Does my overly dynamic website hurt my SEO?
-
I have heard from a couple of people that my overly dynamic URL's hurt my SEO tremendously. Can anyone verify that? Of course my provider says it doesn't matter but I take what they say with a grain of salt.
Another thing, my web crawls show a TON of errors for duplicate page title and overly dynamic url and duplicate page content. How big of a deal is this?
-
I will gladly offer a few tips on your site, but first I will make a couple observations. It sounds like you are just getting started with SEO so I would strongly suggest reading the beginner's guide to SEO from start to finish. Even if you are experienced with SEO it can be a great refresher.
For your site and business, determine your niche. What makes your site different from the thousands of other sites which sell clothing? Use your niche to determine your keywords. Unless you have a massive budget, you will not be able to compete nationally with other websites, but you can do well with longtail keywords.
The below is a list of a few items I would change with your site. Others may feel differently so please be clear these are my opinions:
-
The meta description for your product pages should be unique. The page I examined had the same description as your home page.
-
If you have more information about your company, expand your About Us page. Information such as an address, pictures and profiles of key employees, etc. give consumers confidence in your site.
-
Consider adding badges from companies like TRUSTe, Verisign, McAfee and the BBB. These badges offer shoppers a measure of comfort and confidence in your site.
-
I didn't go through your checkout but if you do not offer Google Checkout, then add it. It's Google's search engine you wish to rank in, and adding their checkout makes your results stand out.
-
remove your meta keywords tag. It offers no benefit.
-
I looked at a blog page: http://www.nvclothing.com/blog. The images at the top are not linked. What if I like what I see and wish to buy it? By linking the image you allow your viewers to be impulsive. Otherwise your visitor needs to want the product enough to search your site.
-
I couldn't find a Home button. Once I leave the home page, how do I get back? Sure I can type in the URL or use the Back button, but I would recommend adding a Home link somewhere.
There were numerous good things I noticed. Your pages have unique Title tags, you offer social sharing buttons right next to your products, and have alt tags on your images.
Good luck.
-
-
Thanks for your feedback. I found the meta tag problem and am fixing it now. I have just recently begun to actively work on my website. If you don't mind, would you please point out areas in which you believe need the most improvement on my site?
I know I don't rank very well on many keywords that I care about but don't really know what to do about it.
thanks in advance.
-
The meta description issue was on your home page.
With respect to the comment "you will never experience any real growth", can you share the reasoning offered? What exactly is wrong with your current software?
That broad statement seems like something a person who is selling software would say to encourage you to buy their product.
I do see SEO opportunities on your site which you are working on correcting. I am also confident if you put time, money and effort into your site you could improve it.
-
Thank you for the feedback. I will look into the meta description issue. can you tell me what page you see that on?
I'll also look into the canonical tag.
I've been told I'll never experience any real growth with my current platform/provider. Is this true?
-
I will agree with Cody and William but offer a bit more detail.
I took a look at your site and yes, your dynamic URLs are pretty ugly.
http://www.nvclothing.com/product.asp?lt=c&catid=13039&sec=women&pfid=NVC02369
There is nothing wrong with having a dynamic URL at all. It would perform a lot better from a SEO perspective if it was displayed in a readable format.
Do my overly dynamic URL's hurt my SEO?
No. Overly dynamic URLs do not hurt SEO. But, your dynamic URLs are missing a significant opportunity to help SEO. By using readable URLs search engines can factor in the key words from your URL as a factor in determining your rank. Also, people feel more comfortable clicking on a URL that clearly indicates what the page will show.
How big of a deal is duplicate page titles and duplicate page content?
It's something you want to fix. The duplicate page issue can be addressed with adding the canonical tag to your pages. There is a strong chance that will fix your duplicate page title issue as well.
If you do not fix this issue, you may have the wrong pages indexed, and your link value may not flow to the correct page. Basically, you wont rank as well in search results.
Something else I noticed while on your site. You use the meta description tag twice. You should eliminate one of them.
-
Depends on how the URL is being written. URL names can get ugly with dynamic writing if they're not cleaned up with URL rewriting methods.
This is something that can have a fairly significant effect on your SEO. You may want to look into configuring a URL rewriting method to write pretty URLs.
Here are a couple of articles to get you started.
http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/using-mod-rewrite-to-convert-dynamic-urls-to-seo-friendly-urls
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls-the-best-practice-for-seo-is-still-clear
-
The difference between something like:
http://www.nvclothing.com/product.asp?lt=c&catid=17763&sec=women&pfid=NVC02304
And what you could do with something like:
http://www.nvclothing.com/wildfox-couture-red-sparkle-heart-long-sleeve-tee
Is pretty significant. Keywords in the url are tremendously valuable and it's worth it to get a developer that is familiar with url rewrite for ecommerce sites like yours.
As far as the duplicate titles and content, big deal. Bear in mind, that you are not going to face any penalties, but you're missing out on performing as best you can and ranking for searches you should be, because the website is not following best practices by having unique content and titles for each and every page.
It's a bit of work, but totally worth the effort.
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
-
How do you optimize a blog post for SEO after the RankBrain?
Hi Guys Just curious to hear what you guys do to rank blog posts in the top in Google especially onsite, after the RankBrain update? Do you still use SEO tools to optimize this or are the SEO tools outdated for this? If yes which tools do you use to get success with? Cheers John
Algorithm Updates | | igniterman750 -
Does cached duplicate content hurts seo by Google
If we have duplicate content or pages cached in Google which has been indexed months back, still it hurts the original pages? Old URLs with cache can be seen now in Google when we search for the same URLs.
