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I would plug the whole site - (it's not that big right?) in to MOZ and see if it's a content duplication issue.

if you are analysing a single page then it may well be optimised at 95% for a specific keywords or small group of contextually similar keywords. However, if the descriptive content, meta title and description is too similar to another product page then you will see a drop as Google will only show the most relevant version of a page. If that is another product then your best bet may be to rewrite the whole page.

The fact that you set up a new page and that suffered a similar drop after a few days (unless you 301'd from the old one to the the new one?) suggests to me that it cannot be an off site problem. The single new page would not have any backlinks affecting it. So it must be an on page problem.

Duplication is the biggest killer of eCommerce sites whether it's content driven ,tags duplicating pages or new-in and sale pages causing it.

Best Regards

Nigel - Carousel Projects.

Hi Zack

There area  number of ways of dealing with this problem all of which are covered here: https://moz.com/blog/seo-guide-to-google-webmaster-recommendations-for-pagination

For me when I have sort problems I go to parameters and specify exactly what Google should do with the result. It's reasonably simply to use parameters in search console and specify NO URLs for the parameter ?view

However, a word of warning - you have to be really careful doing this as you could end up blocking the whole site with the slightest slip. Like canonicals, no indexing and robots.txt - get a good SEO just to take a look.

Best Regards

Nigel - Carousel Projects

I would concentrate on creating the most logical site structure from a user perspective and less on the length of URLs. That combined with highly descriptive, clear and concise Meta Page titles will make your site rock.

Hi Edward - yes the online 'ONLY' was staring me in the face - this is more suited to companies with a physical presence. Still important to have consistent NAP wherever it is listed but not so much on locally only focused directories.

Hi Michael

The problem you have is the very low value content that exists on all of those pages and the complete impossibility of writing any unique Titles, Descriptions and content. There are just too many of them.

With a footwear client of mine I no indexed a huge slug of tags taking the page count down by about 25% - we saw an immediate 22% increase in organic traffic in the first month. (March 18th 2017 - April 17th 2017) the duplicates were all size and colour related. Since canonicalising (I'm English lol) more content and taking the site from 25,000 pages to around 15,000 the site is now 76% ahead of last year for organics.  This is real measurable change.

Now the arguments:

Canonicalisation

How are you going to canonicalise 10,000+ pages ? unless you have some kind of magic bullet you are not going to be able to but lets look at the logic.

Say we have a page of Widgets (brand) and they come in 7 sizes. When the range is fully in stock all of the brand/size pages will be identical to the brand page, apart from the title & description. So it would make sense to canonicalise back to the brand. Even when sizes started to run out, all of the sizes will be on the brand page. So size is a subset of the brand page.

Similar but not the same for colour. If colour is a tag then every colour sorted page will be on the brand page. So really they are the same page - just a slimmer selection. Now I accept that the brand page will contain all colours as it did all sizes but the similarity is so great - 95 % of the content being the same apart from the colour, that it makes sense to call them the same.

So for me Canonicalisation would be the way to go but it's just not possible as there are too many of them.

Noindex

The upside of noindex is that it is generally easier to put the noindex tag on the page as there is no URL to tag. The downside is that the page is then not indexed in Google so you lose a little  juice - I would argue by the way that the chances of being found in Google for a size page is extremely slim, less than 2% of visits came from size pages before we junked them and most of those were from a newsletter so reality is <1% not worth bothering about You could leave off the nofollow so that Google crawls through all of the links on the pages - the better option.

Considering your problem and having experience of a number of sites with the same problem Noindex is your solution.

I hope that helps

Kind Regards

Nigel - Carousel Projects.

Yes they should have put some groundwork in place before doing it! Especially of they knew it was such an important page.

Regards

Nigel

Hi Mike

I see this a lot with sites that have a ton of tag groups. One site I am working on has 50,000 pages in Google caused by tags appending themselves to every version of a URL, the site only has 400 products. Example

Site/size-4
Site/womens/size-4
Site/womens/boots/size-4
Site/womens/boots/ankle/size-4
Site/womens/clarks/boots/size-4

Etc etc - If there are other tags like colour and features, this can cause a huge 3 dimensional matrix of additional pages that can slow down the crawl of the site - Google may not crawl all of the site as a result.

If it's possible to canonicalse then that is the best option as juice and follows are retained - very often it would be the page with the tag lopped off that the tag should cite.

In extreme circumstances I would consider noindexing the pages as they offer very skinny content and rubbish Meta because it's impossible to handle them individually. I have seen significant improvement in organics as a result.

