Should "View All Products" be the canonical page?
-
We currently have "view 12" as the default setting when someone arrives to www.mysite.com/subcategory-page.aspx. We have been advised to change the default to "view all products" and make that the canonical page to ensure all of our products get indexed. My concern is that doing this will increase the page load time and possibly hurt rankings. Does it make sense to change all our our subcategory pages to show all the products when someone visits the page? Most sites seem to have a smaller number of products as the default.
-
Google just announced some tags to help support pagination better. They say if you have a view all option that doesn't take too long to load, searchers generally prefer that, so you can rel=canonical to that page. However, if you don't have a view all page, then you can put these nifty rel="next" and rel="prev" tags in to let Google know your page has pagination, and where the next and previous pages are.
It sounds like you don't want to go the view all route, so you should read the second post below and you can implement the rel="next" and rel="prev" tags.
(from the view all post below) However, if you strongly desire your view-all page not to appear in search results: 1) make sure the component pages in the series don’t include rel=”canonical” to the view-all page, and 2) mark the view-all page as “noindex” using any of the standard methods.
View all: http://googlewebmastercentral.blo...
next/prev: http://googlewebmastercentral.blo...
-
I wouldn't show all products as a default page for users, as that doesn't sound like a good user experience.
Here are a few other Q&A entries from people with similar questions. They endorse some different solutions to the problem:
-
Thanks Anthony and John.
Currently, www.mysite.com/subcategory-page.aspx shows 12 products. When I select "view 24" it adds the following to the end of the URL: "?P=1&S=G&Sh=24&Sr=1"
We have added the rel="canonical" tag to the all of the pages to direct all of the link juice to the default page and to avoid duplicate content issues and have added the parameters to Google WMT. Wouldn't changing our default page to show all the products for indexing purposes be faster than trying to developing links to all of the "hidden" product pages?
-
It sounds like the changes are in the URL parameters and their values. Now in Google Webmaster Tools, if you go to the Site configuration > URL parameters page, you can tell Google how different parameters affect the page.
-
In my experience, use of rel="canonical" is more related to consolidating external link juice. If you're concerned with getting all of your products indexed, focus on creating a good XML sitemap and verifying it in Google Webmaster Tools, and finding ways to create both internal and external links to your deep URLs. I would make the canonical page the one that you want to send visitors to.
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
-
Pillar pages and blog pages
Hello, I was watching this video about pillar pages https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db3TpDZf_to and tried to apply it to my self but find it impossible to do (but maybe I am looking at it the wrong way). Let's say I want to rank on "Normandy bike tou"r. I created a pillar page about "Normandy bike tour" what would be the topics of the subpages boosting that pillar page. I know that it should be questions people have but in the tourism industry they don't have any, they just want us to make them dream !! I though about doing more general blog pages about things such as : Places to rent a bike in Normandy or in XYZ city ? ( related to biking) Or the landing sites in Normandy ? (not related to biking) Is it the way to do it, what do you recommend ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Is there an advantage to using rel=canonical rather than noindex on pages on my mobile site (m.company.com)?
Is there an advantage to using link rel=alternate (as recommended by Google) rather than noindex on pages on my mobile site (m.company.com)? The content on the mobile pages is very similar to the content on the desktop site. I see Google recommends canonical and alternate tags, but what are the benefits of using those rather than noindex?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jennifer.new0 -
"near me" campaign
I'm looking at running a campaign to get a site ranking for terms that include "near me" so for instance, "personal trainers near me", "yoga lessons near me" I'm wondering if this should be a local campaign because of the the "near me" in the term and Google basing results on IP addresses of the searcher (if that's possible possible instead of town names) or will it come down to words on the page including "near me" Any help or examples would be hugely appreciated, thanks community!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marketing_Today0 -
SEO: Can you rank Amazon product Pages ?
Hi Guys Just a general question about doing SEO for our product pages... We have a range of products on Amazon and wondered if it is worth build some good links to our product pages to get them ranked higher in Google ?? Is it easier to rank Amazon product pages ?? Thanks Guys G Gareth
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GAZ090 -
Sort term product pages and fast indexing - XML sitemaps be updated daily, weekly, etc?
Hi everyone, I am currently working on a website that the XML sitemap is set to update weekly. Our client has requested that this be changed to daily. The real issue is that the website creates short term product pages (10-20 days) and then the product page URL's go 404. So the real problem is quick indexing not daily vs weekly sitemap. I suspect that daily vs weekly sitemaps may help solve the indexing time but does not completely solve the problem. So my question for you is how can I improve indexing time on this project? The real problem is how to get the product pages indexed and ranking before the 404 page shows u?. . Here are some of my initial thoughts and background on the project. Product pages are only available for 10 to 20 days (Auction site).Once the auction on the product ends the URL goes 404. If the pages only exist for 10 to 20 days (404 shows up when the auction is over), this sucks for SEO for several reasons (BTW I was called onto the project as the SEO specialist after the project and site were completed). Reason 1 - It is highly unlikely that the product pages will rank (positions 1 -5) since the site has a very low Domain Authority) and by the time Google indexes the link the auction is over therefore the user sees a 404. Possible solution 1 - all products have authorship from a "trustworthy" author therefore the indexing time improves. Possible solution 2 - Incorporate G+ posts for each product to improve indexing time. There is still a ranking issue here since the site has a low DA. The product might appear but at the bottom of page 2 or 1..etc. Any other ideas? From what I understand, even though sitemaps are fed to Google on a weekly or daily basis this does not mean that Google indexes them right away (please confirm). Best case scenario - Google indexes the links every day (totally unrealistic in my opinion), URL shows up on page 1 or 2 of Google and slowly start to move up. By the time the product ranks in the first 5 positions the auction is over and therefore the user sees a 404. I do think that a sitemap updated daily is better for this project than weekly but I would like to hear the communities opinion. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
Is it a bad idea to use our meta description as a short description of a product on that product page?
Does this count as duplicating content even though the meta description has no effect on search results?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | USAMM0 -
Should we NOINDEX NOFOLLOW canonical pages?
Hi, I was window shopping at Gemvara and noticed something interesting... They rank very high for long-tail phrases such as "rose gold engagement rings" and in their pagination pages for that category not only they filled canonical to the main category page (which is logic) but also they "NOINDEX NOFOLLOW" the pages... Is that recommended? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
Volusion store product pages will not index
Hello, I have moved over to Volusion and was wondering if you guys know of any SEO practices that are Volusion specific. i have been working on this site now for 2 months and my impressions and rankings have dropped substantially My 301 redirects where in place before I flipped over and my keywords / titles/ tags etc.. are in place. However i am still not making any progress in the engines. I have noticed that my products are not being indexed per Webmaster tools. I have heard that volusion has something set up to where you must purchase their SEO package in order to rank. I am really at my wits end and currently I thinking about taking a loss and reverting back to my old Shoppe Pro site. Any help would be very appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kerry0217
.0