How can I best handle parameters?
-
Thank you for your help in advance! I've read a ton of posts on this forum on this subject and while they've been super helpful I still don't feel entirely confident in what the right approach I should take it. Forgive my very obvious noob questions - I'm still learning!
The problem: I am launching a site (coursereport.com) which will feature a directory of schools. The directory can be filtered by a handful of fields listed below. The URL for the schools directory will be coursereport.com/schools. The directory can be filtered by a number of fields listed here:
- Focus (ex: “Data Science”)
- Cost (ex: “$<5000”)
- City (ex: “Chicago”)
- State/Province (ex: “Illinois”)
- Country (ex: “Canada”)
When a filter is applied to the directories page the CMS produces a new page with URLs like these:
- coursereport.com/schools?focus=datascience&cost=$<5000&city=chicago
- coursereport.com/schools?cost=$>5000&city=buffalo&state=newyork
My questions:
1) Is the above parameter-based approach appropriate? I’ve seen other directory sites that take a different approach (below) that would transform my examples into more “normal” urls.
coursereport.com/schools?focus=datascience&cost=$<5000&city=chicago
VERSUS
coursereport.com/schools/focus/datascience/cost/$<5000/city/chicago (no params at all)
2) Assuming I use either approach above isn't it likely that I will have duplicative content issues? Each filter does change on page content but there could be instance where 2 different URLs with different filters applied could produce identical content (ex: focus=datascience&city=chicago OR focus=datascience&state=illinois). Do I need to specify a canonical URL to solve for that case? I understand at a high level how rel=canonical works, but I am having a hard time wrapping my head around what versions of the filtered results ought to be specified as the preferred versions. For example, would I just take all of the /schools?focus=X combinations and call that the canonical version within any filtered page that contained other additional parameters like cost or city?
-
Should I be changing page titles for the unique filtered URLs?
-
I read through a few google resources to try to better understand the how to best configure url params via webmaster tools. Is my best bet just to follow the advice on the article below and define the rules for each parameter there and not worry about using rel=canonical ?
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1235687
An assortment of the other stuff I’ve read for reference:
http://www.wordtracker.com/academy/seo-clean-urls
http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/3857-SEO-When-Product-Facets-and-Filters-Fail
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/five-steps-to-seo-friendly-site-url-structure/59813/
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/07/improved-handling-of-urls-with.html
-
I think you have your answer then on how you want to focus your URLs and your site!
-
Absolutely helpful. I really appreciate it. I think one real use case that I may want to solve for is the "focus" plus "city" combo. Ie: "data science schools in chicago". Based on the research I've done thus far I think that may be the only permutation really worth worrying about. Again - thanks a lot!
-
I am not going to be very helpful here.
Looking at those parameters and all the options you would have for URLs, yes you are ripe for duplicate content issue and a whole mess of search engine problems/confusion.
I read this the other day in the QNA forum here at Moz and I wish I could remember to give them credit for the quote, they said "Don't submit search results to the search engines" - so true - so true ....
Why? You end up with an almost infinite number of thin, duplicate pages that Google then does not know which ones to rank. Even if you put all the parameters into a static URL you still have the same problem.
I think you need to step back a sec
Are people searching for "data science schools in Chicago Illinois that cost less than $5000"?
Why would you even want to attempt to setup pages that could potentially rank for those terms based on the URL?
Launch the search function on the site, but hide all the search URLs behind robots.txt
Just setup things like
/search/?focus=datascience&cost=$<5000&city=chicago
/search/focus/datascience/cost/$<5000/city/chicago
put /search/ in robots and you are set
Another option (from one of my favorite WBF http://moz.com/blog/whiteboard-friday-using-the-hash)
Hide all the parameters behind the hash and they stay hidden from the search engines
/schools#?focus=datascience&cost=$<5000&city=chicago
Then go back, do your keyword research and build helpful static URL pages around what your users are searching for and then get those pages to rank. If that ultimately is the type of page above, I would bet you $3,141 plus an apple pie that you need to setup a simpler organization of pages and urls around location say /il/chicago/school-name or type /data-science/school-name and then all the other iterations, you would hide behind a hash etc.
