Dynamic URL Parameters + Woocommerce create 404 errors
-
Hi Guys,
Our latest Moz crawl shows a lot of 404-errors for pages that create dynamical links for users? (I guess it are dynamic links, not sure).Situation: On a page which shows products from brand X users can use the pagination icons on the bottom, or click on: View: / 24/48/All.
When a user clicks 48 the end of the link will be /?show_products=48
I think there were some pages that could show 48 products but do not exist anymore (because products are sold out for example), and that's why they show 404's and Moz reports them.How do I deal with these 404-errors? I can't set a 301-redirect because it depends on how many products are shown (it changes every time).
Should I just ignore these kind of 404-errors? Or what is the best way to handle this situation? -
Hi Dirk,
Thanks for letting me know I will post a new one to see if someone can help me out!Best,
Joost -
Joost
You might want to open a new question (on how to filter) - this question is too deep down the list & marked as answered so I fear nobody is going to see your additional question.
rgds,
Dirk
-
Hi Dirk,
I tried to find some more info last night regarding this issue (the practical part, how to implement it).
But haven't found a solution yet. Thanks for your help!! Really appreciate it.If someone knows please let me know!
Joost -
Hi Joost,
Unfortunately we don't use Wordpress in our company - I know the basics of the Yoast plugin but I am not really an expert in how to configure it. Maybe somebody else on Moz can help you on how to configure it. My guess would be to fill in the full url - you could always try & see if this works.
There are quite a lot of users on the forum who use Yoast - so I guess they should be able to help you with the configuration.
rgds,
Dirk
-
Or can I just use the canonical input field from the category (when you hit edit under the category)?
I assume that is not specfic enough and means a canonical for the "whole" category, right? -
Probably the easiest way to deal with this is to chose one of these pages as the main page & use canonicals on the other versions to the main one.
So - suppose you would chose _/?show_products=all _as the main page - than page /?show_products=48 would have /?show_products=all as canonical.
As you also use pagination - the option of the canonical offers the advantage that you can put the /?show_products_all as canonical url on all the pages (check also this page: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663744?hl=en)Another option would be to put a nofollow on the other display options. So by default people would arrive on /?show_products=24 - the links on show 48 - all would be of type "nofollow'
You might want to check this article: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.be/2014/02/faceted-navigation-best-and-5-of-worst.html - the scope of the article is a bit larger than the question you as here but some of the points are applicable.
Hope this helps;
Dirk
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
-
Hreflang Errors 404 vs "Page Not Found"
For a websites that differ between catalogs (PDPs) what hreflang error causes the least harm? Obviously the best solution is to only have hreflang for shared products, but this takes more work to implement. So when no identical product exists... 1. Hreflang points to 404 or 410 error. 2. Hreflang points to 200 status "Page Not Found" page. This obviously has the additional issue of needing to point back to 100+ urls. I want to avoid having Google decide to ignore all hreflang due to errors as many correct urls will exist. Any thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | rigelcable0 -
Question about creating content pages for keywords
Good morning, We are trying to rank our India based company which provides the following services
On-Page Optimization | | harshal.khatavkar
Engineering Design Services
Architectural Design Services
MEP Design Services Our target audiences are in the US and UK. Offcource, we are targetting above services keywords on most of our main pages and created dedicated services pages too. But lately, we found out that we are ranking well for keywords like Outsourcing Engineering Design Services, Outsourcing Architectural Design Services, etc... which are actually very very good keywords in terms of closing the leads/inquiries as people are actually looking out for outsourcing but the search count for those keywords is low. (though we closed 2 inquiries from those keywords). These pages we created in past just to increase the content of the website. I really want to give it a try to target those keywords by creating more pages, blog posts, backlinks, etc... My question is if we create more and more pages around those keywords then will it affect the rankings of the pages which are already ranking for those keywords or will the new pages compete against those pages or the new pages will help to boost current pages? We can write good content and blog posts on the outsourcing topic but not sure if we should create new pages or increase the length of the existing pages. Can you guys please help with some directions on this as I really don't want to take the wrong route. Look forward! Regards0 -
SEO, 301s & backslashes at end of URL
Wordpess started adding "/" (slashes) at the end of my urls and I've left them up for some time. Will removing them hurt search rankings or do I need to do a 301 redirect? For example - www.site.com/page1/ changed to www.site.com/page1 Are there any other ramifications I may not be thinking about besides just search rankings.
