Welcome to the Q&A Forum

All of these are great answers. Below are a few more resources you might want to check out prior to launching:

The 2014 SEO Checklist by ClickMinded: I can't endorse 100% of everything on there (we all have our own opinions, tools and methods) but it is a fairly comprehensive checklist.

The 2013 SEO Ranking Factors Study by Moz: This is from last year, but still relevant and mostly accurate.

The Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors by SEL: I find this visual format very confusing and convoluted, but others find it very logical and easy to interpret. I think it depends on the person. I'm more data-oriented rather than visually oriented. Either way it's a good resource.

The biggest mistakes I see on eCommerce sites are as follows:

1. Non-Unique Product Copy (e.g. Content taken from manufacturer or distributor descriptions, or product feeds)
2. Internal Duplicate Product Copy (e.g. product variants with their own canonical URLs using the same copy, non-canonical URLs created by query strings, from products in multiple categories, etc...)
3. Thin or Useless Product Copy
4. Indexable URLs for Filtered/Faceted/Layered navigation
5. Indexable URLs for internal search results
6. Indexable shopping cart URLs

Good luck!

That is a very interesting setup by Auto Trader. The Rel = "Canonical" URL changes on the true canonical page depending on your location. So this URL:

https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-sale/New+Cars/Nissan/Rogue

May canonicalize to either of the URLs below, depending on your location:

https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-sale/Nissan/Rogue/Denver+CO-80211

https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-sale/New+Cars/Nissan/Rogue/Los+Angeles+CA-90001

Technically speaking, I think it should work the other way around. Their rankings for these geo-specific keywords seem to be pretty good so I can see why it may be tempting to emulate. However, keep in mind that Auto Trader has a TON of brand equity and PageRank so they can get away with things that might harm another site either now, or in the near future.

After speaking with two other colleagues just to verify, my recommendation here would be NOT to do this. At best, these canonical tags on Auto Trader are probably just being ignored by Google.

Nofollowing them won't help you conserve any of that pagerank for other links on the page. Instead, you would seek to make those something other than href tags. I'm not a developer, but here is one example that might help explain what I'm trying to say: http://www.quackit.com/javascript/popup_windows.cfm . Notice the javascript for the pop-up window on that page does not contain an href tag.

SwanseaMedicine,

That looks fine to me. The syntax used on our site puts a space between the colon ":" and the  bracket "[" as in:

"sameAs": ["https://www.facebook.com/SwanseaMedicine/",

But I don't think it matters, especially if the markup checker said everything was fine. More than likely it's just going to take some time and persistence on your part. Here are some things you can work toward in the meantime:

If you don't have a WIkipedia page begin researching what it takes to get one, and hire a professional Wiki editor to help. You can find them on may freelancer websites by doing a search for Wiki or Wikipedia.

Build as many high quality citations as you can for the Swansea University Medical School from data hubs that may be used by Google to create Knowledge Graph boxes and other rich info in the SERPs. Here's a partial list in the attached image at:

http://marketeer.kapost.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/c88lukhdr7sdp1mlgpd-ph1xam6vplaaunkxdhwnqt2uqkldyz9xdp-mf-0r8yvbomwj0kttplfvanrvm7g7kll6rojg4xwup4yszucuanauxhripoew4tqnxbtfo2efkzqt86en.png

c88lukhdr7sdp1mlgpd-ph1xam6vplaaunkxdhwnqt2uqkldyz9xdp-mf-0r8yvbomwj0kttplfvanrvm7g7kll6rojg4xwup4yszucuanauxhripoew4tqnxbtfo2efkzqt86en.png

Kyle,

It sounds like you've put a lot of thought into this and have come to the same conclusion that I would recommend, which is to prune those pages out of the index using a robots noindex,follow meta tag.

I think you're good to go with that strategy.