Maybe this did help - I hope so.
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 to handle pages I can't delete?
Hello Mozzers, I am using wordpress and I have a small problem. I have two sites, I don't want but the dev of the theme told me I can't delete them. /portfolio-items/ /faq-items/ The dev said he can't find a way to delete it because these pages just list faqs/portfolio posts. I don't have any of these posts so basically what I have are two sites with just the title "Portfolio items" and "FAQ Items". Furthermore the dev said these sites are auto-generated so he can't find a way to remove them. I mean I don't believe that it's impossible, but if it is how should I handle them? They are indexed by search engines, should I remove them from the index and block them from robots.txt? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | grobro0 -
What if my developers tell me they can only handle a certain amount of 301 redirects?
We recently launched a new site and I felt the need to redirect all of our old site URLs to the new site URLs. Our developers told me they would only be able to do about 1000 before it starts to bog down the site. Has anyone else came across this before? On top of that, with our new site structure, whenever our content team changes a title (which is more often than i had hoped), the URL changes. This means I'm finding i have many other redirects I need to put in place, but cant at the moment. Advice please??
Technical SEO | | CHECOM0 -
Can I disallow my subdomain for penguin recover?
Hi, I have a site like BannerBuzz.com, before last penguin my site's all keywords were in good position in google, but after penguin hit on my website, my all keywords are going down and down day by day, i have done some changes in my website for improvement, but in 1 change i have some confusion. i have one sub domain (http://reviews.bannerbuzz.com/), which display my websites all keywords user reviews, in which every category's 15 reviews are display in my website http://www.bannerbuzz.com so are those user reviews consider as duplicate content between sub domain and main website. can i disallow sub domain from all search engine? currently sub domain is open for all search engine, is that helpful to block it? Thanks
Technical SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
Can Page Content & Description Have Same Content?
I'm studying my crawl report and there are several warnings regarding missing meta descriptions. My website is built in WordPress and part of the site is a blog. Several of these missing description warnings are regarding blog posts and I was wondering if I am able to copy the first few lines of content of each of the posts to put in the meta description, or would that be considered duplicate content? Also, there are a few warnings that relate to blog index pages, e.g. http://www.iainmoran.com/2013/02/ - I don't know if I can even add a description of these as I think they are dynamically created? While on the subject of duplicate content, if I had a sidebar with information on several of the pages (same info) while the content would be coming from a WP Widget, would this still be considered duplicate content and would Google penalise me for it? Would really appreciate some thoughts on this,please. Thanks, Iain.
Technical SEO | | iainmoran0 -
Can backlinks from advertising cause a traffic drop?
Hi, I recently noticed that our organic traffic has started to drop and maybe coincidently our adwords traffic has increased. I was asked to investigate the drop. I know that from the google update that unnatural backlinks would be penalized so I thought it might be the backlinks from a site that we advertise on because of the sheer number we have required from them in the last month. Would you think that would be the cause? if not, what could it be? and if it is, how do I go about correcting it as fast as possible? Any Help with this would be greatly appreciated. Many Thanks, Colin
Technical SEO | | digital.moretogether.com0 -
What is best suggested component for joomla seo
my site is running on joomla cms. Iam using jreviews, jomsocial. I want to know what is best componenet for seo and better results
Technical SEO | | jayadeep0 -
Give your top 3 of best optimized websites
Hey gents & ladies, Give your top 3 of websites that in your eyes are optimized in a good way? Tell me why you think the website is that good and notice the keywords.
Technical SEO | | PlusPort0 -
Anchor Text the best way to use it
Hi i am wanting to gain links to my site and make the links relevant and have seen many sites that do not have the keyword on their site and have been told as well as having the keywords in the image that they will also have anchor text from other sites. Can anyone please tell me the important of anchor text and how i should use it. Is it wise to build anchort text links within your own site and what other sites should you be looking for. I have used a few article sites to gain anchor text links but most of these are no follow which does not help me. any advice would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860