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Hello JoaoCJ,

My recommendation is to not allow internal search result pages to be indexed. You should block them from being accessed via the Robots.txt file and then request their removal from GSC. This is what Google recommends.

There are always exceptions to the rule. However, best practices is all I can provide without knowing more about the situation, such as whether those internal search pages are an important part of your taxonomy (rare) or are also receiving significant, high quality organic search traffic (also rare).

Hello Charles,

I'm not sure what you mean with the second option. Would you mind providing the domain so I can see for myself? Or consider clarifying, which may also attract more responses.

My hunch is #1 is the way to go here.

An organization can have multiple brands and websites. If the subdomain is home to a different organization than the root or www. domain you should use the subdomain URL and org name. If it's the same organization, but a different brand, you would use the top level domain and org name. Make sense?

It is not at all uncommon to have the category taxonomy run three levels deep like this.

What page should I land on if I search for "Volunteer Firefighter Patches"? If it's /fire-patches/ you may have trouble targeting "Volunteer" while also targeting Ambulance, Hazmat...

I think pages specifically targeting topics like "EMS Patches" are necessary for this site and would not recommend removing them.

While you're rethinking the taxonomy though, I would change /fire-patches/ to /first-responders/ because at the moment the site has EMS and Ambulance under "Fire". Really, all of these professionals are "First Responders". Then /first-responders/fire-patches/ may even continue another level deep, such as /first-responders/fire-patches/volunteer/ .

Becky,

I think Sean has given you some great advice. I'd just like to add a few things.

I have seen rankings drop when sites add a bunch (thousands) of products with manufacturer descriptions and allow them to be indexed. I have seen rankings rise when these are either removed from the index, or improved with unique copy.

However, you have the manufacturer description so why not leverage it? One idea I have proposed to a few clients is to use that as the description provided to channel partners, affiliates and sites like Amazon, eBay and Google Shopping. Let them deal with the duplicate content while you keep yours unique. Otherwise you'll write all of that unique copy and within months they'll all have it on their sites (because you gave it to them in feeds) and that hard work and money will have been for nothing.

Hello Pascal,

Like Hillary Clinton, I have a public opinion and a private opinion when it comes to stuff like this. The public opinion is also Google's, and that is to use a rel="nofollow" attribute on widget links. They are considered links that webmasters use to manipulate the search engine rankings. Yes, that video is old, but the rule still stands as far as Google is concerned.

My private opinion is that widgets are a form of branding, and it is not a webmaster's responsibility to do anything other than get their brand discovered far and wide. You created a widget that, if people are using it, probably provides some value to them. Why should you get any less credit for this than you would get from someone linking to the widget on your site?

If you are going to keep the links followable, my advice is to keep the anchor text branded and the href pointing to your home page. This is the least likely to seem like link-graph manipulation. Avoid deep-links, unless they go to the widget download page, and avoid optimized anchor text. Use "YourDomain.com" or "Your Brand" instead.

I'll leave the question open for more input since this isn't a question that necessarily has a single "right" or "wrong" answer.

Yes, that would make for a better internet indeed. A lot of these occur because the merchants keep the discontinued product URL in their feed and/or the page returns a 200 status code. Technically this should be considered a "soft 404" since what the user was looking for isn't there.

"My theory is that the uplift generated by the internal linking is subsequently mitigated by other algorithmic factors relating to content quality or site performance or..."

I think your initial analysis of the situation is right. Look to improve user-experience, conversion rates and interactions on those pages and try your experiment again.

I don't like using bounce rate as a metric for this for several reasons, but if you use Time On Site, Pages Per Visit, or track interactions, such as when they scroll past 50% of the page or click a button... There are plenty of ways to gauge whether your changes are providing a better experience for visitors from search results, which in turn should be roughly the same thing that pleases the algorithm.

Zack,

A change like this on a money term ranking page is always going to incur some risk. But here's what I think after your update.

/gifts/birthday-gifts ---> Better user engagement metrics, higher Page Authority, closer to the root.This curated landing page is best for a user who doesn't know which gift to buy, or even which type, but knows who they are buying it for a her or a him. I would say this describes an good (though it could be better) experience for someone searching for a short-tail, generic phrase like "Birthday Gifts" on Google.

/gifts/birthday-gifts/birthday-gifts
This landing page is more like a typical category page with filters and facets to narrow down the search by gender, price and other features.

