New, Used, Refurbished Ecommerce Products
-
I'm in a situation where I am trying to improve an ecommerce site that sells about 10-15 products, and a few variations of each. My main headache is coming from the fact that we sell New, used, and refurbished products that are often overlapping. I'm not really sure if I am categorizing the products/structuring the site the best possible way.
Here is an example that shows the current structure of the site:
New Fruits
--> Bananas
----> Banana Model 1
----> Banana Model 2
--> Apples
----> Apple Model 1
----> Apple Model 2
--> Oranges
----> Orange Model 1
----> Orange Model 2Refurbished Fruits --> Bananas
----> Refurbished Banana
--> Apples
----> Refurbished Apple
--> Oranges
----> Refurbished OrangeThe business, however, specializes in the refurbished models because they make significantly more money for each one that is sold. Because of this, it's way more important to get the refurbished models ranking up for the terms.
I've been struggling to get good results from my SEO efforts and I think that this strange site structure could be holding me back.
Would it make sense for me to use canonical on the "New Fruits" pages, pointing toward the "Refurbished Fruits" pages?
Should I be trying to build links to the category pages or the actual product pages. IE: To "Refurbished Fruits --> Bananas" rather than "Refurbished Fruits --> Bananas --> Refurbished Banana?"
-
Yeah... I think that is the best approach as people search for the fruit first and fore-most then would probably decide on the refurbished or not.
-
So you think I should combine the New and Refurbished categories and just organize them by Fruits? I think that would be pretty useful. It would lessen the amount of duplicate content that I'm getting while also allowing me to send links to the category page that would help both New and Refurbished get found.
-
I would focus on the fruit. I'd have fruit categories and put the refurbished on the top of that structure. People are searching for the fruit first and foremost and not "refurbished" in general. I would not canonical back the new product URLs to the refurbished ones. Keep them pure. However to push the refurbished fruit you could add links and advertising on the new fruit back to the refurbished fruit pages.
I would think you would want to link build back to the category unless the content is real specific to a model. I am thinking the category will be more permanent and you wouldn't want a link back to a product that is sold out or no longer available.
Hope this helps - good luck!
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
-
Use of "/" and using fractions in titles
We are a company that sells pipe and fittings. An example of a part that someone will search for is : 3/4" PVC Socket I am not sure how best to represent the fraction in the title of the page that has such a product. I am concerned that if I use the forward slash it will be misinterpreted by search engines (although it will be interpreted properly by users). A lot of folk search for the product by the fraction size and so it would be good to be able to represent it in the title, but I don't want to get "punished" by confusing search engines. I could replace the forward slash with a hyphen or pipe symbol, but then may look a bit weird to our users... Any recommendations? Bob
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobBawden11 -
How to optimize an ecommerce catalog that uses parameters only
Hello ! I am facing a problem concerning a client's website that has been developped using filters that create parameters - there are no categories. This means that, no matter what I choose as a filter, the page title, desc and my H1 stays the same. In a beautiful, unicorn rainbow filled world - I could just tell them to restructure their site with new categories/sub categories AND with filters. For SEO purposes and to find a temporary solution until we can change the architecture, what would be the best choice? Should we create individual pages that serves the same content as the catalog, but with rewritten URL, Title, Description and canonical?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Charles-O
ie: http:/domain.com/catalog/?brand=moz canonical to http:/domain.com/catalog/brand/moz ? I noticed indeed.com does that (https://ca.indeed.com/SEO-Specialist-jobs vs https://ca.indeed.com/jobs?q=SEO+Specialist&l=) Should we dynamise the content depending on which filters has been selected? Of course, some filters are real filters that wouldn't attract or add any value (such as order by) Thanks for your input!0 -
How can I use AMP html on a CMS
I have been trying to research using AMP to improve our mobile speed. We have a whole lot of sites on the same platform managed by a CMS. From what I have read, AMP html can only be used on static pages. Does that mean we would not be able to incorporate this into the html through our CMS? I would like to implement this across all our homepages to test the effectiveness of it if possible, but there is no way to rebuild all our homepages statically. Any advice is much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chrisvogel0 -
New websites
Hi Moz community, My company updated and used a new developer to build and re-design their charity websites: www.runforcharity.com, www.cycleforcharity.com and www.sportforcharity.com. This sites were "re-launched" at the beggining of December 2015 and I have now been able to get a good 6 weeks worth of data. I've been religiously using Moz.com for a couple of years and I use it simply for SEO purposes. Our websites are built upon organic traffic being driven to them and I have noticed that the PA on the new sites has taken a hammering. They all appear to have a PA of 1 and I'm at a loss why? It appears that no page has h1 text? Would this be an issue with the developer or something the content team is doing wrong? Any help of advice would be much appreciated. Many thanks Ryan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bennerya0 -
How to ask customers to +1 the page of the service/product they used and liked on Google+ of website
What format to use (how to write) to ask customers to +1 the page of the service/product they used and liked on Google+?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MasonBaker0 -
Can I use rel=canonical and then remove it?
Hi all! I run a ticketing site and I am considering using rel=canonical temporary. In Europe, when someone is looking for tickets for a soccer game, they look for them differently if the game is played in one city or in another city. I.e.: "liverpool arsenal tickets" - game played in the 1st leg in 2012 "arsenal liverpool tickets - game played in the 2nd leg in 2013 We have two different events, with two different unique texts but sometimes Google chooses the one in 2013 one before the closest one, especially for queries without dates or years. I don't want to remove the second game from our site - exceptionally some people can broswer our website and buy tickets with months in advance. So I am considering place a rel=canonical in the game played in 2013 poiting to the game played in a few weeks. After that, I would remove it. Would that make any sense? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jorgediaz0 -
What Backlink Services Do You Use or Recommend?
Hi, I need some help w/ link blding and would like to outsource some of it. Can you recommend any reputable company thats affordable? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PaulDylan0 -
Penalty for using expired domain?
I was wondering if anyone has any experience using dropped/expired domains with old "clean" backlinks for new sites. Is there be a penalty for doing this (with good intent)? Worth a reconsideration request?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EdgySEO0