Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
The top level of our site is fine but we have about 1,000 different widget topics with content below them that are set up incorrectly. Here is the current setup for the pages below the main area of the website:
www.my-widgets.com/my-widgets/my-widgets.html
www.my-widgets.com/my-widgets/widgets1.html
www.my-widgets.com/my-widgets/widgets2.html
www.my-widgets.com/my-widgets/widgets3.html
www.my-widgets.com/my-widgets/widgets4.html
That first page is not being seen as the top page for the following corresponding content pages.
We are thinking of just changing that top page to:
www.my-widgets.com/my-widgets.html
Leaving the following corresponding content pages as the same:
www.my-widgets.com/my-widgets/widgets1.html
www.my-widgets.com/my-widgets/widgets2.html
www.my-widgets.com/my-widgets/widgets3.html
www.my-widgets.com/my-widgets/widgets4.html
Then doing a 301 from:
www.my-widgets.com/my-widgets/my-widgets.html
to:
www.my-widgets.com/my-widgets.html
Then the bots should see www.my-widgets.com/my-widgets.html as the top content page for widgets1, widgets2, etc..
With the current setup, that top page is the same level as the corresponding lower pages so naturally the bot wouldn't understand which one is actually the first page.
Would these steps seem logical to fix this issue? If anyone has other ideas, we would love to hear them.
We do like to continue to close all our pages with .html and we have approximately 50,000 pages so we don't want to really do:
www.my-widgets.com/my-widgets/ for the top pages while the rest of the site is all closed up with .html at the end. We would prefer to stick with one theme and we aren't willing to change all 50,000 pages to correct this. Out of the 50,000, about 1,000 of them are the problem top pages to corresponding content pages below.
I hope this makes sense.
Thanks,
Kris
I've seen this symptom so many times, I've even started giving it a name - the "wrong page ranking" problem.
Unfortunately, there are many possible causes of this symptom.
The first step is to get a bit more clarity about your site structure. What you've posted above says nothing about your site structure and how you link internally, which can be one of the causes. What you've posted is your URL structure - largely, an irrelevance.
URLs are part of the user interface of your site. It's nice if they reflect your categorisation and link hierarchy, but URLs can never define that.
Which pages on your site have the most internal links? Do the pages you want to rank have more links than the pages you don't want to rank?
Because url-rewriting is so common, they really must look at page interlinking most of all, so make sure you send good, strong signals that way, too. Sites that use multi-level hover/dropdown menus often have big problems in this area because every page in that structure links to every other page.
First, we don't use any hover/dropdown menus. We stick with straight forward boring old links on the right hand side of every page.
So for example:
www.my-widgets.com/my-widgets/my-widgets.html is currently a home page to anywhere between 20 and 150+ pages of content below it. Every single one of those pages points back to www.my-widgets.com/my-widgets/my-widgets.html. We thought this setup would be just fine because every page below these "top pages" for each particular subject points back to that top page. So we didn't think it mattered if the top page would be at the same directory level as the next level down.
Example Topic:
Pigeons (Top Page)
Right side navigation with the following pages:
- Pigeon Planning
-- Best Planning
-- Don't Do This
-- Plan It This Way
- Pigeon Info
- Pigeon Prices
- Pigeon Whatever
- Pigeon Fun
- Pigeon Activities
.
.
.
More and More Pigeon Information
Pigeon Problems
Another Example Topic
Doves (Top Page)
Right side navigation with the following pages:
- Dove Planning
- Dove Info
-- Rides
--- Ride Hours
-- Accessibility
- Dove Prices
- Dove Whatever
-- Packages
- Dove Fun
- Dove Activities
.
.
.
- More and More Dove Information
- Dove Problems
(I'm afraid widgets is not actually a very good word for our site content and nor are the birds but you get the general idea I hope.)
You can see from the two examples above that we have a Top Page, prime topics below that page and then some of those will have additional pages below them.
A breadcrumb for these pages looks like this:
Home (very top page of site) -> Doves (top page) -> Dove Info -> Rides -> Ride Hours
We don't have any pages lower than Ride Hours. It's as deep as we get. Now in the site: results for checking on Doves we see something like this:
Dove Planning
Dove Info
Rides
Ride Hours
Accessibility
Dove Prices
Dove Whatever
Packages
Doves (Top Page)
Dove Fun
Dove Activities
Etc...
So Doves is stuck somewhere in there, but never at the top of "site:" results.
Now the Home page of the main site (www.my-site.com) is the first thing listed in the "site:" results. Google is not confused about that. All the navigation pages right below the index page are also indexed accordingly.
I believe that our site structure pointing upwards is valid and not an issue since the rest of the site does actually appear logical how Google indexes. It's just those darn top pages for Doves or Pigeons that get a little buried in the "site:" results.
I hope this explains our structure a little better.
Thanks again for the advice.
Kris
As soon as you get beyond a few dozen or a few hundred items, then there's a need to aggregate, which is tricky. Does the same thing happen to every page of this type?
If I was going to gamble, I'd say there's something "wrong" with your category pages which prevents them from ranking.
You want me to define "wrong", right? ;)
Now the Home page of the main site (www.my-site.com) is the first thing listed in the "site:" results. Google is not confused about that.
I would exercise large amounts of caution if you are judging Google results based on advanced search operators. Here be dragons ;)
I am glad the explanation helped. :) Although, I feel no further along! I wish I knew what could be "wrong" with the pages. We aren't spammy people, we don't purchase links, the site is clean... And yes, it is only a problem for these particular pages. Any other upper level for a different part of the site acts as the upper level.
The only reason we thought maybe we should change the links to what I said in the first post is because all other areas do have clearly defined top pages. The top one is a directory higher and these ones are not. That led us to believe that Google is misunderstanding these ones because they didn't follow the same pattern.
So really, the rest of the site is ok. We rank, but not for those particular pages all suffering same issue.
I understand what you mean by using caution with judging on those operators. I know that its often incorrect. It was our only theory so far as to why those particular top pages are always between 3rd and 10th pages.
I guess we will do some more evaluating of the pages themselves. So far, we haven't spotted anything ugly.
Thanks for the thoughts and help!
Kris
Anyway, thanks again for the shared thoughts.
Kris
We made the switch to what we were suggesting in our first post and now the top page is the first in the "site:" results. We did a 301 from the old to this new one. It just happened in the last 24 hours and no movement yet as regards SERP position but it's nice to see it being recognized as expected.
Although the bot might not pay too much attention to directories in general, it does seem as though it's paying attention on our site. In any case, thanks for the advice here, much appreciated.
Kris