Barrett,

I think the Car Gurus way you laid out above is a great solution. This allows you to scale content as well, since now you can provide content only on the single canonical zip code page for that "area". What are some things that Los Angeles drivers need to know about buying a new or used vehicle? Is there anything specific you can call out, like "The last thing you want in LA is to be stuck in traffic on the 405 with a car that won't start..."? If you can pull in data about the zip code it may be possible to automate some customizations at scale as well, such as the average price of new and used vehicles in that zip code, which vehicles are the most popular in that zip code, etc...

Either way it sounds like you're thinking about the problem in the right way so I'm sure you'll be successful. Good luck!

Perhaps those URLs were indexed before you blocked them. If you have them blocked now, either by robots.txt and/or by robots meta noindex tag, you can use Google's URL Removal Tool in GWT to get them out of the index. It may take awhile though.

I see nothing wrong with adding a nofollow tag to those href links. Go for it. If nothing else, it could help you salvage your crawl budget.

Hello Kevin,

I assume you've already tried the "suggest an edit" feature on the maps?
If not, that would be a good place to start.

Do you have a Google MyBusiness listing?
If not, you should set one up. This may help.

Do you have your address clearly marked on your website?
The more you associate your business with that exact address, as typed, the more you help Google figure this mess out.

Do you have your address marked-up using Schema or JSON-LD on your website?
See above.

Are you the custom signs and displays company or another company?

I have a question for you. Which would you rather click on...

Buy Cheap Used Car Parts for Toyota, Dodge, Nissan, Jeep, Cadillac and Other Cars, Trucks and Vans at Used Car Part Outlet!

OR

Used Car Part Outlet: Deeply Discounting Auto Parts Since 1976

I'd have to see the site to answer that question, but when this happens it generally means that users did not think your site was the best result. As you hit page one Google gets more data, including impressions, clicks, click-thru-rate, bounces, query modifications... basically, they'll know if the searchers found what they were looking for or "liked" your site.

Then again, it could be something else, but I'd have to see the site. Did you make any changes? Are your redirects still working?

Hello,

Even though you are blocking that folder the fact remains that you are paying people a commission to place followable links on their site. Since a 301 redirect passes pagerank you are still violating Google's guidelines even if the page two which thy point is blocked in the robots.txt file. This is because, technically, you might still benefit at the domain-level from those links pointing into your domain.

If you turned those links into 302 redirects and/or had the affiliates update them to add nofollow code, it would probably be enough.

Hello Dan,

I'm sorry, but I can't provide more actionable advice without seeing the site. If you're willing to share the site I can have a look at what the URLs are doing. But if you really want to know what's causing the 404 errors, Google Webmaster Tools has a report you can look at, or you can check log files.

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.

Hello Jeffvertus,

I think you've chosen a good URL structure.  The only additional advice I would give is to consider putting all of those within another directory called /locations/ so they aren't all off the root. This has many advantages when it comes to traffic analysis, SEO analysis and reporting, as you can easily limit whatever you're looking at into location specific or non-location specific data.

Subdomains would have been much harder to manage, although there isn't a whole lot of difference with regard to SEO, if we're to believe what Google tells us.

Did that answer your question?

Hello Marty,

If you have the opportunity to use only ONE URL, to which you will link from all categories - and which will be the one and only canonical for that product - I would use site.com/product/product1. Note the use of a /product/ directory instead of being off the root. I find that having products in a product directory makes diagnoses of issues (i.e. index count, site:domain.com inurl:product searches, Analytics segmentation...) a lot easier. However, if you want to keep it site.com/product1 then that would be fine as well. It would be preferable to using multiple URLs and relying on 301 redirects or rel canonicals, which are effective band-aids, but band-aids nevertheless. It is better to actually fix the problem, which is products living on multiple URLs.

Of course you're going to still want to either 301 redirect or rel canonical the old ones to your canonical version since the URLs are likely already in Google's system and possibly have external links.

And you should think about what happens to breadcrumbs as well. If a user gets to /product1 from one category vs another, will their breadcrumb change and how will that be done? Is it ok for usability for the breadcrumb on that product page to always reference the canonical category (i.e. Home ---> category 2 ---> category2 ---> product1)? I tend to think so, and this also may help your internal linking be more consistent when Googlebot visits the page.

