Help with facet URLs in Magento
-
Hi Guys,
Wondering if I can get some technical help here...
We have our site britishbraces.co.uk , built in Magento. As per eCommerce sites, we have paginated pages throughout.
These have rel=next/prev implemented but not correctly ( as it is not in is it in ) - this fix is in process.
Our canonicals are currently incorrect as far as I believe, as even when content is filtered, the canonical takes you back to the first page URL. For example,
http://www.britishbraces.co.uk/braces/x-style.html?ajaxcatalog=true&brand=380&max=51.19&min=31.19
Canonical to...
http://www.britishbraces.co.uk/braces/x-style.html
Which I understand to be incorrect.
As I want the coloured filtered pages to be indexed ( due to search volume for colour related queries ), but I don't want the price filtered pages to be indexed - I am unsure how to implement the solution?
As I understand, because rel=next/prev implemented ( with no View All page ), the rel=canonical is not necessary as Google understands page 1 is the first page in the series.
Therefore, once a user has filtered by colour, there should then be a canonical pointing to the coloured filter URL? ( e.g. /product/black )
But when a user filters by price, there should be noindex on those URLs ? Or can this be blocked in robots.txt prior?
My head is a little confused here and I know we have an issue because our amount of indexed pages is increasing day by day but to no solution of the facet urls.
Can anybody help - apologies in advance if I have confused the matter.
Thanks
-
Hi Lewis,
Firstly thank you for taking your time to respond in depth to my question.
Since reading your response, I have done the following...
Identified the parameters that should NOT be indexed, these are; 'brand=', 'min=' and 'max='
The colour filter 'colour=' is to be kept indexed. I have reviewed the website and found that users cannot currently select to filter more than on colour, which eliminates Google from indexing multiple colour filters in one URL.
However, users can still filter by colour and brand, hence why I have requested ours devs to meta noindex any URL that contains the 'brand=' parameter as well as any URLs that have the 'min/max=' parameters as these are price filters.
I have also requested rel=next/prev to be implemented correctly.
The above should drastically reduce our indexed content.
As well as this, I have added the following parameters into Search Consoles' URL Parameter tool as 'No Crawl', 'brand, min, max' - although I understand this is not a guaranteed fix, it was my first option with no immediate dev time over the weekend.
Now the only URLs in need of a canonical is the colour filtered URLs as 'brand, min max' are all noindex. I have asked dev to ensure the canonical points back to page 1 for now, however I am looking into a view-all page option so the canonical would point to that.
A good learning curve all of this!
-
There is a big difference between robots.txt and no index
"Therefore, once a user has filtered by colour, there should then be a canonical pointing to the coloured filter URL? ( e.g. /product/black )
But when a user filters by price, there should be noindex on those URLs Or can this be blocked in robots.txt prior?"
See http://i.imgur.com/114BHcR.png
You need to use a no index tag not robots.txt ideally with a secular canonical pointing to the product.
Please see references one and two below. There are larger versions of the photos below as well
You need to run your site through deep crawl and or screaming frog SEO spider If you would be kind enough to give me the URL privately or publicly I will run a deep crawl and SEO spider
** This topic is difficult to explain without using the ability to show videos and images inside the box while describing this. That's why I recommend you view this YouTube video and slide share.**
Deep crawl is fantastic at solving these issues it has done this for other magenta clients of mine, and I strongly recommend utilizing what you've learned from that webinar and the other references below.
please see one and two below
- https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/webinars/masterclass-webinar-faceted-navigation-for-seo/
- https://www.stonetemple.com/seo-tags-virtual-keynote-with-gary-illyes-and-eric-enge/
-
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/02/faceted-navigation-best-and-5-of-worst.html
-
https://moz.com/blog/building-faceted-navigation-that-doesnt-suck
-
http://searchengineland.com/google-offers-advice-faceted-navigation-infinite-scroll-web-pages-184232
larger versions of the images
I agree with Lewis's recommendation for an extension and have added a couple more.