They aren't the same page right now so I wouldn't use the Rel Canonical tag as a way to consolidate them. The View All category page is good for crawling, but the Curated Landing Page is better for users.

I would come up with a layout that combines the best of both pages and test that option against a percentage of the traffic to the /gifts/birthday-gifts. Basically create a B version of that page, which includes the filtering options available on the category page. These options can affect what shows up in the first carousel for "all birthday gifts" while the curated sections remain on the page for easy self-select (i.e. For Him / For Her).

Assuming that page converts at least as well as the existing A version, I would give serious thought to combining these two pages to see if you can get your highest performing landing page into the #1 spot. Given the relatively lower authority of the existing #1 spot, I think this is definitely doable.

You do risk losing some traffic that would have been more inclined to click on your listing after seeing more than one in the SERPs, but you can offset that with PPC, as you're doing now.

Collect your baselines first. Combine the totals from both pages to see if the consolidation results in more sales.

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

Q: The example I gave earlier "www.domain.com/greeting-cards/occasions/birthday-cards/" would this be considered keyword stuffing if I am targetting the keyword "birthday cards"?

A: Absolutely not. If you saw a real keyword stuffed URL you'd probably laugh out loud at the fact that people are still writing URLs like www.bluewidgets.com/widgets/blue-widgets/best-blue-widgets/top_blue_widget.html . Your example is just a clear URL representation of the structure of your site.

Q: Keeping in mind this taxonomy would it be better for my URLs to follow this pattern instead? www.domain.com/greeting-cards, www.domain.com/occasions, www.domain.com/birthday-cards?

A: That depends. Are birthday cards a form of greeting cards? Are occasions just a way to categorize greeting cards by occasion? If so, they should probably go under the /greeting-cards/ directory.

Q?: All of our product pages have URLs formatted as follows /product/product-name.

A: Good. I'd keep them like that. You don't need category folders in the product URL.

If you're not logged into the account associated with that entity they probably won't be very responsive. If you were logged into the right account it shouldn't take more than a few days. I did this twice myself for another entity.

Either way, I hope you get it sorted out. The way Google handles this stuff is extremely frustrating.

If you have control over how all of this works I recommend keeping things consistent. So if the taxonomy is "greeting cards > occasions > birthday cards" and the breadcrumb is "greeting cards > occasions > birthday cards" then the URL path should be "/greeting-cards/occasions/birthday-cards/".

This one is debatable, but my personal preference is also to have /product/ in that url path to differentiate product pages from category URLs, blog posts and other types of pages.

Just adding to the great answer above, if you are logged into the Google account associated with that Knowledge Graph (such as the one used for Google Local listings / Google+) and click on the "Feedback" link in grey at the bottom of the KG box it will allow you to suggest edits for various fields, including social profiles.

You can also provide feedback in the same exact way without being logged into the account, but I don't think it would have nearly as much success at getting added for all to see.

This is a deeper issue that will probably require the help of a developer, though it shouldn't take them long to fix. Basically, paginated category pages that have ZERO products should return a 404 status code because they really shouldn't exist. The fact that any content appears on those URLs is a bug that needs to be fixed, because they should show "Page Not Found". Also, as you mentioned, the very last page in the set should NOT have a Rel "Next" tag, and there should be no links, (whether href or javascript) to subsequent pages beyond the last one with products on it.

I don't understand the question. Perhaps submit a new question to create a new thread, and elaborate on the issue.

It should take care of the duplicate content issue as it relates to tag pages, but not it will not show as a 404 because the page will still be there, just removed from Google's index.

If you adjusted the settings in Yoast it should apply to all future posts and tags.

#1. The way you're handing paginated URLs with products on them is fine, but the problem is when you get to the end of the paginated set and the system continues to make pages even though there are no more products to show. That is the issue I was trying to help you resolve, which is not the same as paginated pages that show products.

#2 Yes, the canonical for the brand pages should be the URL listed above as "Category". Thus both the "Category" URL and the "Brand" URL in your example should list the Category URL as Canonical.

I agree that this is likely the cause of your duplicate title issues.

It means the page has a Rel="Canonical" tag that tells search engines it is the right page to show in search results -- as opposed to one that says another page should show up instead. You can learn more here.

Google may have figured out that they don't want those pages in their index, but the problem still exists and needs to be fixed. The pages show a 200 status code, do not have a robots Noindex tag, and have self-referencing Rel ="canonical" tags. All of these things are problems, but if you just have the system return a 404 status code on those pages that don't list any products you should be fine.