Maintaining SEO with Ecommerce Search Refinement
-
Hey Everyone,
i have an interesting scenario I'd appreciate some feedback on. I'm working on restructuring a client site for a store design, and he had previously built a bunch of landing pages mostly for SEO value- some of them aren't even accessible from the main nav and contain a lot of long-tail type targets. These pages are generating organic traffic but the whole thing is pretty not user-friendly because it's cumbersome to drill down into specific categories (that many of the landing pages fulfill) without going through 3 or 4 pages to get there. For example, if I want to buy orange shoes, i can see specific kinds of orange shoes, but not ALL the orange shoes, even though there is an SEO page for orange shoes that is otherwise inaccessible from the main navigation.
If that wasn't too confusing, essentially the usability solution to this is implementing some search refinement so that the specific sub categories can be drilled into easily with less steps.
My issue is that I'm hesitant to implement this even though I know it would be an overall benefit to the site, because the existence of these SEO pages and being wary of destroying the organic traffic they're already receiving.
My plan was to see to it that the specific category pages are built with the necessary keywords and content to attract those organic visits, but I'm still nervous it might not be enough.
Does anyone have any suggestions for this circumstance, but also just maximizing SEO efforts on a site with search refinement and how to minimize loss. From a usability standpoint, search refinement is great, but how do you counter the significant SEO risks that come with it?
Thanks for your help!
-
Actual pages reached through refinement.
-
That's great- I was thinking of trying something similar. One follow up though, were the sub content pages actually "pages" or were they accessible only through refinement.
For example, if we're talking about "Orange Shoes" - did you actually have a page for Orange Shoes, or is it accessible just by refining Orange shoes from the shoes category?
-
Makes much more sense now.
I went through something very similar about 9 months ago. What we did is take the content from the landing pages and placed it on the sub-content pages with products right on that page. We then created a 301 redirect from the old page to the new. We then went and found all sites on the internet linking to the old pages and updated them if possible to the new URL.
We did see a little bit of a dance on the keywords, but over time we have actually climbed higher in the rankings for those organic terms we were afraid of losing. Best part was that this has increased conversions because customers get to the products much faster and the overall experience is better for the customer.
-
So part of it is that I'm a little wary of deleting those pages, but also that the search-refinement won't be SEO friendly either.
-
I don't think I explained it very well, but yes, the second thing you said. In implementing the search refinement I would be replacing the landing pages with sub-content pages that can be drilled into and my concern is that I will lose the working SEO on those pages. Even though they aren't very user friendly, they're generating some long-tail traffic.
This restructuring is happening in conjunction with a store redesign so it's not as if I'm just implementing it for the heck of it. This is step 1 in a large project, and I don't think tightening up the category structures will considerably improve user experience without search refinement- but in implementing search refinement I'm trying not to demolish the SEO too.
Hope that makes sense- thanks for helping.
-
I'm a little confused as to what you are afraid of losing? From your description it sounds like you are saying you are going to make the pages that are receiving organic traffic more easily accessible from your main navigation?
However, I'm also thinking that you are saying you are considering replacing the landing pages with sub-content pages that can be drilled down in to?
Please help me understand a little more clearly.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Merging Pages and SEO
Hi, We are redesigning our website the following way: Before: Page A with Content A, Page B with Content B, Page C with Content C, etc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | viatrading1
e.g. one page for each Customer Returns, Overstocks, Master Case, etc
Now: Page D with content A + B + C etc.
e.g. one long page containing all Product Conditions, one after the other So we are merging multiples pages into one.
What is the best way to do so, so we don't lose traffic? (or we lose the minimum possible) e.g. should we 301 Redirect A/B/C to D...?
Is it likely that we lose significant traffic with this change? Thank you,0 -
Looking for Adult SEO company
Hi guys and girls, I am looking for a company that is willing to work with us to improve our SEO. Our website is www.reallovesexdolls.com and we keep on going all the way UP to fall rock bottom hard again (like waves in the ocean). It's really weird, we never invested much in link building and such. We are so busy with other things that it would be nice to outsource this task. You can contact us by phone, or by email. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MartinePeters0 -
Pagination & SEO
Hi In one of my other Q&A's someone mentioned I may need to look at pagination. For instance, are these pages counted as 'new' pages in Google's eyes when clicking on pagination? http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/plastic-storage-boxes http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/plastic-storage-boxes#productBeginIndex:30&orderBy:5&pageView:list& Does anyone have any advice on what I could do? It's not something I have had much experience with. Thank you Becky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Onsite SEO vs Offsite SEO
Hey I know the importance of both onsite & offsite, primarily with regard to outreach/content/social. One thing I am trying to determine at the moment, is how much do I invest in offsite. My current focus is to improve our onpage content on product pages, which is taking some time as we have a small team. But I also know our backlinks need to improve. I'm just struggling on where to spend my time. Finish the onsite stuff by section first, or try to do a bit of both onsite/offsite at the same time?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Volusion SEO
I have an SEO setting on our Volusion e-commerce store enabled, it is titled "Enable full URL for Home Page Canonical Link (include /default.asp)" I am questioning whether or not this should be enabled for optimal SEO performance. Can anyone provide any advice on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PartyStore0 -
Favorite SEO firm you would recommend
Is there a favorite SEO firm that you would recommend. Is there any site that ranks the top firms in the country?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | movieguide0 -
Should eCommerce Canonicalize to CMS
We have inherited a site that has a Joomla CMS "showroom" front-end and a Magento "store room" for check out etc. Question - As the site's main pages are in the CMS section should we: make all Magento product pages canonical to the main sections/product pages within the CMS (even though there are no duplicate content issues) "No index" the product pages Index but indicate low page value in sitemap Do something else? 🙂 Thanks for any and all input!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheNorthernOffice790 -
Multiple blogs for seo
I have signed up for some rather expensive lawyer directories that have very high domain PR, 's of 6 or 7 . Some of these allow you to make blog posts or articles on their site which should be good for SEO because of the high domain PR. I understand that if I do a lot of posts on one of these blogs with links back to my site, I should rapidly reach the point of diminishing returns because they are all coming from the same domain. Therefore, I plan to mix up my blo posts betwee several of these sites and also rewrite them and post them on my own site's blog. My question is this, if I post on any of these sites and I link back to internal pages of my site, and not to the home page, does this offset the "diminishing returns" factor? Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | diogenes0