- http://www.mageworx.com/magento-2-seo-extension.html
- https://ecommerce.aheadworks.com/magento-extensions/ultimate-seo-suite.html
- https://ecommerce.aheadworks.com/magento-2-extensions/layered-navigation
I Hope this helps,
Thomas
78tExl8.png nMrYeUWlslY xJeFTbY.jpg wOHxaEE.jpg QprPUyk.jpg 114BHcR.png
-
Hi!
We do a lot of consultancy for Magento projects and this is a question that comes up quite regularly as it can't really be handled perfectly straight out of the box with Magento.
Every implementation is a little bit different, but I'll put together some recommendations below based on the information available at the moment.
For your faceted navigation, you ideally don't want to index any of these pages, unless you believe that you'll rank in your own right for specific filters (e.g. Colour, like you pointed out in your last message).
That then comes with some additional complications. In Magento, if you have 3 colours available in the faceted nav, you'll have all the different variations indexed in each combination.
For example:
Blue
Black
RedBlue + Black
Blue + Red
Black + Red
Black + Blue
Red + Blue
Red + BlackMagento as standard doesn't always keep the filters in the same order, so you can end up with literally thousands of pages ending up in the index for a relatively small number of attributes being shown on your pages.
There are a few recommendations here:
- Go and look at the MageWorx Ultimate SEO Suite Plugin - http://www.mageworx.com/seo-suite-ultimate-magento-extension.html - For $249, it solves a lot of issues Magneto has straight out of the box and gives you ultimate control over your meta titles.
What you want to do is set all of your facets to 'NOINDEX,FOLLOW' where possible. This will reduce the number of URLs in the index gradually. An example of this would be adding ?min=* and mode=* etc (grid/list variants).
- For your canonicals, you're probably best setting the canonical to the current filtered page (for example, if you're on a category page with colour = blue selected in your faceted nav, you'd have this URL as your canonical). Some sites we work on have it setup so the canonical points to the category URL (like you currently have).
Finally, you probably want to build an extension to allow you to inject content into the filtered content pages. If you're using an extension like ManaDev for your facet navigation, this can be achieved fairly easily and allows you to add a block of text to each filter applied on a page.
You should also look to request each of the incorrectly indexed URLs is removed from the index (although this does take a long time if you have a lot!).
We wrote a really long guide around launching a Magento website last month which may be of interest - https://www.pinpointdesigns.co.uk/the-definitive-guide-to-launching-a-magento-website/. We've also done a guide on Common Magento SEO Issues here - https://www.pinpointdesigns.co.uk/common-magento-seo-issues/ and I previously wrote a guide on setting Magento up for Search Engines on Moz - https://moz.com/ugc/setting-up-magento-for-the-search-engines (Although this is likely to be a little outdated now)
I hope this helps!
Lewis
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
-
URL structure with dash or slash
Hi, everyone Basically I am editing my website page's URL for SEO Optimisation and I am not sure which URL structure is best for SEO. The main different is the sign ( dash or slash ) before the product-code. HERE ARE TWO EXAMPLE www.example.com/long-tail-keyword-product-code www.example.com/long-tail-keyword/product-code To get more idea of my page, here is one of the product from my website : http://www.okeus.co.uk/pro_view-3.html My website is selling my own product, as a result the only keyword can be found was the name of the product and I separated different design by different code. Any experts who are willing help would be very much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chrisyu781 -
Mixing static.htm urls and dynamic urls on a Windows IIS Server?
