Sections, Products and SEO

[johngwms]

I would appreciate some advice about the SEO issues surrounding Sections and Product Pages. I have one section Page and one Product Page per product on my site.

I appreciate that Section Pages can be indexed because they have the Title and Description metatags and that body text within the Section Page will also be read and indexed.

Most of the detailed information about the product including text with keywords and keyword phrases will be in the related Product Page. How can I ensure that the text on the related Product Page is also indexed as well as the Section Page?

John

[RuralWeb]

site map.........

[leehack]

John there has been some lengthy discussions on duplicates and SPP very recently which i'd recommend having a good read through, the discussions started about duplicate content, but they also cover what you refer to.

I had a quick look at your site and it seemed to be a mix of ways that you are using. Your ultimate aim is to usually have the product page as the one indexed and ranked highest and therefore that page is the one marketed towards the key phrases you are targeting. You seem to have quite a bit of info on the listing pages also and although this is good to a certain extent, I think you may have a little too much and be diluting the final pages. You may find that your listing pages are in fact more important for your product pages, it can be product specific, I am just generalising. Lets say you have 100% of content, if you split it 50/50, then you could end up with 2 pages, neither doing great. However, if you split it out to be 20-30% on the listing page and 70-80% on the product page, you may find a better overall result.

There is an SPP tutorial on my site, if you are unsure what we mean when we refer to SPP or how it is set up.

[johngwms]

Thank you Lee.

I will certainly take a look at the threads you mention.

The big question is "How do I ensure that the Product page is Indexed and not the Section Page above it?"

John

[leehack]

If you had 2 market stalls next to each other John and you wanted people to almost always visit one of them, you would make one far more appealing than the other. In SEO terms that would mean the content on the one page needs to outweigh the other, so choose the contents wisely bearing in mind the 'rough' idea I gave on percentages below.

[johngwms]

Got it!

Thanks Lee.

[RuralWeb]

The big question is "How do I ensure that the Product page is Indexed and not the Section Page above it?"Block the page you dont want indexed - its all in the threads if you read them

[Mike Hughes]

The big question is "How do I ensure that the Product page is Indexed and not the Section Page above it?"

I agree with Malcolm, block any pages you don't want indexed.

I'd have to ask why you want to do this though. Google will naturally show whichever of your pages it thinks ranks best for the search term, highest in the results. All your doing by blocking section pages is preventing those pages from appearing in the results, even if they rank better (i.e. higher up the results page) than your other pages.

It's a bit of an odd thing to do really. Why wouldn't you want them in the search results?

Mike

[RuralWeb]

It's a bit of an odd thing to do really
Ive given up asking the obvious questions - we have had some real odd ball SEO stuff recently:rolleyes:

[leehack]

I'd have thought blocking the listing page would devalue the product pages somewhat, been as they are at the next level in the structure, so i'd have said that is a bad idea - but happy to be shown the light as ever. The hierarchy would then be:

Do spider this level
----Don't spider this level
----------Do spider this level

which I personally can't see being of benefit for the store.

I think John wants to have his SERPS landing on the product page with the most info and probably the add to cart button too Mike, this would seem very logical to me. If i was searching for a product, i'd rather to be taken to the SPP rather than the listing page, on a listing page the product could be 20th on the screen well below the fold. I do agree with you however on why would you want to remove pages from the index completely, hence the hint at tipping the balance towards the product page and leaving the listing page to also rank.

As ever SEO is full of so many different ideas and opinions.....

[Mike Hughes]

I've given up asking the obvious questions - we have had some real odd ball SEO stuff recently

I know. Some people are really making it much harder for themselves than they need to. I just try and undo the odd bit of confusion here and there but I'm not sure it's helping as we often seem to end up going around in circles.

Mike

Edit: Lee, I agree that the product page might be more desirable to send customers to than the section page, but if Google puts your section page on the first page of results and your product page on the second page, then getting rid of the section page just means you have no results on the first page of results. The product page doesn't magically get boosted from page 2 to page 1.

And, as you say, blocking the section page will also block Google's spider from following the links on that page, so it might not even find the product page.

[leehack]

Edit: Lee, I agree that the product page might be more desirable to send customers to than the section page, but if Google puts your section page on the first page of results and your product page on the second page, then getting rid of the section page just means you have no results on the first page of results. The product page doesn't magically get boosted from page 2 to page 1.
As I read it, the guys has his 'highest' SERPS landing on listing pages at the moment, he'd prefer that this emphasis was the other way round. So if in your example the page he wants on page 1 of Google is currently page 2 and vice versa, i'd suspect that there is either far better or too much content on the listing pages. Thus, the idea to switch this round if possible, by changing the ratio of content, still retaining the page 1 & 2 SERP, just the other way round.

