the google index. My website is brand new so I don't have any traffic yet, how would you handle it? noindex, follow? Or block /categories/ and /tags/ from robots.txt? Probably I am completely wrong with both ways? I am grateful for your answers! Best regards!
Technical SEO | | grobro0 -
What is the best way to handle these duplicate page content errors?
MOZ reports these as duplicate page content errors and I'm not sure the best way to handle it. Home
Technical SEO | | ElykInnovation
http://myhjhome.com/
http://myhjhome.com/index.php Blog
http://myhjhome.com/blog/
http://myhjhome.com/blog/?author=1 Should I just create 301 redirects for these? 301 http://myhjhome.com/index.php to http://myhjhome.com/ ? 301 http://myhjhome.com/blog/?author=1 to http://myhjhome.com/ ? Or is there a better way to handle this type of duplicate page content errors? and0 -
Best Schema Advice
Hi, I am new here and I have searched for but not got a definitive answer for this. I am sorting out a website which is a scaffolding company operating in a particular area. They are only interested in targeting a particular area and from what I have read through here I need to mark the site up with schema mentioning their company name and address. My issue is that I seem to find lots of conflicting advice about what should go it and how it should be laid out. I would love to know peoples opinions on where the best guide for setting up schema correctly for a site like this. They use wordpress, I am ok with inserting code to the site etc, I just want to make sure I get it right from the start. Once I have done this, I understand that I need to get local citations using the same NAP as how the site is marked up. Sorry for what might seem like a daft question but I am a designer and I am still learning the ins and outs of SEO. Thanks
Technical SEO | | kirstyseo0 -
Best practice for eCommerce site migration, should I 301 redirect or match URLs on new site
Hi Guys, I have been struggling with this one for quite some time. I am no SEO expert like many of you, rather just a small business owner trying to do the right thing, so forgive me if I say something that makes no sense 🙂 I am moving our eCommerce store from one platform to another, in the process the store is getting a massive face lift. The part I am struggling with is whether I should keep my existing URL structure in place or use 301 redirects to create a cleaner looking URLs. Currently the URLs are a little long and I would love to move to a /category/product_name type format. Of course the goal is not to lose ranking in the process, I rank pretty well for several competitive phrases and do not want to create a negative impact. How would you guys handle this? Thanks, Dinesh
Technical SEO | | MyFairyTaleBooks0 -
Should I noindex, follow categories?
Hey Everyone, A simple question (hopefully). Should I check or uncheck the noindex, follow setting for categories on our site? We've got about 5-6 but they aren't anything that people should know or would help in SEO. For example, one category is "featured content" and another is "what's happening." Checking them dictate where a post goes on the site. I'm pretty sure it should be checked, but I wanted to check with the experts first 🙂 http://d.pr/i/jtrc
Technical SEO | | ttb0 -
Is it best to create multiple xml sitemaps for different sections of a site?
I have a client with a very big site that includes a blog, videos, photo gallery, etc. Is it best to create a separate xml file for each of these sections? It seems to me like that would be the best way to keep everything organized. Or at least separate the blog out from the main site. Does anybody have any tips or recommendations? I'm not finding any good information about this.
Technical SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
Best Way To Handle Expired Content
Hi, I have a client's site that posts job openings. There is a main list of available jobs and each job has an individual page linked to from that main list. However, at some point the job is no longer available. Currently, the job page goes away and returns a status 404 after the job is no longer available. The good thing is that the job pages get links coming into the site. The bad thing is that as soon as the job is no longer available, those links point to a 404 page. Ouch. Currently Google Webmaster Tools shows 100+ 404 job URLs that have links (maybe 1-3 external links per). The question is what to do with the job page instead of returning a 404. For business purposes, the client cannot display the content after the job is no longer available. To avoid duplicate content issues, the old job page should have some kind of unique content saying the job is longer available. Any thoughts on what to do with those old job pages? Or would you argue that it is appropriate to return 404 header plus error page since this job is truly no longer a valid page on the site? Thanks for any insights you can offer.
Technical SEO | | Matthew_Edgar
Matthew1