Hi all, We've had a website originally built using static html with .htm extensions ranking well in Google hence we want to keep those pages/urls. We are on a dedicated sever (Windows IIS). However our developer has custom made a new DYNAMIC section for the site which shows new added products dynamically and allows them to be booked online via shopping cart. We are having problems displaying them both on the same domain even if we put the dynamic section withing its own subfolder and keep the static htms in the root. Is it possible to have both function on IIS (even if they may have to function a little separately)? Does anyone have previous experience of this kind of issue or a way of making both work? What setup do we need to do on the dedicated server.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | emerald0 -
Please help with some content ideas
I was reading this post http://www.clambr.com/link-building-tools/ about how he had basically outreached to experts in the field and each one had shared this post with their followers. I am wondering how this could translate to our small business marketing and design blog I am really struggling for content ideas that will work in regards to popularity and link building.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Need Perfect URLs
I'm redesigning a site's structure from the ground up, and am having issues with the URLs. I'd love to have them be perfect, but kept finding conflicting advice online. 1. For my services blog, is it best to have it set up like www.example.com/services/keyword or
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Stryde
www.example.com/keyword There seems to be conflicting advice as to keep it short and keep the keyword as far to the left as possible, but also that including the word services would help with long tail phrases and site organization. 2. For my blog section, is it best to have it set up like
www.example.com/blog/keyword or
www.example.com/keyword or
www.example.com/blog-post-title-with**-keyword**-in-it It's similar to the first question, but also adds the question of including the entire post title in the URL or just the keyword. Your help would be greatly appreciated!1 -
Redirect help
I work for a company that has a domain that is something like www.neat-stuff.com but most people just use www.neatstuff.com without the dash. The redirect for the homepage works fine. We recently launched a new site and if you use www.neat-stuff.com/category it redirects from the old site to the new site just fine. However if you use www.neatstuff.com/category it does not properly redirect to www.neat-stuff.com/category. How do I fix that?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Could this URL issue be affecting our rankings?
Hi everyone, I have been building links to a site for a while now and we're struggling to get page 1 results for their desired keywords. We're wondering if a web development / URL structure issue could be to blame in what's holding it back. The way the site's been built means that there's a 'false' 1st-level in the URL structure. We're building deeplinks to the following page: www.example.com/blue-widgets/blue-widget-overview However, if you chop off the 2nd-level, you're not given a category page, it's a 404: www.example.com/blue-widgets/ - [Brings up a 404] I'm assuming the web developer built the site and URL structure this way just for the purposes of getting additional keywords in the URL. What's worse is that there is very little consistency across other products/services. Other pages/URLs include: www.example.com/green-widgets/widgets-in-green www.example.com/red-widgets/red-widget-intro-page www.example.com/yellow-widgets/yellow-widgets I'm wondering if Google is aware of these 'false' pages* and if so, if we should advise the client to change the URLs and therefore the URL structure of the website. This is bearing in mind that these pages haven't been linked to (because they don't exist) and therefore aren't being indexed by Google. I'm just wondering if Google can determine good/bad URL etiquette based on other parts of the URL, i.e. the fact that that middle bit doesn't exist. As a matter of fact, my colleague Steve asked this question on a blog post that Dr. Pete had written. Here's a link to Steve's comment - there are 2 replies below, one of which argues that this has no implication whatsoever. However, 5 months on, it's still an issue for us so it has me wondering... Many thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gmorgan0 -
Spammy? Long URLs
Hi All: Is it true that URLs such as this following one are viewed as "spammy" (besides being too long) and that such URLs will negatively affect ranks for keywords and page ranks: http://www.repairsuniverse.com/ipod-parts-ipod-touch-replacement-repair-parts-ipod-touch-1st-gen-replacement-repair-parts.html My thinking is that the page will perform better once it is 301 redirected to a shorter page name, such as: http://www.repairsuniverse.com/ipod-touch-1G-replacement-parts.html It also appears that these long URLs are also more likely to break, creating unnecessary 404s. <colgroup><col width="301"></colgroup> Thanks for your insight on this issue!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | holdtheonion0 -
URL Parking and Frame Forwarding..
I have a few URLs... Is there any benefit for me to frame forward these empty domains?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IoanSaid0