[Advice] Dealing with an immense URl structure full of canonicals with Budget & Time constraint
-
Good day to you Mozers,
I have a website that sells a certain product online and, once bought, is specifically delivered to a point of sale where the client's car gets serviced.
This website has a shop, products and informational pages that are duplicated by the number of physical PoS. The organizational decision was that every PoS were supposed to have their own little site that could be managed and modified.
Examples are:
- Every PoS could have a different price on their product
- Some of them have services available and some may have fewer, but the content on these service page doesn't change.
I get over a million URls that are, supposedly, all treated with canonical tags to their respective main page. The reason I use "supposedly" is because verifying the logic they used behind canonicals is proving to be a headache, but I know and I've seen a lot of these pages using the tag.
i.e:
- https:mysite.com/shop/ <-- https:mysite.com/pointofsale-b/shop
- https:mysite.com/shop/productA <-- https:mysite.com/pointofsale-b/shop/productA
The problem is that I have over a million URl that are crawled, when really I may have less than a tenth of them that have organic trafic potential.
Question is:
For products, I know I should tell them to put the URl as close to the root as possible and dynamically change the price according to the PoS the end-user chooses. Or even redirect all shops to the main one and only use that one.I need a short term solution to test/show if it is worth investing in development and correct all these useless duplicate pages. Should I use Robots.txt and block off parts of the site I do not want Google to waste his time on?
I am worried about: Indexation, Accessibility and crawl budget being wasted.
Thank you in advance,
-
Hey Chris!
Thanks a lot for your time. I did send you a PM the day after your original post, I will send you another :).
Thanks a lot for your additionnal advice. You're right about managing client's expectations and its crucial. You're pointing out some valid points and I will have to ponder about how I approach this whole situation.
Charles,
-
Hey Charles,
No problem, I've been out of the office most of the past week so I'm trying to catch up on a few of these now, sorry! I don't recall seeing any PMs either.
I feel weird to recommend shaving 3/4 of their site on which they put a lot of money in.
That's perfectly normal and I'd have the same reservations. If you do decide to go ahead with it though (and I'm absolutely not looking to push you into a decision either way, just providing the info) you can highlight the fact that paying a lot of money for a website doesn't make it inherently good. If those extra pages are providing no unique value then they're just a hindrance to their long-term goal of earning a return from that site via organic traffic.
It's a conversation we have semi-regularly with new clients. They think that because they just spent $20k on a new site, making changes to it is silly and a waste of the money they invested in the first place. "Sure it's broken but it was expensive"... I don't think search engines or users really care how much it cost
in the eyes of the client, it may come off as bold.
It certainly is bold and don't be fooled, there is a reasonable chance their rankings will get worse before they get better. In some cases when we perform a cleanup like this we'll see a brief drop before a steady improvement.
This doesn't happen all the time by any means, in fact we did a smaller scale version of this last week for two new clients and both have already started moving ahead over the weekend without a drop in rankings prior. It's really just about managing expectations and pitching the long term benefit over the short term fear.
Just be very careful in the way you project-manage it - be meticulous with updating internal links and 301 any pages that have external links pointing to them as well. You want to end up with a clean, efficient and crawlable website that retains as much value as possible.
You understand many sets of eyes are directed at them and a lot is to gain.
Also a very valid concern!
I'm probably not telling you anything you don't already know anyhow so don't think I'm trying to lecture you on how to do your job, just sharing my knowledge and anecdotal evidence on similar things.
-
Hey Chris!
Thanks for that lenghty response. It is very much appreciated and so is your offer for help. Let me check with some people to see if I can share the company's name.
[EDIT] Sent you a private msgOne of the reason I want to test the waters is, to be real honest, I feel weird to recommend shaving 3/4 of their site on which they put a lot of money in. I guess it comes down to reassuring them that these changes will be positive, but in the eyes of the client, it may come off as bold.
Another thing is, it is an international business that have different teams for different country. For more than 20 countries, they are the only one to try and sell their product online. You understand many sets of eyes are directed at them and a lot is to gain.
-
Hi Charles,
That's a tough one! I definitely see the motivation to test the waters here first before you go spending time on it but it will likely take less time than you think and either way, the user experience will be significantly better once you're done so I'd expect that either way, your time/dev investment would likely be viable.
I suppose you could block certain sections via Robots and wait to measure the results but I'd be more inclined to throw on the gloves and get elbow deep!
You've already mentioned the issues the current structure causes so you are aware of them which is great. With those in mind, focus on the user experience. What is it they're looking for on your site? How would they expect to find it? Can they find the solution with as few clicks as practical?
Rand did a Whiteboard Friday recently on Cleaning up the Cruft which was a great overview of the broader areas you can often trim your site back down to size. For me anyway, the aim is to have as few pages on the site as practical. If a page(s), category, tag etc doesn't need to exist then just remove it!
It's hard to say or to give specific advice here without seeing your site but chances are if you were to sit down and physically map out your website you'd find a lot of redundancy that, once fixed, would cut your million pages down to a significantly more manageable number. A recent example of this for us was a client who had a bunch of redundant blog categories and tags as well as multiple versions of some URLs due to poor internal linking. We cut their total URL volume from over 300 to just 78 and that alone was enough to significantly improve their search visibility.
I'd be happy to take a closer look at this one if you're willing to share your URL, though I understand if you're not. Either way, the best place to start here will be reviewing your site structure and seeing if it truly makes sense.
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
-
What is the better url structure for aluminium hog rings?
