Difficulty with Indexing Pages - Desperate for Help!
-
I have a website with product pages that use the same URL, but load different data based on what's passed to them with GET. I am using a Wordpress website, but all of the page information is retrieved from a database using PHP and displayed with PHP.
Somehow these pages are not being indexed by Google.
I have done the following:
1. Created a site map pointing to each page.
2. Defined URL parameters in Search Console for these type of pages.
3. Created a product schema using schema.org, and tested it without errors.
I have requested re-indexing repeatedly and these pages and images on the pages are still not being indexed! Does anybody have any suggestions?
-
Hey, David Butler . . . you are probably the only person who has looked at this issue, so I want to thank you again for your input.
I wanted to follow up about this. Since I am using Wordpress for the website, I used Wordpress's rewrite_rule function.
After confirming that it was working correctly, I deleted the old sitemaps and created new ones, then submitted them to Google.
Shortly after this, the pages were successfully indexed.
So from this experience I get the impression that using URL parameters doesn't necessary work -- I certainly am not going to use them in the future.
I am going to mark this issue as resolved.
-
Hi jacleaves,
I'm interested to see how this works out for you!
Please post an update after you've finished your work
Cheers,
David
-
Hey, David Butler,
I am at a loss when it comes to canonical tags -- I am trying to understand how to use them. However, in this case I thought it was set up correctly.
To better explain the website . . . all of the product pages use the same URL, which is http://amishdirectplaysets.com/playset-details/.
I programmed the pages to retrieve info from a database and display specific product information based on the parameters passed to them (?mfgID=A-1&catID=4). I cannot change the URL's to be anything different, as they are not actually different pages.
What I had read is that the canonical url should not include the URL parameters, so that is why they were just going to the same page. I created URL parameters in Google Search Console because I thought that would take care of this issue. However it is not.
So . . . what I have done (after reading your post) is gone ahead and changed the canonical URL to include the URL parameters.
Is that how I'm supposed to handle it in this type of a situation?
I am updating this response . . . after further investigation I can take care of changing the URL to something more search-engine friendly by using mod rewrite. I'll test it out.
-
Hi jacleaves,
The problem here is with your canonical tags (more info on canonical tags here).
This page: http://amishdirectplaysets.com/playset-details/?mfgID=A-1&catID=4
Has a canonical tag pointing to: http://amishdirectplaysets.com/playset-details/
The same thing is happening on all of your product pages.
I would change all of your product pages to use "SEO-friendly" URLs and have a self-referring canonical tag.
Eg. your example page: http://amishdirectplaysets.com/playset-details/?mfgID=A-1&catID=4
Would become: http://amishdirectplaysets.com/playset-details/a-1-standard-climber-vinyl-playset
And the canonical tag would point to: http://amishdirectplaysets.com/playset-details/a-1-standard-climber-vinyl-playsetCheers,
David
-
Hi Matthew,
Thanks for your quick response!
Here's one page:
http://amishdirectplaysets.com/playset-details/?mfgID=A-1&catID=4
My issue is none of the individual product pages are being indexed.
In response to your starting suggestions:
1. I am not blocking any resources.
2. I am not using noindex.
3. Page is being rendered successfully.
One more thing . . . I mis-spoke about how the content is generated. The content on this page is generated by PHP and NOT Javascript. So that is a non-issue. (I corrected this in my initial question.)
I appreciate your feedback. Please let me know if you are able to determine what else I could be missing!
-
Hi jacleaves!
Without your website URL it will be difficult to diagnose the problem as there are a few potential technical issues here. My main worries would be whether you're blocking indexation somehow and the fact you're displaying your content using JavaScript.
I'd start here:
- Check you're not blocking crawlers in your robots.txt file
- Check you're not using the noindex tag
I'd also try using fetch and render in Google Search Console (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6066468?hl=en) for your site pages to see how Google sees them. If googlebot isn't seeing your content, that's a strong hint there's a JavaScript crawling problem.
Also, strap yourself in and read this - https://www.elephate.com/blog/ultimate-guide-javascript-seo/ - it's THE guide for JavaScript SEO.
Let us know how you get on and we'll go from there!
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
-
Insane traffic loss and indexed pages after June Core Update, what can i do to bring it back?
Hello Everybody! After June Core Update was released, we saw an insane drop on traffic/revenue and indexed pages on GSC (Image attached below) The biggest problem here was: Our pages that were out of the index were shown as "Blocked by robots.txt", and when we run the "fetch as Google" tool, it says "Crawl Anomaly". Even though, our robots.txt it's completely clean (Without any disallow's or noindex rules), so I strongly believe that the reason that this pattern of error is showing, is because of the June Core Update. I've come up with some solutions, but none of them seems to work: 1- Add hreflang on the domain: We have other sites in other countries, and ours seems like it's the only one without this tag. The June update was primarily made to minimize two SERP results per domain (or more if google thinks it's relevant). Maybe other sites have "taken our spot" on the SERPS, our domain is considerably newer in comparison to the other countries. 2- Mannualy index all the important pages that were lost The idea was to renew the content on the page (title, meta description, paragraphs and so on) and use the manual GSC index tool. But none of that seems to work as well, all it says is "Crawl Anomaly". 3- Create a new domain If nothing works, this should. We would be looking for a new domain name and treat it as a whole new site. (But frankly, it should be some other way out, this is for an EXTREME case and if nobody could help us. ) I'm open for ideas, and as the days have gone by, our organic revenue and traffic doesn't seem like it's coming up again. I'm Desperate for a solution Any Ideas gCi46YE
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | muriloacct0 -
Can anyone help me diagnose an indexing/sitemap issue on a large e-commerce site?
