SEO for Faceted Navigation€¦ · © Copyright 2017 Builtvisible. All rights reserved. Private and Confidential. Title: Robyn Lodge - Builtvisible Created Date: 10/19/2017 11:34:49

© Copyright 2017 Builtvisible. All rights reserved. Private and Confidential

SEO for Faceted NavigationSmart solutions for better organic performance

Robyn Lodge | Senior Consultant | [email protected]


Just so we’re clear…



Sometimes it can be great



Turn visibility into cash


Long-tail“samsung galaxy s8 64gb”

260 searches


SEO can often be a secondary concern which can lead to problems



Different facet combinations can create endless URLs

kj If these are left open to crawl and indexation, we have a problem.

There are only 147 products in Debenham’s ‘ceiling lights’ category…

…But over 1,000 faceted category pages indexed!


Spot the difference…



Our crawlable architecture becomes too flat


• We have little ability to rank for anything other than head terms, losing out on HUGE opportunities.

• Head terms are super competitive • We’re blocking pages targeting mid and long tail terms


Hugely competitive & generic


Head term“mobile phones”110,000 searches


More specific, but still competitive


Mid-tail“samsung mobile”

8,100 searches



Very specific with intent to buy


Long-tail“samsung galaxy s8 64gb”

260 searches

Mid-tail“samsung mobile”

8,100 searches



What can you do about it



One size does not fit all



Remember what you are trying to achieve…



How do you get there?



Develop your strategy

• Understand user’s search behaviour • Which pages drive traffic - are they being indexed?

• Analyse competitors and define your brand’s quality benchmark• Set criteria for a ‘thin’ page – should it be indexed?

• Mirror search demand with technical config• E.g. Cut off point for indexing URLs with a specific number of facets applied

o black short sleeve petite maxi dress between £20-30 = 0 searches



What tools are at your disposal?

Reduces crawl budget waste

Reduces duplication / keyword cannibalisation

Passes link equity

Cleans up indexation bloat

Robots.txt disallows

Noindex,follow

Canonical

Rel=“nofollow” internal links

Often depends on the site’s configuration…



Scaling up

• Learn to speak your dev team’s language• Understand your platform• Understand your priorities

• Add noindex,follow to a URL when:• It reaches a certain subfolder depth• It has a certain number of facets applied• Multiple facets are selected in the same facet category

• Prevent further facet refinement when product offering remains the same• Prevent clickable links / URLs created• Add rel=“nofollow” to link

• Enforce strict, consistent ordering of facets in URL string• Avoids further URL string combinations



Common sense also applies...

• Look for obvious facets that don’t drive search traffic

• Check search volumes and test

• QA search data with GA data

Tip:

• First add noindex,follow to allow URLs to drop out of index

• After ~4 weeks, add robots.txt disallows



Putting the process into action



Classic ecommerce website

Architecture prone to severe levels of duplication and keyword cannibalisation through deeply faceted category structures.

• 1,000s of categories with multiple facets creating an infinite number of URLs• Huge numbers of duplicate pages indexed • Keyword cannibalisation • Thin pages (low products, no optimisation, no content)

• Inconsistent ordering of facets in URLs

• SEO not a historical priority



Over 90%



0.007%



No development scope for overhauling their existing architecture.

Instead, we carried out a platform review with the aim to reduce crawl budget waste, and reduce

duplication and cannibalisation.



First up, data collection



Excel



Scaling crawls

• Screaming Frog for crawl sample• ~150k URLs

• Regex exclusions to filter out product pages• Leaving just category & subcategory pages



Custom extraction for facet analysis

Use Xpath or CSS selectors to extract 4 useful data points to help us identify duplication:



For example - number of products


Another one - product titles


Add in some GA data…

All channels and organic data can show if a faceted URL is receiving traffic and/or converting, regardless of search volumes.

• 3 month data sample

• Organic & all channel data

• Traffic, revenue & transactions

Bulk export GA data using Analytics Edge (free)


Now the useful part



What we need

• Clean dataset of organic pages

• Supporting data from GA

• Common identifiers to classify duplicate pages



Identify duplicate pages


Filter to organic dataset

Create unique string Find duplicates

Analyse duplicate pages

• Status code 200• Indexable• Canonical

• COUNTIF unique string

• A-Z unique string column

• Concatenate custom extractions

• No. products• Product 1• Product 2• Product 3

• Work out best solution


For example


7 different URLs with

• The same number of products

• The same first 3 products


Strategy is important, execution is everything



Code changes

• Updated robots.txt disallows• Inconsistent URL structure – created 6 different disallows

• Started discussions around creating rules to avoid generating unnecessary faceted URLs• 5 or less products / product selection doesn’t change with additional facets

• Updated sitemaps• Removed blocked URLs


On-page optimisation

For faceted pages where search demand was present but the pages were underperforming organically:

• Optimise meta data

• Add on-page copy

• Internally link between related pages

Monitor performance and gauge next steps.


35%Robyn Lodge | Senior Consultant | [email protected]


To summarise



Get the right data



Identify areas of crawl budget waste



Understand your devs & work with them to implement fixes



Wash, rinse, repeat



Thanks


Documents

SEO for Faceted Navigation€¦ · © Copyright 2017 Builtvisible. All rights reserved. Private and Confidential. Title: Robyn Lodge - Builtvisible Created Date: 10/19/2017 11:34:49