Page/Website Structure

[ATP]

Hello again Mozzers,

We have a category, lets call it widgets. Within widgets are about a hundred or so products. For usability my predecessor made the following layout

Widgets Main Cateogry  - Links off homepage - (no content just links to the 3 sub-categories)
- Widgets by Resolution
---- About 20 subcategories 
eg. 0.1 Resolution widgets
      0.2 resolution widgets
- Widgets by Capacity
---- About 20 subcategories
eg. 1 capacity widgets
     2 capacity widgets
- Widgets by Type
---- About 12 subcategories

This was a major improvement from a userbility perspective as it made a very complex product range navigatable by the major features or basic type. However, as you can imaging we now have 60+ very similiar pages all displaying very similiar products a nightmare for SEO. It also isnt ideal for user navigation as it take too many clicks to get to the products.

I propose the following fix, and i wanted your opinion.

Widget Main Category - Link from homepage (Consolidated with Widgets by Type)
-300 Words of content
-Links to the 12 Sub-type Catoregies (These are pages i can fill with content + products. This would give me a more ordinary structure of which I can focus each page to a keyword)

The tricky part comes with incorporating the capacity and resolution options.

1 Browse Capacity Page
(20 sub categories all the same except capacity quantity & products)
1 Browse by Resolution Page
(20 sub categories all the same except resolution value & products)

The owner want them, I was going to link from the main widgets page to each of these to give the customer the option. What I can't decide is how to deal with them from an SEO point of view. Should they be no-followed? canonicaled? Can there be any advantage to having so many pages covering slightly different variations or as i suspect it is dangerous to the overall health of the site.

To complicate things further, Canonical tags may not be an option due to an old magento version running that doesnt support them. Is there an alternative way around?

As always many thanks.

[LesleyPaone]

If I were doing the site the way I would more than likely do it is have your main bolded categories as actual categories. The for the sub categories that you have listed I would use a filtered navigation that is not indexed for them. One thing that would determine if I did that would be how many products are in the bolded categories as well. How many should be in the bolded categories? (when I say bolded I am talking about the ones you have in bold in your post)

[Everett]

Lesley, the only problem with that otherwise good plan would be that those bolded pages don't seem to make good categories in-and-of themselves. For example, what's the difference between the "Widget" category landing page and the "Widgets by Resolution" landing page before any filters have been set?

ATP could you drastically reduce the amount of category pages by putting them into: Low, Medium, High Resolution options? Thus:

Widgets

• Widgets by Capacity (not a page, but a drop-down to select one of the below)
• • High Resolution Widgets
• • Medium Resolution Widgets
• • Low Resolution Widgets

Then you could apply filters like price, color, rating... and use rel canonical tags to keep the filter URLs from being indexed on their own.

[ATP]

Im at the difficult point where developing filters etc are not a great option due to the age of our CMS. Before I can secure a greater budget I need to show results.

This rules out (for now) any mass changing of nav bars which are sadly a bit static. This means doing it via pure and fairly basic page structure at the moment. Hence my difficulty sorting out a normally fairly easy problem.

[Everett]

OK Let's start again now that we know your hands are sort of tied - for now.

I would write some introductory copy for each category page and use it to help the visitor. For example:

Widgets Main Category
Add content to this page. Explain what to look for in a widget. How do I choose one? Should I shop by resolution, capacity, type? What are the differences between widget brands? Is one more "high end" and another more "entry level"? Where do I go from here?

- Widgets by Resolution
Add content to this page. Explain the differences between various resolutions. What sort of resolution should I be looking for if I want to do This type of thing Vs That type of thing? What resolution do I need for the types of things I want to do? How can I get the best resolution for my budget?

• 0.1 Resolution widgets
  Add content to this page. What are 0.1 Resolution Widgets best for? What do they not do well? When should I go up to a higher resolution widget? Are these more entry-level? Are they designed to provide me with all of the features I need to get started with widgeting at a lower cost point? Show me the "value" of 0.1 widgets without making them sound "cheap". At the same time, if I need a higher resolution widget, point me to the next level up.
• 0.2 resolution widgets
  Add content to this page. What are the 0.2 resolution widgets good for? Why should I buy one of these instead of a less expensive 0.1 resolution widget? Do I need a 0.3 resolution widget, or will a 0.2 give me what I need? Should I be concerned with capacity and other options too?

- Widgets by Capacity So on and So Forth...
---- About 20 subcategories
eg. 1 capacity widgets
     2 capacity widgets
- Widgets by Type
---- About 12 subcategories

So in the end you'll need to write about 55 pages of content for those three categories and their subcategories. You can probably knock this out in a week if you focus on this project. Just don't fill it with useless "SEO copy". Try to anticipate and answer a visitor's questions so they know what to do next.

Rel canonical (rel next prev doesn't seem to work well, though in theory it's supposed to) the paginated pages of each category or subcategory back to first page in that cat/sub-cat.

It is quite alright if the products listed in different categories overlap. Make sure that products which exist in multiple categories don't have multiple URLs going to them. This tends to happen when categories are put into the product page URL. If that is the case, we can discuss different ways to handle it, but I'll assume it's not an issue for now.

[ATP]

Cheers Everett.

You have definitely reset my thinking, id started to make it over complex for myself.

The content for the resolution / category pages will create a lot of duplicate issues due to the unavoidable similarities, i will take a combination of solutions provided here and try to consolidate resolution and capacity into broader categories that can be written about as you suggest with less overlap. I will look to no-index smaller categories that would be thin and cause issues but remain essential.

I will also stick to my plan and consolidate the "types of widget" onto the main widget page. This will move them a step up the hierarchy and allow me a wider scope of content on the main parent page.

All product urls are  homepage.co.uk/product.html by default so shouldnt cause issue in multiple urls. I have also implimented automatic canonical tags on all cateogry and products to combat any accidental duplications.