Magento Duplicate Content Recovery

[Jonnygeeuk]

Hi, we switched platforms to Magento last year. Since then our SERPS rankings have declined considerably (no sudden drop on any Panda/Penguin date lines). After investigating, it appeared we neglected to No index, follow all our filter pages and our total indexed pages rose sevenfold in a matter of weeks.

We have since fixed the no index issue and the pages indexed are now below what we had pre switch to Magento. We've seen some positive results in the last week. Any ideas when/if our rankings will return?

Thanks!

[evolvingSEO]

Hi There

This is really hard to answer. Let's assume nothing else changed (which is of course, completely impossible) but for the sake of the question. All of the wrong pages that were not indexed prior would need to be de-indexed in Google - I would check to see if they are still indexed, because it can take some time for them to be de-indexed. If/when that happens, in our hypothetical vacuum like situation, the rankings would return when those pages are completely de-indexed.

However, in reality, this is not how it works of course - so by all means, fix the technical issues, as they are important of course - but don't forget to keep a wide view of the situation and realize that other factors may be affecting the rankings now as well - and to not hyper-focus/obsess too much about this one thing.

-Dan

[LynnPatchett]

Hi Jon,

Are you sure the indexing issue was the cause of your drop in rankings? Switching platforms can introduce a raft of potential issues. You have probably covered these but worth keeping in mind things like any content changes that happened at the same time, proper rel canonical tags on the product pages, 301 redirects to account for url changes etc. I would pay particular attention to main keywords and their associated landing pages pre and post platform change to note any major differences which might give you more specific areas to look at.

In regards how long it might take, if you have a big site with lots of products then it could take google a number of weeks to reindex (or deindex) all the pages, so I would suggest being patient before making too many changes on top of each other. You can check the cache date of your main pages in the google serps by clicking on the 'cached' link next to the url which will give you a page with the date of the latest copy google has.

Hope that helps!

[BlueprintMarketing]

I personally feel Magento is prehistoric and not much fun. However if it is a issue where you have simply had mixed up settings with index and archive I believe it will be back before you know it. I have fouled up the settings once or twice myself. this is a link to a very good resource for Magento in my opinion I would be running WordPress woo commerce but I don't know how big your stores nor do I know you're interested in running

http://yoast.com/articles/magento-seo/

I hope I have been of help,

Tom