Deindexing SEO Delivers Revenue Results

June 7, 2018

SEO is still an important aspect of the Google algorithm and other search engine crawlers. In my opinion, tweaking Web pages can result in a boost for content in some queries. I have a hunch that Google’s system then ignores subsequent tweaks. The Web master then has an opportunity to buy Google advertising, and the content becomes more findable. But that’s just an opinion.

The received wisdom is that the key to great SEO is to generate great content, which is the crawlers then index. Robin Rozhon shares that technical SEO has a big impact on your Web site, especially if it is large. In his article, “Crawling & Indexing: Technical SEO Basics That Drive Revenue (Case Study)” Rozhon discusses to maximize technical SEO, including deindexing benefits.

Rozhan ran an experiment where they deindexed over 400,000 of their 500,000 Web sites and 80% of their URLs, because search engines indexed them as duplicate category URLs. Their organic traffic highly increased. Before you deindex your Web sites, check into Google Analytics to determine how well the pages are doing.

Also to determine what pages to deindex collect data about the URLs and find out what the parameters are along with other data. Use Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, log files, and other data about the URL to understand its performance.

Facets and filters are another important contribution to URLs:

“Faceted navigation is another common troublemaker on ecommerce websites we have been dealing with.Every combination of facets and filters creates a unique URL. This is a good thing and a bad thing at the same time, because it creates tons of great landing pages but also tons of super specific landing pages no one cares about.”

They also have pros and cons:

I learned this about “facets”:

  • Facets are discoverable crawlable and indexable by search engines;
  • Wait! Facets are not discoverable if multiple items from the same facet are selected (e.g. Adidas and Nike t-shirts).
  • Facets contain self-referencing canonical tags;

And what about filters?

  • Filters are not discoverable;
  • Filters contain a “noindex’ tag;
  • Filters use url parameters that are configured in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster tools.

As a librarian, I believe that old school ideas have found their way into the zippy modern approach to indexing via humans and semi smart software.

In the end, consolidate pages and remove any dead weight to drive traffic to the juicy content and increase sales. Why did they not say that to begin with, instead of putting us through the technical jargon?

Whitney Grace, June 7, 2018

Comments

2 Responses to “Deindexing SEO Delivers Revenue Results”

  1. Julia on June 7th, 2018 10:40 am

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    Julia

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