Correct strategy for long-tail keywords?
-
Hi,
We are selling log houses on our website. Every log house is listed as a "product", and this "product" consists of many separate parts, that are technically also products. For example a log house product consists of doors, windows, roof - and all these parts are technically also products, having their own content pages.
The question is - Should we let google index these detail pages, or should we list them as noindex?
These pages have no content, only the headline, which are great for long-tail SEO. We are probably the only manufacturer in the world who has a separate page for "log house wood beam 400x400mm". But otherwise these pages are empty.
My question is - what should we do? Should we let google index them all (we have over 3600 of them) and maybe try to insert an automatic FAQ section to every one of them to put more content on the page?
Or will 3600 low-content pages hurt our rankings? Otherwise we are ranking quite well.
Thanks, Johan
-
Thank You very much, Philipp. We will change our website according to your suggestions
Have a great week! Johan
-
Hej Johan!
Ah okay, then the answer is easier: If your visitors won't be able to see those sites, Google must not access them either.I also suggest not to list them in an XML-Sitemap since only pages with value for users should be listed there. As you asked above, IMO these 3600 low quality pages would not have a positive impact - they might even hurt you.
Focus on pushing those sites for search engines that are of value to users.
Cheers,
Phil -
Hi, Philipp!
Thank You for the response. Visitors currently do not see these options anyway, they are only in the system because of our custom pricing quote system.
I think my main question is, should we hide these pages from google or should we list them in our sitemap. Our site visitors will never see these pages, but they do exist. We can make them noindex, if google may not look well at them.
-
That amount is probably a bit too much. I guess you want to bundle your efforts more into top-hierarchy overview pages. Keep in mind that users hardly will perform specific searches for something like "log house wood beam 400x400mm"...
Usually it's a better choice to have one landing page for the product and let users customize via dropdown (to chose 400mm, 600mm, etc.). This will reduce your amount of pages and probably leads to a better user experience too.
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
-
What Navigation strategy should I pursue for this local SEO project? Why?
Hi Mozzers, Context: I am working with a plumbing company that is located in NC and covers 6 locations( 1 address + 5 target cities). To start off I am planning to SEO his main location + 2 to 3 areas. The initial plan is to create 30 (10 services for 3 locations) unique landing pages for the main area and the extra locations,. His services are: PLUMBING EMERGENCY PLUMBING WATER TREATMENT WATER HEATER INSTALLATION WATER HEATER REPAIR TANKLESS WATER HEATERS SEWER AND DRAIN CLEANING REPIPING GARBAGE DISPOSALS GENERAL PLUMBING Since I am including 2 to 3 extra areas offering all these services above, should I include a subnavigation which will create a localized microsite within the site itself for these extra locations or not? Please specify why? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Why Keyword Ranking Fluctuate?
Hi All, I have a shoes website and I am working on it from last four months. I am targeting four main keywords but I have some issues with ranking. First one is that keywords ranking fluctuate many time a day but they remain on the same page. Second one is that these keywords remain on the same page for 2 to 3 week and than suddenly they drop down in the ranking. Please help me regarding these issue. Waiting for replies. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cuttingseo0 -
Image maps and keyword density?!
If image maps/shapes are showing as keyword density in SEO tools, could they skewing the SEO effectiveness of a page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Crumpled_Dog0 -
Newbie question about long tail keywords
I am a little confused as to how search engines see and rank keywords. Let me explain. If I have a fairly long tail keyword such as "buy natural progesterone cream uk" will the search engine also break this up into smaller parts such as "buy natural progesterone uk"," buy progesterone cream uk", "natural progesterone uk" and so on or will it only see the words that are next to each other like "progesterone cream uk". Also where does cannibalization come into this? I really appreciate any help I can get with this that furthers my understanding. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mogsta220 -
Why my own page is not indexed for that keyword?
