We’ve been experiencing some problems with our website in regards to Google results and indexing. The results are returning pages associated with the REGION they are related to rather than the CATEGORY; even though the category is far more keyword-specific and has more content, the region page ranks far higher in the SERPS than the category, and sometimes the category isn’t even listed at all despite the site being several years old and indexed/crawled frequently.
We THINK we have narrowed it down to being because of canonical links pointing directly to a root product which is making Google completely ignore the entire category - is this possible? Would Google just assume that the whole “category” level is irrelevant and either list the end product or the main region?
The structure at the moment goes:
STATE - Region (aka City) - Category - Product
as you can see on http://www.experienceoz.com.au
EVERYTHING except the category level is being indexed by Google. ANY help would be greatly appreciated as the category is pretty much our most important landing page to get customers to follow through with a purchase (other than the product itself of course). Thanks.
Edit: ugh, how do you get the URL not to automatically add spammy meta title tags on this forum?
Well, I cannot really understand your question either, so I took a look at your website hoping to find some clue there - I can’t say I’m any the wiser for having looked.
Nevertheless, here are a couple of thoughts that may or may not answer your problem, whatever it is.
First, you have canonical links that point to the webpage that they are coded on. For example:
<link rel=“canonical” href=“http://www.experienceoz.com.au/gold-coast” />
is coded in the <head> section of the
http:// www. experienceoz. com. au/gold-coast
webpage itself.
This is not a very good idea. In plain words, it is saying to Googlebot: The content on this page is the same as the content on this page which you should index in preference to this page.
I do not know what Googlebot will make of this kind of use of the canonical instruction - most probably ignore it, is my guess.
Secondly, if you class your Category pages being these, for example:
Zoos in Australia
Theme Parks in Australia
Then, Google has indexed them. If you put in a search term like “Zoos in Australia” I guess your webpage is not ranking well in the SERPs because competition appears strong for this search term.
Just because a webpage is indexed does not mean it will rank well, or at all, for any given search term.
Just because a webpage does not rank well, or at all, for any given search term it does not mean it is not indexed.
If these pages are not what you class Category pages as, then a little further explanation on your part would be helpful.
The canonical tag is a way of saying to Google, “when you see this page, this is the URL we want you to use for it”. It’s a request rather than an instruction, and Google can ignore it if it chooses to. Essentially, it is used to give a definitive URL when there are multiple routes to a page, or when you have variations that you don’t want Google to index.
It should not be used to refer to anything other than the definitive URL for that page, or else you are likely to see Google not indexing the page, exactly as you have done here.
Edit: ugh, how do you get the URL not to automatically add spammy meta title tags on this forum?
Don’t use spammy titles having the forum software grab the title tag for links really does highlight those sites that have gone overboard with keyword stuffing!
Un-check the “Automatically retrieve titles from external links” box further down the page. (If you’re in ‘quick reply’ mode, you need to click ‘go advanced’ to get this option).
Not sure why people are having such difficulty understanding this question. In fact, because it displays a fluent and sophisticated command of the English language, and uses complex sentence structures and vocabulary, it stands out from what we so often see in this forum. Not to insult anyone in particular…
Sorry, it’s a bit hard to describe as we have our own terminology for each level of the domain.
So for example for a full URL from main page to end product, would be something like: http://www.experienceoz.com.au/gold-coast/theme-parks/sea-world
Where:
/gold-coast = REGION
/theme-parks = CATEGORY
/sea-world = PRODUCT
Both the regions and products are indexing fine, but none of the category-level pages under any region are indexing, despite being more relevant to most search queries and at a higher level of the site than the product pages. We are trying to make the categories as targeted as possible but it’s all a bit pointless if they aren’t even being indexed.
So what I am trying to say is that, looking at the HTML, does it seem like the CANONICAL LINK is being directed to the PRODUCT and thus ignoring the category entirely?
I’m not exactly sure how else I can word it, lol. But thanks for all the help anyway
