Is there something fundamentally wrong with our site architecture?

[danatanseo]

Hi everyone!

Could a few of you brilliant people take a look at the architecture of this site http://www.ccisolutions.com, and let me know if you see any obvious problems? I have run the site through XENU, and all of our most important pages, including categories and products, are no deeper than level 3. Everything deeper than that is, in most cases, an image, a pdf or an orphaned page (of which we have thousands).

Could having thousands upon thousands of orphaned pages be having a more hurtful effect on our rankings than our site architecture? I have made loud noises and suggested that duplicate content, site speed and dilution of page authority due to all those orphaned pages are some of the primary reasons we don't rank as well as we could. But, I think those suggestions just aren't sexy or dramatic enough, so there is much shaking of heads and discussion that it must be something fundamentally wrong with site architecture.

I know re-arranging the furniture is more fun than scrubbing the floors, but I think our problems are more about fundamental cleanup than moving things around

What do you think?

[EGOL]

If I had a site with thousands orphaned pages I would be attacking them with an ax in both hands.  If they serve no purpose they would have been redirected the same day they were orphaned.

Google can have a really long memory for orphaned pages - years for some that I have seen.  So if these pages are thin content, or duplicate content I think that they would be putting a drag on your site if they are not causing a Panda problem.

If possible, I would also be putting links in the pdf documents that point to the homepage or a more relevant page of the website.  Then any linkjuice that flows into them from your site or from other sites is put to good use.  For pdfs that you don't own and can't edit I would be looking for a way to provide the same information where linkjuice can flow back.

I would also be after those review form pages, getting rid of them for a form on the product page under a tab.  Those pages are linkjuice sinks, trivial content, duplicate content.  I would get  rid of them ASAP.

Here is an example

http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/jsp/product/ProductRatingRequest.jsp?product=ANH-GL2400-24

That's what I see in a quick look.

[peterthistle]

Maybe do some re-architecting along with the cleanup.

I didn't walk thru the cart process but the site navigation at least has the look of something that's been patched and altered over time, for example: Main menu My Account and Login point to the same page so that kind of thing should be sorted, the navigation paths should be mapped and made simpler if possible.

The site could do with some copy editing. Might want to tighten up how everything is organized, and plan overall what pages are supposed to be ranking for what terms, the information seems spread around too much, it all seems a little scattered and in places a little verbose.

Here: https://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/CLA.cat, we have a mis-used "About Us" page offering additional services descriptions instead of talking exclusively about the company.

Services overviews should be found only on their own focussed pages designed to rank for their terms.

About page should be about the company itself: who's in it, reason for being, history, function within the economy, corporate responsibility ideas, market(s) served. That kind of stuff.

My take just checking quickly.

[danatanseo]

Thanks EGOL,

I have spent some time discussing the "Review Request" page types that you referenced above with our IT director. Since we have these set as "disallow" in our robots.txt file, and it appears that none of these pages have been indexed, shouldn't we be able to accomplish what needs to be done by adding a "no follow" attribute to these pages?

[EGOL]

That would evaporate a lot of pagerank.

I would place the form under a tab to reduce that loss.

[danatanseo]

Thanks EGOL,

Is it evaporating pagerank simply because those pages exist as many separate pages with thin/duplicate content? Or would the "no follow" be evaporating pagerank? If so, how? I was under the impression that adding a "no follow" attribute retained the pagerank of the page on which the  no followed link resides?

Thanks for any clarification you can provide. I am trying to get my ducks in a row before giving marching orders to our IT director.

Dana

[EGOL]

My understanding is that pagerank flows into every link on a page.  If the page has a nofollow link then the pagerank into that page is lost.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVOOB_Q0MZY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl0MBeKDXLY

These pages are not needed for the visitor either.  One click less if the form is placed under the review/ratings tab that leads to them.

[danatanseo]

Fascinating. It never ceases to amaze me that the better I get at SEO, the less I seem to know   Thanks very much EGOL I very very much appreciate your explanation and help on this one!

[danatanseo]

One final follow up question EGOL if you don't mind. We also have a link on all the product pages that goes to an "Email this Product to a Friend" request page on another URL. It's a very similar scenario as the "Rating/Review" request links. Are these causing a similar problem? I ask because if we are going to fix one we might as well fix the other at the same time. Let me know what you think.

Thanks as always!

[EGOL]

If this was my site I would place that form under a tab.

If you get rid of the review/ratings page and the email to friend page that will decrease the size of your site by a lot of pages.  That will give you a more compact site with a much higher content value per page.

If I dumped pages like these from one of my sites I would be hoping to see my rankings slowly climb a little higher.

I can't guarantee that... It is what I would do myself and what I would hope the result would be.

Good luck if you try it.  I think that there is upside here and I think that the downside is about zero.

[danatanseo]

Thanks again. Yes, we are definitely going to go for it. It makes complete sense.

[EGOL]

Come back in two or three months after you remove the pages and let us know if anything happened.

[danatanseo]

Thank you so much Peter. This is excellent advice and has dot fallen on deaf ears! As we move forward, not only with trying to make the current site better but also to redesign a site on a new platform that is easier for our customers to use, your advice is going to come in very handy. Thanks so much for taking the time to comment and advise!

Dana