So to clarify when you say "menu" are you talking about faceted navigation or are you talking about actual page navigation (near header/footer)? If it's faceted, then you should canonical back to the main page so you're not competing with other pages on your site (/mens-shoes or /womens-shoes). If you canonical the men's or women's page back to the main /shoes/ page then you will lose the benefit of those pages.

Does the site only work off of parameters, or do you have separate pages for different genders?

There aren't any rules how the description should be formatted in Google's Guidelines - https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en - however it's worth noting that the description you list in your dashboard may not show up for customers searching for your service/company. Google made the shift a little while back to show a limited amount of information (NAP, website, hours of operation, reviews) which doesn't normally include the description. I haven't seen anything to suggest adding more keywords in the description will boost ranking, especially since it's a hidden element for that page.

Local SEO Guide did a great study on Local SEO ranking factors - http://www.localseoguide.com/guides/2016-local-seo-ranking-factors/ 

Read through that to get an idea what to test & try to get your page ranking better.

What if you use a concatenation formula in excel? If you have a list of all the old pages, and all the new then you could put them in separate columns and run a formula to fill in the required areas to the code. Seems like if there's a specific code that just needs the copy and paste touch, that could work in a pinch.

Peter has a great answer with some good resources referenced, and i'll try to add on a little bit:

1. Why it is important that the rel canonical tag points to a non-parameter URL?

It's important to use clean URLs so search engines can understand the site structure (like Peter mentioned), which will help reduce the potential for index bloat and ranking issues. The more pages out there containing the same content (ie duplicate content), the harder it will be for search engines to determine which is the best page to show in search results. While there is no "duplicate content penalty" there could be a self inflicted wound by providing too many similar options. The canonical tag is supposed to be a level of control for you to tell Google which page is the most appropriate version. In this case it should be the clean URL since that will be where you want people to start. Users can customize from there using faceted navigation or custom options.

2. What is the extent of the negative impact from having rel canonicals pointing to URLs including parameters?

Basically duplicate content and indexing issues. Both of those things you really want to avoid when running an eComm shop since that will make your pages compete with each other for ranking. That could cost ranking, visits, and revenue if implemented wrong.

3. Any advice for correcting this?

Fix the canonical tags on the site would be your first step. Next you would want to exclude those parameters in the parameter handling section of Google Search Console. That will help by telling Google to ignore URLs with the elements you add in that section. It's another step to getting clean URLs showing up in search results.

I tried getting to http://www.chasing-fireflies.com/costumes-dress-up/mens-costumes/ and realize the parameters are showing up by default like: http://www.chasing-fireflies.com/costumes-dress-up/mens-costumes/#w=*&af=cat2:costumedressup_menscostumes%20cat1:costumedressup%20pagetype:products

Are the parameters needed for every URL? Seems like this is a websphere commerce setup kind of thing.

Hey James,

I read through the post and it's interesting because Yoast isn't necessarily saying homepage SEO doesn't exist (even though that's the name of the post... clickbait much?), he's saying you shouldn't be targeting it with one keyword. So if you go the route of targeting a general theme of the site + brand, then you're going to be much better off than simply trying to rank for the one keyword you want to rank for. Going back to my example of an attorney and using the general term of Criminal Defense, then using internal pages to rank for the most specific (and potentially more likely to convert) phrases is the better way to go.

All pages on the site should speak to the theme, because it will help users and Google understand what the site is about. For general, and especially local, terms I see a lot of homepages ranking well. Not optimizing the homepage could cause you to miss a large amount of users just starting their search. They may not know exactly what they need yet, but there is a need. The queries will start broad and get more specific as they hone in on what they really need. Make sure you catch the users on the broad query because they will be more likely to remember your brand later down the road.

I think the homepage should be optimized for the vertical or the wide-scope most competitive keyword. Your homepage will be the strongest and most authoritative page on the site, so leaving it optimized for just the brand (which you should rank well for anyway) is kind of a wasted opportunity. For example a DUI/DWI lawyer could optimize the home page for Criminal Defense Attorney, but then have sub pages for DUI and DWI to speak to the user with specifics about each case or the different types of situations. Start broader with the homepage and narrow down with internal pages.

Not optimizing the homepage would be a wasted opportunity in my opinion. Which Yoast article were you reading? Care to share a link?