Question What is the better url structure for aluminium hog rings? /hog-rings-by-material/aluminum/ or
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | momentumllc
/hog-rings-by-material-aluminum0 -
What is the best way to structure website URLs ?
Hi, can anyone help me to understand if having category folder in URL matters or not? how to google treat a URL? for example, I have the URL www.protoexpress.com/pcb/certification but not sure google will treat it a whole or in separate parts? if in separate parts, is it safe to use pcb/pcb-certification? or it will be considered as keyword stuffing? Thank you in anticipation,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SierraPCB1 -
Geo-Targeted Sub-Domains & Duplicate Content/Canonical
For background the sub domain structure here is inherited and commited to due to tech restrictions with some of our platforms. The brand I work with is splitting out their global site into regional sub sites (not too relevant but this is in order to display seasonal product in different hemispheres and to link to stores specific to the region). All sub-domains except EU will be geo-targeted to their relevant country. Regions and sub domains for reference: AU - Australia CA - Canada CH - Switzeraland EU - All Euro zone countries NZ - New Zealand US - United States This will be done with Wordpress multisite. The set up allows to publish content on one 'master' sub site and then decide which other sub sites to 'broadcast' to. Some content is specific to a sub-domain/region so no issue with duplicate and can set the sub-site version as canonical. However some content will appear on all sub-domains. au.example.com/awesome-content/ nz.example.com/awesome-content/ Now first question is since these domains are geo-targeted should I just have them all canonical to the version on that sub-domain? eg Or should I still signal the duplicate content with one canonical version? Essentially the top level example.com exists as a site only for publishing purposes - if a user lands on the top level example.com/awesome-content/ they are given a pop up to select region and redirected to the relevant sub-domain version. So I'm also unsure whether I want that content indexed at all?? I could make the top level example.com versions of all content be the canonical that all others point to eg. and rely on geo-targeting to have the right links show in the right search locations. I hope that's kind of clear?? Obviously I find it confusing and therefore hard to relay! Any feedback at all gratefully received. Cheers, Steve
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SteveHoney0 -
Intra-linking to pages with a different Canonical url ?
Hello Moz Community! I'm hoping to get some advice around intra-linking practices and the benefits when a page that is being linked to has a different canonical tag than it's own URL. Confused? Allow me to elaborate. Scenario: Background: Ecommerce Company is trying to increase its organic ranking for key, broad terms in the cycling industry. Ecommerce company is trying to rank its category pages for a main term. To help this, the company focusing on increasing the quality of its intra-linking structure (the links and anchor texts that link to another page within the site). Example goal: to have it's Road Cassettes category page rank for 'Road Cassettes' Company's 'cassettes' main category page is here: /Components/Drivetrain/Cassettes/ And the company uses filtered navigation logic to drill down into 'road cassettes' specifically: /Components/Drivetrain/Cassettes/?page_no=1&fq=ATR_RoadBiking:True SEOs are instructed to include occasional links back to this page, with SEO friendly anchor text, to help strengthen it's authority for the main term. The Issue / Question: Main category URL: /Components/Drivetrain/Cassettes/ Road Cassettes category URL: /Components/Drivetrain/Cassettes/?page_no=1&fq=ATR_RoadBiking:True Road Cassettes Canonical URL: /Components/Drivetrain/Cassettes/ The canonical URL of the filtered Road Cassettes category is its main category URL. Will Company be able to effectively rank its Road Cassettes category URL for 'Road Cassettes' if the canonical URL is the main category? Should the canonical URL not be the main category? OR Will increasing the intra-linking to the Road Cassettes URL help the main category URL rank for 'Road Cassettes' - by passing all it's authority?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ray-pp0 -
Search Refinement URLs
My site is using search refinement and I am concerned about the URL adding additional characters when it's refined. My current URL is: http://www.autopartscheaper.com/Air-Conditioning-Heater-Parts-s/10280.htm and when someone chooses their specific year, make, and model then it changes to: http://www.autopartscheaper.com/Air-Conditioning-Heater-Parts-s/10280.htm?searching=Y&Cat=10280&RefineBy_7371=7708. Will this negatively affect SEO for this URL? Will the URL be counted twice? Any help would be great!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrandLabs0 -
Use of rel=canonical to view all page & No follow links
Hey, I have a couple of questions regarding e-commerce category pages and filtering options: I would like to implement the rel=canonical to the view all page as suggested on this article on googlewebmastercentral. If you go on one of my category pages you will see that both the "next page link" and the "view all" links are nofollowed. Is that a mistake? How does nofoolow combines with canonical view all? Is it a good thing to nofollow the "sorty by" pages or should I also use Noindex for them?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ypsilon0 -
Canonical URL redirect to different domain - SEO benefits?
Hello Folks, We are having a SEO situation here, and hope your support will help us figure out that. Let's say there are two different domains www.subdomian.domianA.com and www.domainB.com. subdomain.domainA is what we want to promote and drive SEO traffic. But all our content lies in domainB. So one of the thoughts we had is to duplicate the domainB's content on subdomian.domainA and have a canonical URL redirect implemented. Questions: Will subdomain.domainA.com get indexed in search engines for the content in domainB by canonical redirect? Do we get the SEO benefits? So is there any other better way to attain this objective? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NortonSupportSEO0 -
Is having a canonical tag for the link that IS the canonical a negative thing?
Throughout our site, canonical tags have been added where needed. However, the canonical tags are also included for the canonical itself. For example, for www.askaquestion.com, the canonical tag has been added as www.askaquestion.com. Will this have a negative impact or does it not really matter whether there is such a loop?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kbbseo0