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Searching for Compelling Hard Data on why B2B Websites Should Be Responsive
I am being asked to provide hard data in support the migration to a responsive website for a large B2B website. I have searched for any case studies showing before/after comparisons - no luck. I can easily show: Current data on desktop vs mobile visitors, their bounce rate, pages per visit, etc. Google Analytics Benchmark data - really compelling stuff there! In the past year, 100K visitors have come to the site from mobile devices. GWMTs shows the client not receiving mobile impressions for important keywords, All the close competitors have gone responsive. In APAC regions, mobile is more widely used than in the USA. BUT, I can’t show that making this expensive and time-consuming transition will result in more revenue. The client is a financial services software company, with a 2-3 year sales cycle. Has anyone seen data to support this transition? Thanks everyone! Have a great long weekend.
Algorithm Updates | | RosemaryB0 -
Parallax Scrolling when used with “hash bang” technique is good for SEO or not?
Hello friends, One of my client’s website http://chakracentral.com/ is using Parallax scrolling with most of the URLs containing hash “#” tag. Please see few sample URLs below: http://chakracentral.com/#panelBlock4 (service page)
Algorithm Updates | | chakraseo
http://chakracentral.com/#panelBlock3 (about-us page) I am planning to use “hash bang” technique on this website so that Google can read all the internal pages (containing hash “#” tag) with the current site architecture as the client is not comfortable in changing it. Reference: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/docs/getting-started#2-set-up-your-server-to-handle-requests-for-urls-that-contain-escaped_fragment But the problem that I am facing is that, lots of industry experts do not consider parallax websites (even with hash bang technique) good for SEO especially for mobile devices. See some references below: http://searchengineland.com/the-perils-of-parallax-design-for-seo-164919
https://moz.com/blog/parallax-scrolling-websites-and-seo-a-collection-of-solutions-and-examples So please find my queries below for which I need help: 1. Will it be good to use the “hash bang” technique on this website and perform SEO to improve the rankings on desktop as well as mobile devices?
2. Is using “hash bang” technique for a parallax scrolling website good for only desktop and not recommended for mobile devices and that we should have a separate mobile version (without parallax scrolling) of the website for mobile SEO?
3. Parallax scrolling technique (even with "hash bang") is not at all good for SEO for both desktop as well as mobile devices and should be avoided if we want to have a good SEO friendly website?
4. Any issue with Google Analytics tracking for the same website? Regards,
Sarmad Javed0 -
Multiple Listings in Results fading Local SEO
Lately I am noticing multiple listings for results seem to be fading away. Example is one domain being listed twice for a search phrase The Home page for example and an Internal Page. Is anyone else seeing this? Safe to say Google wants to see 10+ individual domains per results page?
Algorithm Updates | | bozzie3110 -
Confused About Addon Domains and SEO
I find addon domains really confusing. Everyone I've asked so far says that they don't affect SEO but I find that really hard to believe considering the same content is on both a subdomain and a subfolder and also has it's own unique domain. PLUS (in my case) completely different niche sites are sharing the same hosting. I really don't want to pay for hosting for all of my different sites but at the same time, if it's better/safer to do so for Panda/Penguin reasons I'm happy to do that. Thank you for your time. I look forward to your opinions/suggestions!
Algorithm Updates | | annasusmiles0 -
SEO Faith Shaker... help!!
Something has happened which is, well inexplicable to me... I'm stumped! We have a client that has two sites which compete for the same keywords. One is a .com, the other is a .co.uk. They have different content so there's no dupe worries. We have, for the past few months been carrying out SEO for the .com site. It's doing great. We don't do anything with the .co.uk site, which, incidentally dropped from 2nd (under the .com) to 9th after Panda for its main keyword. The owner of the site has switched the .co.uk to Wordpress and now that site, with the same content, same links, same social signals, etc... (nothing was done to it except the platform being changed) has suddenly shot up above the .com for not only its main keyword but most of the others too. What gives?? It doesn't even have a link from the .com site! So, the .com which has undergone SEO is now being beaten by the .co.uk which hasn't. The .com is still directly underneath it. It feels like all of the things we know about SEO, all of the ranking factors and everything are being totally undermined here, just due to a change to Wordpress. Surely that can't be it?? The .com is an older domain, has more content, has always done well, has more links and from better places, and all the social stuff surrounding the business is targeted at it. This isn't a penalization issue or anything like that, this is simply a matter of the .co.uk suddenly blasting above everything for no apparent reason. Any ideas?? I know that there "might" be a tiny, tiny, tiny advantage of the country TLD but that's not enough to do this, and the .co.uk always did worse before.
Algorithm Updates | | SteveOllington1 -
Which is better for SEO. 1 big site or a number of smaller sites.
Hello , I am about to create a website with product reviews for a certain niche. What i want to know: Is it better for me to have a site with all reviews , like nicheproductsreviews.com and then have nicheproductsreviews.com/product-one-review.html and nicheproductsreviews.com/product-two-review.html or buy multiple domains to have product name in the domain name, like product-one-review.com and product-two-review.com As far as I understand, first approach consolidates all pages on the same site , consolidating all the link juice to it. However, second approach lets me have the product name in the main domain URL. Which way is better for SEO and why?
Algorithm Updates | | voitenkos0