Is it possible to use a script to write? Alternative option is to run a screaming frog crawl looking for all images, download into excel, and use the image file name to help create a tag. That's assuming you've named the image with something specific instead of leaving it default (eg: image4893054893.jpg). Ideally you would want to include image alt tags, and many platforms can help make it easy. Could you give a little more information about your situation? There might be a pattern you can use to update on a large scale. I would not have the same tag applied to all images, because that really doesn't help search engines understand the photo and wouldn't be useful to users who have vision impairments. If you don't have the time to do it, then hire someone to assign alt tags (virtual assistant). Screaming Frog will make it really easy to find all the image files.

You most likely won't see any new links from Yext because they use a URL redirect on all sites they control. Check the live listings an confirm. If you're using Yext for link building/gaining do-follow links on directories... It's probably best to consider alternative options. Most of the links to your website from those directories will actually pass through a redirect set up by Yext, then land you at the final destination (your website). One benefit of that redirect is so they can track click data in your Yext dashboard.

I could be wrong, but you should check and see if you're seeing any new links from a Yext subdomain. I haven't used Yext in a while, but I remember seeing a redirect for past clients (when I was working in an agency. That might be worth checking out.

Either way, you should have reporting in your Yext dashboard on all the listings that are live. Once again I'll stress that you should not be using Yext simply for building links.

I wasn't going to throw out re-branding quite yet, but yeah that would make sense from a couple angles. With that special character how do I say the name? Is it spoken like "NO. 1" or is it "N Degree 1" or is it "N - 1"? I actually wasn't sure how to say it. This is definitely going to be a tough one to get a handle on citation-wise.

Consistency matters for citations, and this is definitely a case I haven't dealt with before. Since the name is so unique and many sites won't allow for special characters I would pick one format to use across local citations. I guess the big question is how sites see the special character. If they see "No1" as "NO-1" that might work against you from a branding/dupe listing standpoint. If the rest of the information is the same across the citation sources, then it's possible the name variations could get aggregated together. In that case No1 and N°1 could become synonymous and acknowledged as one and the same.

I see a lot of sites are respecting the special character, so the best advice is to try and make it as consistent as possible. If you have a minority not respecting the character I wouldn't worry too much about it. You're playing a numbers game, so the more sites (quality sites) that have the special character will help you. The ones without may count for slightly less, but might not hurt you too much.

I would think the parameters wouldn't count, but the root URL would (eg; search engines ignore anything after the "&" or "#" in the URL). I think Google devalues affiliate links, because those aren't "editorial" links - they're essentially paid links. It's really hard to say whether the links will be determined as "affiliate" by Google since the author is adding that in the tagging (that word may serve as a flag). My recommendation is to reach out and ask if they can change that URL tagging, since you're not an affiliate and don't want to be seen as one. UTM parameters are common for campaign tracking, and they don't influence the URL in terms of passing juice or whatever, so really you can put whatever you want. Those exist so you can define attribution models more effectively to learn what campaign provides the best ROI for your company/website.

I'd try to change that parameter, and maybe making the case that the author adding parameters like that to your URL is hurting your tracking (getting mixed in with real affiliates). It seems kind of weird to me that an author would add a tracking parameter like that without someone asking, but maybe that happens more than I realize.

Let me know how it works out - I haven't seen this case before so if others have experience I'd be interested to see how people have handled it in the past.

Unless the business locations are franchises and independently run, I'll say keep it all under one domain. Build location landing pages out for the different locations with unique content. Splitting them to separate domains will create more work for you (and the company) to maintain and build the authority. If you use location page silos, then you can keep content and links under one domain and consolidate your efforts. The divide and conquer approach won't work well if you don't have a pretty sizable staff (and budget) to work on both sites simultaneously.

If you keep it all under one powerful domain you can have a setup like:

Homepage > Location 1 (general) > Specialized services for location 1

Homepage > location 2 (general) > specialized services for location 2

That way you're able to capture traffic using each unique location page and more specific traffic for the services. All are sharing a benefit from the homepage authority, and you'd be able to internally link to the other locations so customers can easily find all the business offices. It's a little cleaner than replicating another site on a new domain... plus you need to think about creating all unique content for the other site, and making sure it's optimized... That would be a lot of extra (not needed) work.

Keep it simple - one primary domain, and local landing pages for the new locations.