hi, I recently recreated the page www.zenucchi.it /ITA/poltrona-frau-brescia.html on the third level domain poltronafraubrescia.zenucchi.it by putting it on the home page. The first page is still indexed for the keyword poltrona frau brescia . But the new page is no indexed for that keyword and i don't know why ( even if the page is indexed in google ) .. I state that the new domain has the same autorithy and that i put a 301 redirect to pass his authority to the new one that has many more incoming links that did not have previous .. i hope you'll help me thanks a lot
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | guidoboem0 -
Dropping dramatically in keyword rankings
One of my clients has always ranked well for this keyword (janitorial services, nh). Then within a week, they dropped out of the top fifty in Google and now in other major search engines as well. My first thought of why the drop in rankings is due to duplicate listings within online directories. The previous marketing person on staff was listing the company more than once in these directories, and it wasn't discovered until later in the link building process. Sometimes the company was listed with "janitorial services" as part of the company name, and then listed again with "carpet cleaning" as part of the company name... sometimes with duplicate address, or using the po box instead - as if two companies. The odd thing in all this is that while they dropped in ranking for this keyword, they still come in usually 1st in Google Places for this keyword with 12 excellent reviews. And yet when I check their Google Places account, it says that it needs to be reverified, again, it doesn't meet the terms. (company is a family owned business, for over 30 years, they have a lot of potential). So all this duplication needs to be fixed, but how serious are duplicate listings on places like Manta, YellowPages, SuperPages, also Yahoo Business Local and Bing Business Directory? And now that "forensics" seems to be my task, any suggestions on how to start? Any processes I should go through with Google WebMaster? _Cindy And, too, if I could add, the site ranks very poorly for this keyword and while I have provided recommendations, and they understand the onsite issue, they have yet to go forward with implementation, making this a little more difficult issue.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CeCeBar0 -
What strategies to best use to boost rankings across long-tail articles on site?
Heya! I'm currently engaged in what appears to be a slightly unusual SEO task. I run a large, reasonably well-respected (but not global-standard, yet) site that I'm currently monetising through individual articles targetted at addressing specific search engine queries that I know have decent traffic. It's the EHow / Demand Media model, except with a focus on a single specific (video games) niche, and much, much better quality articles (sufficiently good that they attract a fair amount of praise - all the writers on the site are published authors and the quality's damn high). Most of our articles end up ranking with essentially no backup, but they don't rank high - usually 2nd or 3rd page of Google. I'm trying to determine what the most effective strategy would be for us to boost our article rankings with the least possible expense / effort (we don't have a huge budget). Our long-tail articles are mostly being trumped by articles with either a couple of external links to them or by other articles with no links but from a site with significantly higher Domain Authority (70+ to our 48).I'm working to improve our on-page optimisation, but it's already pretty good (an "A" report from the SEOMoz tools on most or all pages). So, I'm wondering what the best use of our time would be to increase traffic globally across the site. Strategies I'm considering: Focussing on building links to the homepage and to any other pages on the site, by asking for links from community members, doing linkbait articles, directory submissions, guest blogging, and so on. Long-term aim: increase our domain-wide MozRank and MozTrust. Build links to our long-tail articles specifically, most popular first. Get direct links from relevant blogs, press releases, social bookmarking, etc. Long-term aim: get to #1 on Google one page at a time. Something Else? I'm wondering what the big SEO brains here would suggest? Happy to provide additional details if it would help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cairmen1 -
Keyword Self-Cannibalization Concern
Right now I have an E-Commerce website that has layered menu properties. I have one page trying to rank for "NextGen Digital Ballast" that is the main category page. However, on that category page I link out to three product pages which would be "NextGen 400W Digital Ballast", "NextGen 600W Digital Ballast" and "NextGen 1000W Digital Ballast". The on page ranking factors tools is saying I may need to consider making adjustments because of the potential self-cannibalization, but I wanted to get some feedback to see what others thought about that. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JerDoggMckoy2