Hello Dan,

Thank you for following up with the private message. I'll keep the domain name out but will post here so others can learn from it.

I checked the 404 error page and it does return a 404 response in the http header, which is good. However, I did notice a few other issues while on the site...

I think you should block the following directories in your robots.txt file:

/search/
/stockist/
/ukstockist/
/services/form/

I also noticed several product pages with absolutely no product detail descriptions (e.g. /happy-tee-pink), which is not a good signal to send to Google, and not a good user experience. You should be creative and write custom, 100% unique content for these pages.

I noticed there is both a .com and .co.uk site with no use of rel alternate href lang. Click here for more information.

You should stop using capitol letters in the URLs. Everything should be lower-case. Also don't use spaces in the URL. Use a dash or underscore instead (e.g. "/Stockist/North East"  should be "/stockist/northeast" ).

Google has been executing javascript more and more lately and this is causing a lot of 404 rises, among other errors, across the web. Google Webmaster Tools will tell you exactly which page caused the error and, if applicable, which page was linking to it. This would help diagnose the issue so I suggest looking into that and going from there.

Good luck!

The Back Burner,

I think Takeshi gave a great response though I can't officially endorse it because I wouldn't officially endorse the strategy. When someone says "at risk of the Panda penalty" you need to take that very, very seriously. I've worked with comparison shopping engines (CSEs) and even eCommerce sites that have tried similar solutions in the past. What you're talking about here are doorway pages and are clearly against webmaster guidelines from any major search engine.

If you and the person who owns the company understands the risks and have weight the potential benefits than you are obviously free to do as you please. But you may think about your coworkers and the fact that a lot of businesses have gone under completely, and a lot of people have lost their jobs, because the SEO decided to take a risk like this.

OK enough of the disclaimer talk. You asked if anyone has used that particular service. I have not, so I'll butt out now.

We would love to hear about the results a year from now if you think to check back.

Hello Steve,

It is difficult to say how long it will take because Google handles different sites at different speeds depending on things like domain-level trust metrics, how often the pages get updated, how easy the site is to crawl, etc...

Generally speaking, bouncing back after a complete site migration takes a couple of months, which can be shortened by following best practices, most of which it sounds like you've already done.

I would submit a new XML sitemap (replace the old one) and then fetch these new pages as Googlebot. Then if you want to write a useful blog post that links to those pages it would help get them crawled and indexed, while also building some internal pagerank for them.

Good luck.

Hello,

The plugin creates a new CSS file, which you can access and control to make the data appear any way you like:
http://historyofmormonism.com/wp-content/plugins/schema-creator/lib/css/schema-style.css?ver=1.050

Yes, the data that you are marking up needs to appear on the page, but you can mark up existing data instead of using a plugin that adds new data to the page. Or you can use the plugin to add the data to the page and customize the look by adjusting the CSS file.

My advice would be to learn how to add the markup yourself so you can just apply it to whatever it is on the page that you're trying to mark-up instead of relying on the plugin. This way you don't get the ugly box. It isn't that difficult if you can already do basic HTML. For example:

Here is what the plugin is doing:

Alex Baugh
Brigham Young University
Professor

The Div ID for "Schema_block" is what is creating that container. In the CSS file I linked to above it reads as follows (bolding is mine):

#schema_block {
    clear:both;
    margin:0 auto 10px auto;
   ** background: #EEEEEE;**
**    border: 1px solid #CCCCCC;**
    padding: 1em;
    overflow: hidden;
}

You can make that look like whatever you want it to look like. For instance, you could completely remove the margin, background, border and padding. It's not the "box" that Google needs to see, it's the content (e.g. Alex Baugh, Brigham Young University, Professor) on the page and the markup in the code that surrounds it.

I hope this clarifies the issue for you. A good designer/developer should be able to provide further assistance if you are not comfortable editing code or CSS files.

If the two sites are structured differently and do not share ANY significant content then you don't need the rel alternate href lang tag.

Good luck Dan!