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For product pages, I would canonical the page with the most descriptive URL.

For category pages, I agree with you, I would noindex them.

I think I just answered my own question!!

I agree entirely that "Search result pages are too varied to be included in the index".

That said, my understanding is that if you canonical a page, it doesn't get indexed. So we wouldn't have to worry about the appearance / user-friendliness of the URL. But (again, in my opinion) we should still worry about link equity being passed, and that won't happen if you noindex.

This gets complicated fast. I like your solution b/c it's a lot cleaner and easier to implement. Still not convinced it's the "best" way to go though.

Simon, Wesley, Michael...

These customer facing search result pages are the ones often bookmarked and shared by site visitors. How worried does one need to be about losing link equity? I realize every site is going to be different and social shares don't have link equity - at least for now - but this could add up over time. The rel canonical will enable capture of link equity whereas the robots noindex will not.

Am I over thinking this?

Hi Jeremy.

Yours is a common problem. The best way to deal with it is, as Wesley mentions, by putting canonical tags on all the duplicate pages - the one you want indexed and to show up in search results AND all the others that you can arrive at via catalog search or any other means of navigation.

Michael's suggestion will prevent the duplicate pages from getting indexed by Google. Unfortunately you lose any link equity going that route, so I'd suggest starting with canonical tags first.

Not to be a smart ass or anything, but it sounds like you answered your own question JP.

There is no right or wrong answer to "are meta descriptions really necessary". Often times it is best to let Google self-generate the meta description so it matches the intent of the user query. Especially when, as it sounds like in your case, you're talking about an ecommerce site with maybe (?) a lot of product pages and long-tail keyword queries your pages could be eligible to rank for. In my mind, the real question is whether you'd be better off spending your time creating great content, or trying to craft unique meta description tags for product pages that are already "generating a better CTR than if I were to plug something in there myself."

It's a judgment call.

Thanks for sticking with this EGOL.

"A query will be listed in Google Webmaster Tools when you have a page that competes in the top ten on the web for that query."

Then I'm not understanding what "average position" means because on other sites, I'm seeing numbers in that column that range from 1 to 750. Is it the average placement for:

• every page on your your site that's eligible to rank for that term, considering of course, personalization and location;
• every page on any site that's eligible to rank for that term; or
• something else altogether?

I searched GWMT looking for an answer and it's not clear (to me anyway) there either.

Thank you EGOL and Chris Menke for taking the time to look at the site and giving me your thoughtful responses. It's much appreciated.

I realize it's an uphill battle with this site and that the site author is competing with herself in many instances, but I'm wondering why when I look at Google Webmaster Tools (GWMT), she's not even showing up for many search queries. I know GWMT only shows us a sampling, but surely she's eligible to rank for more than just the 3 queries it's showing me now after more than a year in operation. That's why I think I'm missing something.

I can't figure out why this site (www.liveathomeseniors.com) is eligible for so few search queries on Google Webmaster Tools. I know there is a lot of work to be done, but this is my biggest puzzle right now. What am I not seeing? 379 pages are indexed and yet the site is has only been deemed eligible to rank for 3 queries over the past 3 months. Is it all the repetition in the way the content has been structured?

I'd appreciate people's thoughts on this. I can't see the forest for the trees.

Donna

I also reference the Moz guide that @Chris mentions above. That and (less frequently) this one - b-s.ee/149L8Cv. A how-to from stateofdigital.com for mobile websites.

I followed @Eli's suggestion and Googled "seo audit filetype:pdf". It's a great template.

That's exactly the problem, the redirects are disbursed randomly throughout the site. Although, and the job's still running, it now appears as though there's almost a 1-2-1 correlation between pages and redirects on the site.

I also heard from Dan Sharp via Twitter. He said "You can't, as we'd have to crawl a URL to see the status code You can right click and remove after though!"

Thanks again Michael. Your thoroughness and follow through is appreciated.

Thank you Michael.

You're right. I was on a 64 bit machine running a 32 bit verson of java. I updated it and the scan has been running for more than 24 hours now without hanging. So thank you.

If anyone else knows of a way to exclude files using status codes I'd still like to learn about it. So far the scan is showing me 20,000 redirected files which I'd just as soon not inventory.

I'm having a similar difficulty on my own site - the words "Philadelphia SEO Company" are being appended to end of every post, not pages, posts only.

• I've ticked "force rewrite titles" on the Yoast General tab.
• I'm using "%%title%% " in the title template for both pages and posts on the Post Types tab.
• I have not touched the header.php file.

Any ideas?

I have a very large ecommerce site I'm trying to spider using screaming frog. Problem is I keep hanging even though I have turned off the high memory safeguard under configuration.

The site has approximately 190,000 pages according to the results of a Google site: command.

• The site architecture is almost completely flat. Limiting the search by depth is a possiblity, but it will take quite a bit of manual labor as there are literally hundreds of directories one level below the root.
• There are many, many duplicate pages. I've been able to exclude some of them from being crawled using the exclude configuration parameters.
• There are thousands of redirects. I haven't been able to exclude those from the spider b/c they don't have a distinguishing character string in their URLs.

Does anyone know how to exclude files using status codes? I know that would help.

If it helps, the site is kodylighting.com.

Thanks in advance for any guidance you can provide.

Thank you both. I appreciate the feedback!

I'm curious to know if Moz concurs with your BOTW assessment James Shaw. They've assigned it a domain authority of 81.

For local SEO, it's good to get directory listings / citations. It serves to validate your business is where you say it is.

I agree with all of the above and just want to add that those local links can make a big difference to a small business in a non-competitive market. Now if you're a SEO company trying to rank for SEO in Seattle, forget it. But if you're a in a niche market in a small community, it can make a real difference.

Hi Mihai.

I recommend an API-enabled tool created by Daniel Butler at SEOGadget. It's called the Content Strategy Generator Tool. It taps into a variety of social media platforms including Digg, Twitter and Google Insights to allow you to identify trending topics and possible outreach candidates - editors and / or bloggers who might be interested in the content you produce. It's a great tool!

Can Moz weigh in on this please? There is a lot of really  good discussion on this particular topic across multiple threads but no clear direction. What does Moz recommend and why? The why is important and here's why.

If I have a client with an established blog that uses the blog.domain versus domain/blog structure, should I be recommending they migrate to a different structure?

Yes, it will look like stuffing.

Google looks at the entire URL. You're best to go with the first option, using short but descriptive language to name your poster files.

That said, if you're renaming files you need to keep in mind any existing links or bookmarks. You don't want to create a poor user experience or lose any existing link equity.