Should i noindex/nofollow a faceted navigation page?
-
I have an ecommerce website with 4 departments, that share the same categories,
For example a bicycle shop would have different products for mountain biking and road cycling, but they would both share the same 'tyres' category.
I get around this by having the department as a filter, that changes the products on show, and adds a URL parameter of ?department=1.
When this filter is applied, i have a canonical link setup to the non-filtered category. Any filter links are nofollowed.
My top menu has 4 different sections, one for each department, and links to these URLs with the department parameter already on, these links are set to allow robots to follow.
As i am actively pointing Google at these pages, and it is my main navigation, should the page they go to be noindexed? As its the canonical i want to rank.
Hopefully this makes sense.
Cheers
-
Hello SEOhmygod,
If you could share your site I would be able to provide better input. From the sound of it though, if I understand correctly, you are canonicalizing each department back to a version of the page for all departments. That is probably not ideal. It would be better to have each department have its own landing page for each category, on which you would customize Title, description and OnPage content for that particular department. You may also want to consider rewriting the URL instead of using a filter so:
.com/tyres?department=1
becomes
.com/tyres/mountain-biking/
or
.com/mountain-biking/tyres
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
-
Pages not indexable?
Hello, I've been trying to find out why Google Search Console finds these pages non-indexable: https://www.visitflorida.com/en-us/eat-drink.html https://www.visitflorida.com/en-us/florida-beaches/beach-finder.html Moz and SEMrush both crawl the pages and show no errors but GSC comes back with, "blocked by robots.txt" but I've confirmed it is not. Anyone have any thoughts? 6AYn1TL
Technical SEO | | KenSchaefer0 -
Home Page Ranking Instead of Service Pages
Hi everyone! I've noticed that many of our clients have pages addressing specific queries related to specific services on their websites, but that the Home Page is increasingly showing as the "ranking" page. For example, a plastic surgeon we work with has a page specifically talking about his breast augmentation procedure for Miami, FL but instead of THAT page showing in the search results, Google is using his home page. Noticing this across the board. Any insights? Should we still be optimizing these specific service pages? Should I be spending time trying to make sure Google ranks the page specifically addressing that query because it SHOULD perform better? Thanks for the help. Confused SEO :/, Ricky Shockley
Technical SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Do I use /es/, /mx/ or /es-mx/ for my Spanish site for Mexico only
I currently have the Spanish version of my site under myurl.com/es/ When I was at Pubcon in Vegas last year a panel reviewed my site and said the Spanish version should be in /mx/ rather than /es/ since es is for Spain only and my site is for Mexico only. Today while trying to find information on the web I found /es-mx/ as a possibility. I am changing my site and was planning to change to /mx/ but want confirmation on the correct way to do this. Does anyone have a link to Google documentation that will tell me for sure what to use here? The documentation I read led me to the /es/ but I cannot find that now.
Technical SEO | | RoxBrock0 -
Page has Noindex, nofollow, still ranks #1
Hi there, I have a question about a few pages on our site, whom has a no index, nofollow meta tag but they are still indexed and even rank number one in our market for the term. How is that possible or is it that Google just ignores the tags when they think it´s an error from our side? The url is www.drogisterij.net/kilo_killer and the keyword is kilo killer. We rank number 1 if you search from Google.nl Anyone have seen it before and know why this might be? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | JaapWillemDrogisterij0 -
Website ranking went from page one to not in top 50 overnight. Help/suggestions?
One of our customer's websites initially ranked very well. For approximately 3 months it sat atop of Google for their optimized keywords. Suddenly, on November 17th, the ranking dropped and they were no longer in the top 50 for any keywords. We went through Google Webmaster tools and found no violations, so we emailed Google to see if we violated something and if they would reconsider. They responded "We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google." This is a site built on WordPress, so we turned off a majority of plugins in case one was somehow affecting the site. They have an incredible amount of business partners that link their website from their partner's website menus, so they have about 15,000 links all with anchor text "insurance." (every page on partner site is seen as a different link). Think this is affecting it? Maybe Google sees it as artificial? (P.S. This has been set up this way for a while before they came on with us). The site ranks on page one of Bing and Yahoo, but nowhere in top 50 for Google. Any suggestions? Appreciate the help!
Technical SEO | | Tosten0 -
Block /tag/ or not?
I've asked this question in another area but now i want to ask it as a bigger question. Do we block /tag/ with robots.txt or not. Here's why I ask: My wordpress site does not block /tag/ and I have many /tag/ results in the top 10 results of Google. Have for months. The question is, does Google see /tag/ on WordPress as duplicate content? SEOMoz says it's duplicate content but it's a tag. It's not really content per say. I'm all for optimizing my site but Google is not penalizing me for /tag/ results. I don't want to block /tag/ if Google is not seeing it as duplicate content for only one reason and that's because I have many results in the top 10 on G. So, can someone who knows more about this weigh in on the subject for I really would like a accurate answer. Thanks in advance...
Technical SEO | | MyAllenMedia0 -
Two different page authority ranks for the same page
I happened to notice that trophycentral.com and www.trophycentral.com have two different page ranks even though there is a 301 redirect. Should I be concerned? http://trophycentral.com Page Authority: 47 Domain Authority: 42 http://www.trophycentral.com Page Authority: 51 Domain Authority: 42 Thanks!
Technical SEO | | trophycentraltrophiesandawards0 -
Is it better to delete web pages that I don't want anymore or should I 301 redirect all of the pages I delete to the homepage or another live page?
Is it better for SEO to delete web pages that I don't want anymore or should I 301 redirect all of the pages I delete to the homepage or another live page?
Technical SEO | | CustomOnlineMarketing0