SEO Friendly Facets

[BeckyKey]

Hi

I'm still stuck on the subject if SEO friendly facets.

Firstly, is it worth investing time in over things like SEO campaigns/content marketing as I'm the only one working on SEO and trying to prioritise all tasks

Can I set up facets so they are SEO friendly - should they simply be blocked? my concern is wasting crawl budget and duplicate pages.

Here's an example of a page on the site - https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/lift-tables

Here's an example of a facet URL - https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/lift-tables#facet:-1002779711011711697110,-700000000000001001651484832107103,-700000000000001057452564832109109&productBeginIndex:0&orderBy:5&pageView:list&

What would be the best course of action to take to make them SEO friendly?

Tips would be appreciated

[HiveDigitalInc]

I would not suggest working to get all of your facets indexed unless you can take steps to ensure quality and unique content is presented.  For example, the facet you provided shows the products filtered by load capacity, lift, etc.  If all of your facets were crawled and indexed, you would end up with a large number of pages that simply have a single product listed, which would in turn compete with your single product page.

Additionally, as you are not adding any additional unique content onto the page to further highlight the facets that are selected.. for example "These lift tables are rated with lift capacity for 300kg and 500kg with a 480mm width." .. I doubt you would see any improved rankings or traffic as a result of indexing these facets.

Lastly, I'm not aware that the URL structure you have provided for the facets is actually navigable by search engines at this point.  the # in the url typically creates a "break" in the url, with the crawlers parsing the content before, but after.  This isn't to say that it isn't a work in progress or that crawler behavior would change  (read: spiders get js now, flash, etc.).  But if you want those urls to get crawled, I would suggest implementing pushstate to force seo friendly urls for each facet..  alternatively you could look at a solution leveraging the ? instead of #  and = instead of : so the facets appear as query parameters.

Is it worth your time?  Depends on whether you think you faceted pages have enough value and weighting that they could rank alone.  It is also worth considering whether or not your faceted navigation is allowing for crawling of the paginated pages, therefore allowing full crawl/index of all of your products vs. only those available on the first page.

Good luck!

Jake Bohall

[MeganSingley]

Hi Becky! Did Jake's response help answer your question? If it did, please mark as "good answer" to close it out. Thanks!

[BeckyKey]

Hi

This is really helpful thank you, I think at the moment I'd rather keep them from being crawled as the pages aren't helpful for crawlers. I will look into it in future if required.

Thanks very much!