On-Page Optimization | | MSpencer1 -
Content with changing URL and duplicate content
Hi everyone, I have a question regarding content (user reviews), that are changing URL all the time. We get a lot of reviews from users that have been dining at our partner restaurants, which get posted on our site under (new) “reviews”. My worry however is that the URL for these reviews is changing all the time. The reason for this is that they start on page 1, and then get pushed down to page 2, and so on when new reviews come in. http://www.r2n.dk/restaurant-anmeldelser I’m guessing that this could cause for serious indexing problems? I can see in google that some reviews are indexed multiple times with different URLs, and some are not indexed at all. We further more have the specific reviews under each restaurant profile. I’m not sure if this could be considered duplicate content? Maybe we should tell google not to index the “new reviews section” by using robots.txt. We don’t get much traffic on these URLs anyways, and all reviews are still under each restaurant-profile. Or maybe the canonical tag can be used? I look forward to your input. Cheers, Christian
On-Page Optimization | | Christian_T2 -
301 redirects, efficiency and dynamic URLs
Hi, I have 2 301 redirect questions. Question 1: I have am working with a designer on the redesign of a website that currently has over 5,000 indexed pages. The majority of these are dynamic URLs from the Stone Locator database. (see below) http://www.domain.com/storelocator.php?zipcode=91784&page=12 How can I efficiently deal with these pages from an SEO perspective when developing the new site? Is there a way to do a bulk 301 redirect to a store locator page, for instance? Question 2: If a rel=canonical tag has been established on a page (www....), is it necessary to add 301 redirects to all of the other versions on: the home page (domain.com , domain.com/index.html, domain.com/index.html, etc.) all other pages with those same extensions ? Thank you for your help! Erin
On-Page Optimization | | HiddenPeak0 -
Changing url in connection with meta title inconsistency
We run a site, which is a directory type one, where visitors can look for local businesses per city as well (at some point similar to the 'Yelp concept'). Now, we use www.example.com as the homepage, and the www.example.com/city1, where city1 is the capital of our country, is 301 redirected to the homepage, so this is your default setting. When you choose e.g city2, your url changes to www.example.com/city2, and the city value is stored in a cookie. Then, when you leave the session, and return to the site later on, you will see the homepage url, but with your previous choice of city (in case you let cookies be stored). My concern is, that the meta title always contains the chosen city name, so when you return to the website, and you previously used city2, you will now see the homepage url (which normally belongs to city1), but with the meta title of city2 or with any other previously chosen city. Does this mean a problem, and should I always use the correct url, which would be www.example.com/cityX, or this could not cause a problem for me? If it does, would you mind sharing me the exact problems as well? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | Dilbak0 -
Canonical URL problem
On page analysis wanted me to add a canonical url tag. However I added then re ran the on page analysis and it came up with an error. What is the proper way to add a canonical url tag in the head of an index page? ie. add a canonical tag to www.hompeage.com/index.html would it be ? Or should I ignore this for a home page? Because I add it then run the analysis again and get this? Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical Moderate fix <dl> <dt>Canonical URL</dt> <dd>"http://www.ensoplastics.com/index.html"</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>If the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. Make sure you're targeting the right page (if this isn't it, you can reset the target above) and then change the canonical tag to reference that URL.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply.</dd> <dd>So do I add it or not? If I don't I get a lower page rating if I take it off I get a higher page rating with room for improvement. </dd> </dl>
On-Page Optimization | | ENSO0 -
Rename index.php or keyword in URL?
It is important for me to get good search results for keyword + city name For instance: tulips amsterdam What would be better: renaming index.php or adding the cityname to the URL? www.example.com/amsterdam/tulips OR www.example.com/pages/tulips-amsterdam
On-Page Optimization | | svdg0