Hey guys. Wondering if someone can help diagnose a problem for me. Here's our site: https://www.flagandbanner.com/ We have a fairly large e-commerce site--roughly 23,000 urls according to crawls using both Moz and Screaming Frog. I have created an XML sitemap (using SF) and uploading to Webmaster Tools. WMT is only showing about 2,500 urls indexed. Further, WMT is showing that Google is indexing only about 1/2 (approx. 11,000) of the urls. Finally (to add even more confusion), when doing a site search on Google (site:) it's only showing about 5,400 urls found. The numbers are all over the place! Here's the robots.txt file: User-agent: *
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webrocket
Allow: /
Disallow: /aspnet_client/
Disallow: /httperrors/
Disallow: /HTTPErrors/
Disallow: /temp/
Disallow: /test/ Disallow: /i_i_email_friend_request
Disallow: /i_i_narrow_your_search
Disallow: /shopping_cart
Disallow: /add_product_to_favorites
Disallow: /email_friend_request
Disallow: /searchformaction
Disallow: /search_keyword
Disallow: /page=
Disallow: /hid=
Disallow: /fab/* Sitemap: https://www.flagandbanner.com/images/sitemap.xml Anyone have any thoughts as to what our problems are?? Mike0 -
Why does Google rank a product page rather than a category page?
Hi, everybody In the Moz ranking tool for one of our client's (the client sells sport equipment) account, there is a trend where more and more of their landing pages are product pages instead of category pages. The optimal landing page for the term "sleeping bag" is of course the sleeping bag category page, but Google is sending them to a product page for a specific sleeping bag.. What could be the critical factors that makes the product page more relevant than the category page as the landing page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Inevo0 -
Any idea why this page isn't indexing?
Hi Mozzers, Question for all of you. Any idea why this page isn't indexing in Google? It's indexing in Bing, but we don't see it in Google's results. It doesn't seem like we have any noindex tags or anyway issues with the robots files either. Any ideas? http://ohva.k12.com/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | petertong230 -
How to avoid content canibalizm? How do I control which page is the landing page?
Hi All, To clarify my question I will give an example. Let's assume that I have a laptop e-commerce site and that one of my main categories is Samsung Laptops. The category page shows lots of laptops and a small section of text. On the other hand, in my article section I have a HUGE article about Samsung Laptops. If we consider the two word phrases each page is targeting then the answer is the same - Samsung Laptops. On the article i point to the category page using anchor such as "buy samsung laptops" or "samsung laptops" and on the category page (my wishful landing page) I point to the article with "learn about samsung laptops" or "samsung laptops pros and cons". Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
Getting individual website pages to rank for their targeted terms instead of just the home page
Hi Everyone, There is a pattern which I have noticed when trying to get individual pages to rank for the allocated targeted terms when I execute an SEO campaign and would been keen on anyones thoughts on how they have effectively addressed this. Let me try and explain this by going through an example: Let's say I am a business coach and already have a website where it includes several of my different coaching services. Now for this SEO campaign, I'm looking to improve exposure for the clients "business coaching" services. I have a quick look at analytics and rankings and notice that the website already ranks fairly well for that term but from the home page and not the service page. I go through the usual process of optimising the site (on-page - content, meta data, internal linking) as well as a linkbuilding campaign throughout the next couple of month's, however this results in either just the home page improving or the business page does improve, but the homepage's existing ranking has suffered, therefore not benefiting the site overall. My question: If a term already ranks or receives a decent amount of traffic from the home page and not from the page that its supposed to, why do you think its the case and what would you be your approach to try shift the traffic to the individual page, without impacting the site too much?. Note: To add the home page keyword target term would have been updated? Thanks, Vahe
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vahe.Arabian0 -
Review of on page SEO - Please help
Hi I am new to SEOmoz but can see a lot of great information going back and forth. I am looking for a little help with the SEO on our site and looking for suggestions on what to do to improve it. We have some pages where we aggregate content from our database such as this: http://www.touristlink.com/india/nagpur/cat/temples.html It would seem that "Temples in Nagpur" is not that competitive of a term but we dont show up until page 4. Any on page suggestions on what we could do to improve? Or any mistakes we are making. All the content on the site is fairly new as in 6 months even though the site has been established and online for a number of years. We have not done any specific linking building for the term "Temples in Nagpur" Any suggestions on the overall structure of the site would also be great. Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidUrmann0 -
Help! Optimizing dynamic internal search results pages...
Hi guys, Now I have always been against this, and opted to noindex internal search results pages to stop the waste of link juice, dupe content, and crawl loops... however, I'm in a discussion with somebody who feels there may be a solution, and that the pages could actually be optimized to rank (for different keywords to the landing pages of course). Anybody come across such a thing before? My only solution would be still to noindex and then build static pages with the most popular search results in but that won't suffice in this case. Any recommendations would be much appreciated 🙂 Thanks, Steve 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SteveOllington0