Personally I don't think it's enough to simply leave Google to figure it out although I have seen some sites with very high DA get away with it.

To be honest I am pretty shocked that Shopify doesn't have a feature to cope with this

Regards

Nigel

Carousel Projects.

Hi Edward

It is really important to have your NAP listed across all the common directories - well when I say all, not low grade ones obviously but sites like Google, Twitter, Foursquare, Yelp, Yell, Thompson Directory etc, depending on your country. There is a great list on Whitespark and you can download a citation checker so that all of the information is consistent across the web. I have seen very tangible moves up in SERPS when this is done correctly as many of these sites are high DA.

This is brilliant - A convenient list by location. I hope it helps: https://whitespark.ca/top-local-citation-sources-by-country/

Kind Regards

Nigel

Hi Alex

This is exactly the way I guide all my eCommerce clients when they are setting up their product pages. The colour becomes an attribute and sits after the main URL using a # - the URL is therefore non colour specific. the advantage is that you will not have all the colours of a style competing in Google for rank where all the content on the page apart from the colour is duplicate content.

I have seen a huge advantage in setting styles up this way. Colour can be a drop down on the page but make sure you tell the developer to list all colours on the category and brand pages otherwise the number of style options can look a bit thin.

This site does it well (I set it up) - like you are suggesting - Google stops at the # - no need to mess with parameters. https://www.shoon.com/mens-c108

Good luck

Nigel - Carousel Projects

Hi Furseo

I would say that it has the potential to affect your SEO as you are not able to close the pop up without selecting a city. I do not live in any of the cities listed so I can't navigate your website. Google will penalise sites which it deems are obscured behind an intrusive pop up.

You can read more about interstitial ads and pop ups here: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/08/helping-users-easily-access-content-on.html

If you want to ask then have a pop up that can be closed by the user. Having a sniffer on the site is not always a good idea as servers can be hosted in different locations to the user.

Kind Regards

Nigel

Hi Kelly

I work with eCommerce stores all the time and coincidentally some of those happen to be footwear sites. Anyway I'm sure it's just coincidence.

The problem you may have here could be multi-fold

1. Page Authority/Domain Authority - it may just be that because the home page has a high domain authority - (ie online reputation helped by back links from other high DA sites), that it was naturally easier to rank for contextually similar keywords to those that you were targeting for the home page.

The new page may have no backlinks whatsoever and therefore a low page authority (PA) so even though to you it appeared more relevant it may be really hard to rank quickly for the search terms Boots

2. Back links & Anchor text - The home page may well have back links through the anchor text Boots which may of course conflict with what you are trying to achieve for the new page, so it would not simply be enough to remove all mention of boots when other sites may be pointing at you through that keyword.

I don't think that simply waiting will make a lot of difference as Google updates dynamically now. But you may be able to influence how the page is treated internally by re-directing internal traffic through the keyword Boots.

Blog posts could be written citing the term Boots with back links to the new page.

Outside influencers may be able to write blog content or provide links back to you through the anchor text Boots.

Frankly if it's causing you problems internally by breaking this new page out and trying to rank for it I would always hold my hands up and re-canonicalise. You do not want to be accused of losing the company money. Keep the page there and maybe slide it across when more of the above has been achieved. Creating internal and getting backlinks for Boots will not make any difference as it's canonicalised to the home page. When you have waited a few months and can be more confident then maybe try again.

For sure you can't sit and wait as your credibility flies out of the window.

I have a client who sells a certain brand of sandals really well. His subcategories were tags so appended themselves to everything creating skinny content. We are just in the process of making them sub-categories. Frankly if Toe Post sandals fails to rank for the brand and is considered a subset or partial duplicate of sandals, then we will re-canonicalise pretty quickly back to sandals.

I hope that helps.

Sometime the logical way doesn't always achieve the best results.

Regards Nigel

Hi Michael,

Yes - OK forget the brand pages - I had to make some assumptions from what you had written.

Cut it down and write contextually strong descriptive content 3-400 words at category & Sub-cat level.

I work with a lot of eCommerce sites that have fallen victim to pernicious tags, sizes and colours appending themselves to every version of a page.

It might look great having 50000 pages splattered all over Google but can you honestly say that they provide value and a good UX for the consumer?

Make each page sing for it's supper. Have a keywords or small group of contextually similar content for each page and add the written content and you will nail it.

Use MOZ Keyword explorer to provide you will the closely matched keywords,

I hope that helps,

Kind Regards

Nigel

Sorry but I think the opposite.