I know what you mean about SEO and it is a grey area, but take this thread for example. He's had advice off 3 people, all different:

Change the ratio of content between listing pages and product pages
Completely block the page
Block the page is best, but why do this, be happy with what you've got

It really is no wonder that confusion reigns supreme on SEO.

[RuralWeb]

blocking a page is a stupid thing to do but that's what the op asked for so that's what I told him how to do as it's the only way to be 100%. However every action does have it's consequences and if you combine that with no site map and cgi navigation you end up with a site that is almost unspiderable.

[leehack]

blocking a page is a stupid thing to do but that's what the op asked for so that's what I told him how to do as it's the only way to be 100%. However every action does have it's consequences and if you combine that with no site map and cgi navigation you end up with a site that is almost unspiderable.
Sorry Mal, re-reading that back it does seem like I am pointing to the fact that you provided wrong advice, which is not what I meant at all. The guy did ask how to do this and your advice was correct, i just don't think he has relayed properly what he is trying to do.

[RuralWeb]

no problem lee - going for a walk with the dog now as it's finally stopped raining up here and I'm bored with doing mind numbing product photography

[leehack]

I'm bored with doing mind numbing product photography
Get touting for a ladies underwear site, i'm sure the boredom would pass. :D

[Mike Hughes]

I know what you mean about SEO and it is a grey area, but take this thread for example. He's had advice off 3 people, all different:
Change the ratio of content between listing pages and product pages
Completely block the page
Block the page is best, but why do this, be happy with what you've got
It really is no wonder that confusion reigns supreme on SEO.
__________________

There's no reason for SEO to be confusing. All anybody who runs their own site needs to know is the same basic stuff it's always been. Pages are mainly ranked by a combination of 1. Content and 2. Importance (pseudo measured by link strength).

The differring advice this guy got was because he asked a specific question about how to block a page and was given the answer to that question. Malcolms answer was 100% correct which is why I agreed with it but also pointed out that was a pretty daft thing to do.

Section pages will often do better than product pages because even though the product pages might have better content, their importance is lower. This is because of the way most sites are structured. The home page is seen as the most important because this is where all the external links point to. As you navigate through each step of the sites structure the link strength diminishes to the point where pages that are several steps away from the home page are seen as unimportant and often ignored by the search engines. A site map can help here as then every page is only 2 steps way from the home page (as Malcolm pointed out right near the start of this thread).

All anybody needs to do for SEO is to make each page do as well as it can. Have the right content and try to get some external links. Playing around with blocking certain pages is most likely going to do more harm than good.

Mike

[johngwms]

Phew!

I thought I'd let you all cool down a little before clarifying.

Lee is correct, I need my SERPs to point to a product page. If a customer is searching for a specific product he needs to go to the product page, not the listing (Section Page) above.

However, if he is searching for a product type then the listing page would be more useful.

This has clarified matters for me - thank you all. I will organise my SEO to include generic Keywords and Phrases in the Section Page and specific Keywords and phrases on each product page. I don't think that excluding Section Pages from the spidering process would help in the grand scheme of things, although it may raise the ranking of my product pages.

I was initially confused as I was under the (incorrect) impression that product pages were not indexed in the same way as Section Pages. It seems from what is being said that they are.

John

[Mike Hughes]

I don't think that excluding Section Pages from the spidering process would help in the grand scheme of things, although it may raise the ranking of my product pages.

There's no reason to think that excluding one page from the index will cause another one to rise. It doesn't work that way as they're all ranked on their own merit.

I was initially confused as I was under the (incorrect) impression that product pages were not indexed in the same way as Section Pages. It seems from what is being said that they are.

Correct. It's only the pop-up pages (i.e. extended info pages) that aren't ideal for doing well in the search engines.

Mike

[leehack]

If anything John, blocking your listing pages would have a considerable detrimental effect on your product pages, as those will be your only 'internal' pages that link to those product pages. Without them, there is no internal linking apart from the sitemap. I'd be amazed if that did not cause far more harm than good.

[Stereo Steve]

You just need different and unique text on the section page. There will be less of it per product probably so the SPP page should rank higher for searches realted to it. Of course, saying this is very different to finding the time to actually write unique text. It's hard work (see other thread re dup content).