Lets Talk About "SEO" Baby

[Guest]

If you remember Salt 'N' Pepa then the title just might make sense to you. I want to talk about Search Engine Optimization. My goal is to pick the brain of other users here to determine some questions that I have as well as maybe learn some things I didn't already know. Although, I have seen many people steer clear of 'manufacturers' talk, I think its time to bring it up on the table. My website www.13thGreen.com uses the manufacturers page very extensively. Here we allow brands to represent themselves with a graphic banner and a blurb of text. This has proved very successful in bringing traffic. Currently our manufacturer pages (also referred to as brand pages) receive a lot of direct traffic from Google. But the goal here is to always improve upon that. Which brings my first question.

 

Using USU5 by FWR, a product's URL on a brand page would look like this.

http://www.13thgreen.com/ninja-hybrid-golf-2010-onslaught-p-992.html?manufacturers_id=17

 

The code that determines this (I believe) link is found here in product_listing.php

$p_name = $lc_text = '<a rel="nofollow" href="' . tep_href_link(FILENAME_PRODUCT_INFO, 'manufacturers_id=' . $HTTP_GET_VARS['manufacturers_id'] . '&products_id=' . $listing['products_id']) . '">' . $listing['manufacturers_name'] . ' ' . $listing['products_name'] . '</a>';

 

Now at first I wanted to remove the "?manufacturers_id=17" from the link. I thought it would cause Google to see a duplicate page. But as the code shows in the product_listing.php it appears to me that it is marked as a "nofollow', which in my understanding will not get indexed.

 

So how does this effect SEO? Because I do not know, I am only left to speculate. Part of me feels like Google will index the brand page but will not include the valuable link to the products due to the nofollow. I am beginning to think that its horrible and its robbing my brand pages of potential SEO points if you would call it that. Does it? If I remove the nofollow, then I think it could really help the pages. Can anyone support my theory? I know if I remove the no follow I will get a nice list of duplicate pages in Google Web Master tools but I know I can resolve this by removing the "?manufacturers_id=17" from the parameters. Any comments would be appreciated.

 

Thanks

 

- 32 Degrees

[Hotclutch]

 

Using USU5 by FWR, a product's URL on a brand page would look like this.

http://www.13thgreen.com/ninja-hybrid-golf-2010-onslaught-p-992.html?manufacturers_id=17

 

 

 

I don't know how the manufacturer's ID gets appended to your product URL like that, but you can get Google to ignore that parameter. Look in Webmaster Tools, Site Configurstion - Settings - Parameter handling, and tell Google to ignore that parameter.

[Jack_mcs]

You can install Ultimate SEO (if you can't get SEO 5 to work) along with Header Tags SEO. They both work well toegether and Header Tags allow you to control your manufacturers through the title and meta tags, breadcrumb, url and text on the page.

[Guest]

Jack,

 

Thanks for the suggestion, if all else fails I will do just that! I must admit though, USU5 was as easy as spreading butter to install. Currently I'm not looking for a solution. I'm looking for an answer in regards to what works better.

 

Hotclutch,

 

The manufacturers ID gets appended to the product URL because in this case the product is clicked on from the manufacturers page.

 

<hr>

 

But what I want to know is how the manufacturer_id and the nofollow effect SEO? Because I do not know, I am only left to speculate. Part of me feels like Google will index the brand page but will not include the valuable link to the products due to the nofollow. I am beginning to think that its horrible and its robbing my brand pages of potential SEO points if you would call it that. Does it? If I remove the nofollow, then I think it could really help the pages. Can anyone support my theory? I know if I remove the no follow I will get a nice list of duplicate pages in Google Web Master tools but I know I can resolve this by removing the "?manufacturers_id=17" from the parameters. Any comments would be appreciated.

[spooks]

You need to look at what the no-follow is specifically doing, ie is it only added when there is the manufacturers_id in the url? As long as there is a path for google to the product, which there normally would be, the no-follow is a good idea, as otherwise google sees a second path, with manufacturers_id, which then leads to a duplicate content issue.

 

The other approach, avoiding use of no-follow, is to use the canonical tag, that may be the safest route for you, its applied to your target pages, ie product_info.php.

 

Hope that gets you closer.

 

 

[GemRock]

i am afraid to say you seem still not knowing what you are doing. in all the scores of osc shops or osc based shops I have done so far, i dont even think there is a possibility or reason (unless you have installed /mod'ed some rubbish) of having any id=xx at end of urls whatever you click. thats a principle for seo urls. full stop.

Ken

[Guest]

You need to look at what the no-follow is specifically doing, ie is it only added when there is the manufacturers_id in the url? As long as there is a path for google to the product, which there normally would be, the no-follow is a good idea, as otherwise google sees a second path, with manufacturers_id, which then leads to a duplicate content issue.

 

The other approach, avoiding use of no-follow, is to use the canonical tag, that may be the safest route for you, its applied to your target pages, ie product_info.php.

 

Hope that gets you closer.

 

Spooks,

 

This was more on the lines for what I was looking for. What I understand from your post is this. The no-follow stops duplicate content in this matter because if it was not there then Google would see two different paths to the same product. Hence duplicate page warnings in my Google Webmasters tools. Also, the no-follow is only on products clicked from the manufacturers page. What I don't understand is to use the canonical tag. Can you explain this further? What I have figured out on my own is this. I can easily remove the manufacturers_id from the url parmeter. However, when I click on a product from the manufacturers page, WHEN (if I remove it) the manufacturers_id is not appended to the parameter the left hand side category tree opens up to where that product is located. Ex. An ogio grom golf bag clicked from the ogio brand page will take me to the product and the cateogry tree will open "Golf Bags" on the navigation on the left hand side. This can't be too bad?

 

 

i am afraid to say you seem still not knowing what you are doing. in all the scores of osc shops or osc based shops I have done so far, i dont even think there is a possibility or reason (unless you have installed /mod'ed some rubbish) of having any id=xx at end of urls whatever you click. thats a principle for seo urls. full stop.

Ken

 

Gemrock,

 

I wish I had your experience and knowledge on the matter. I felt it was stock like that. However, I could be wrong. Maybe just a modification? However, I have heard other people talk about the same thing???

 

Normal Ex. (First page is landing page, followed by the user clicking on the product:

http://www.13thgreen.com/
http://www.13thgreen.com/product_info.php?products_id=334

 

Manufactures Page

http://www.13thgreen.com/index.php?manufacturers_id=17
http://www.13thgreen.com/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=17&products_id=996

[spooks]

 

 

If you land on the product_info.php page with no paraemters set, application top will endevour to find what category that product is in, thus setting a category id which is then used by the category menu.

 

Thisthread will give you a little more on the canonical tag

[Jack_mcs]

Thanks for the suggestion, if all else fails I will do just that! I must admit though, USU5 was as easy as spreading butter to install. Currently I'm not looking for a solution. I'm looking for an answer in regards to what works better.

I don't see the destinction. Using those contributions will solve the problems of how the url is displayed as well as the duplicate page problem.

 

As for the id being in the url, that has no bearing at all on SEO so you shouldn't waste your time trying to "fix" that. It will cause a problem if there are multiple pages (thus url's) but that is fixed by installing the proper contributions. You can also filter them with robots.txt entries too though if you don't want to use those.