If you are a weak site with few back links and a low domain authority then you need to concentrate as much juice through as fewer pages as possible whilst retaining a strong fairly flat hierarchy. You don't have the option of doing nothing as you are cannibalizing your site in search.

I deduce from what you are saying that you have this problem.

Site/size
Site/Collection-1/Size
Site/Collection-2/Sub-collection-1/Size

So the size filter can be applied to any part of the site at collection level. You may also have

Site/Brand/Size
Site/Brand/Collection/Size
Site/Brand/Collection/Sun-Collection-1/Size

Then you will have maybe

Site/Sale/Size
Site/Sale/Collection-1/Size
Site/Sale/Colelction-1/Sub-collection-1/Size

On top of this problem you will have

Site/Brand/Product-1/Size-29
Site/Brand/Product-1/Size-30

Etc

I hope I am right!

Solution for Brands and Categories

it is better to have size as a tag and noindex/nofollow the tag group so that none of these extra pages get indexed in Google. This will make an enormous difference to your website slashing the number of pages with skinny content and visits right down.

You simply can not have these pages:

Site/Brand/Size

Competing with the main brand page ie

Site/Brand/

I don't know how many sizes you have but say there are 20, then it's like having 20 duplicates of the brand page, the category page, the category/sub category page.

Solution For Products.

Have one product page:

Site/Brand/Product-1

The sizes can then drop down on the page without changing the URL - the canonical on any size is thus

Site/Brand/Product-1

Some sites will append the tag for size thus:

Site/Brand/Product-1#size30

With the size as an attribute - everything after the # is not indexable as Google does not go beyond a #

It would also be prudent to do this for colour as well otherwise you will get mass duplication at colour level. That should also be treated as a tag or attribute that does not append to every version of a page.

I really do hope I have understood this correctly.

I repeat, You don't have the option of doing nothing as you are cannibalizing your site for search.

eCommerce site structure is core to my business.

Kind Regards

Nigel

When you say they have been indexed do you actually know that they have been recently crawled by Google? I have worked on sites where it has been 10 days to two weeks for some of the internal brand and sub category pages to be re indexed.

Take the URL and past it in to the google bar then when the listing comes up click the down arrow to the right of the domain name to see the Google cached version and check the date.

If it's still stating a date pre-update then all you have to do is wait.

There is no other reason apart from browser caching why Google should show the old version of the Meta. I agree if the Meta is poor or too long Google may decide to use a page snippet but not the old Meta.

 

Thanks Hanna, just ensure it's Women's and not Women as it Dan's reply and remember the use of Ladies' as well,

Kind Regards

Nigel

It seems odd to deal with filtering here. I'd normally do that in Search Console under URL parameters but you have to be extremely careful altering stuff in there. If you email me the site I'll run a check on why Collections aren't showing.

Hi SEOhanna

Totally. You do not need to mention Women's three times, just the once and that would be OK to rank for the derivatives as you say.

If it was me I would include the other terms like the words Ladies, printed tops, women's solid shirts etc (Use MOZ Keyword explorer to find contextually similar keywords, materials etc),  spread through 3-400 words of descriptive text on the category page.

A short description at the top reinforcing the main category and then a chunkier piece below the fold. If you place it all at the top then the customer would have to scroll through it to find product.

I hope that helps

Regards Nigel

Hi mk

I am completely with Martin here. It never made sense creating a domain name with company and product in in the first place. You would be doubling the mistake by bringing it back to a sub domain.

In my opinion you either leave it like it is but more preferably, use a subfolder, then 301 all the old site back to the equivalent pages within that. i.e.

domain.com/catergory/separateproduct

It just doesn't make sense from a number of points running a site just for a subset of products. The site would continually fight with www.companyname.com for link juice. It's far better to keep the whole shebang under one umbrella.

Although part of the ranking factor in determining QS is associated with conversion history I would argue that it is heavily skewed towards how the ad text is written targeting appropriately written on page content/headings/meta.

Regards

NIgel

Try deleting these from the Robots txt.

Disallow: /collections/+
Disallow: /collections/%2B
Disallow: /collections/%2b

Submit again and see what comes up. I'd hazard that this is the most logical explanation apart from having a noindex tag on the collections pages.

Are the blogs pages coming up by the way?

Right click 'view source' and have a look if there is one there.

Regards

Nigel

Without seeing that section of code it's hard to say. I would assume that the meta tags are in the wrong position on the page from what you have posted. They need to be in the head element and should go: name="description" content=XXX"/>