De-indexing pages = better ranking?

[widgetized]

Hi there,

my website has got 700-800 pages now, and it keeps growing. I'm using Wordpress + Woocommerce, so every time I add a new product, I basically get a new page added. Since I already have Categories and Tag pages that are more important and more optimized than my single product pages, I was wondering if it would be wiser to de-index all my single product pages.

I have been reading some articles like this one [neilpatel.com ] that might confirm that it is better to have fewer pages than hundreds of pages that are both old and have thin content from an SEO point of view.

Furthermore, I analyzed my competitors (those who outranked me in recent years), and they all have smaller / simpler websites consisting only of 10-20 pages with a list of products and no dedicated single product page.

What do you guys think about this?

[SweetPotato]

Google now more than ever is not an exact science. It's pretty chaotic and random. Sometimes even google employees can't give a straight answer on what should be done.
And then there's the Gurus, who guess stuff based on trial and error. There's no magic formula, else we will all be rich.

What i got from that article is he means useless pages (query params, ) not product pages. If you de-index those then how can you rank for those products? if you do that you are gone.
You should try to add value to those 800 products, avoid copied descriptions that appear on every single site. Add rich snippets, be unique (whatever that means).

I don't think there's any value on categories and tag pages. But that's only my opinion.

EDIT: Oh and i've forgotten the question. No, 800 pages is nothing in the big scheme of things. You can have 500,000++ as long as they are unique and have value.

[n0tSEO]

I would suggest to start with your prospective customer in mind: do you want the product to be found via product page? Or category page? Or both?

If you don't want customers to find your products via their individual page, then de-indexing individual product pages makes sense.

[widgetized]

Thanks for the inputs, I still have doubts about it though. Here are some more reasons (not sure how much info I can share about my website in this forum):

1) I have single product pages only because Woocommerce (and e-commerce platforms in general) are designed that way. My products are music tracks, and visitors would find no benefit in visiting the single page about the product other than 1) to add the product to cart 2) to see related products. They can preview the product already from the category page.

2) Due to their nature, my products can easily share a similar text description and keywords. I can offer different music tracks all sharing the same arrangement and instruments (eg. upbeat summer music with ukulele), for the same purpose (eg. music for advertising), with just minor differences in the music itself (which Google ignores). The product page would then compete for the very same position in Google SERPs, and I'm not sure that would make sense, I'd prefer the main category page (eg. upbeat music) to rank instead. It's where the real value can be found.

Then again, there's this thing where my competitors' website ranks 10/20 times better than mine, with few pages.

I'm just unsure if I would destroy my website de-indexing my product pages now. (my site is 10 years old)

[not2easy]

It is not the number of pages that matters, it is the number of ways there are to find the same content on WordPress sites. If you offer sitemaps for tag pages, category pages, archives, etc. you can have duplicate content problems with Google.

WordPress is notorious for offering many ways to present the same content. Rather than noindexing posts or pages, you should consider using canonical tags for related versions of your content. This, and selective use of your sitemaps helps Google understand the structure you prefer to have indexed (without preventing other versions of the same content from being found.) to get a good understanding of how and why, see rel=canonical: the ultimate guide [yoast.com]

BTW -

(not sure how much info I can share about my website in this forum):

Two resources for help and tips about using the forums - our Welcome page [webmasterworld.com] and our Terms ToS [webmasterworld.com]
;)

[tangor]

I'm just unsure if I would destroy my website de-indexing my product pages now. (my site is 10 years old)

With that time factor, and the site is producing, any changes you make should be SMALL and over a period of TIME, and the least intrusive.

[ichthyous]

@widgetized I am in the same position, and after the May update I am thinking that sites with a lot of older thin pages are dropping across the board...not by page but the entire site. I would like to either noindex or just delete these pages which do not get much traffic, and which I have separated into an archive section and not linked from any other page or category. I could delete them and 301 them, or noindex them. I have heard various opinions...how did it work out for you?

[JS_Harris]

Branding is key for shops online, you WILL outrank people if the search term contains your brand name.

If you sell product focus on branding early and often. Number of pages is irrelevant so long as none are considered thin or duplicate

[Pjman]

I can attest to the less is more factor helping out your SEO, if you have a focused niche. In the past I let my whole site be indexed.

Then one day someone told me to look in WMT to see the words that G was picking up in my content. In the past WMT tools would list of word counts of all that were indexed, they removed this about 2 years ago; probably because people were use it to manipulate their indexable content. When I reviewed the data I had a huge number of words that were nonsense indexed and it made me tighten up what was being indexed. I nonidexed all thin content and removed nonsense words that didn't go with my niche, but were in huge volumes.

After about 6 months, the site as a whole jumped in rankings. I have since done that with other sites and always got a boost.

I would say it is totally worth your time to do this.

[ichthyous]

I have a large number of older product pages where newer very similar items have replaced it. I didn't want to delete pages that had links coming in, so instead I am changing the canonical url on the old page to the newer page. I read that this should drop the old page from the index in favor of the new page and boost the new page by "merging" the two. I see no need to keep endless older pages for items nobody buys anymore. Has anyone else used the canonical approach?

[widgetized]

@itchthyous unfortunately, I didn't take any decision yet. There are so many opposing viewpoints, and Google seems to be making a lot of updates lately, which would totally confuse me about what would be a consequence of my actions and what would just be their update.

What I can tell you is that I was planning to de-index only my products from the year 2010 to begin with, and then wait and see what would have happened. But the fact that some of those products are still attracting some sales, makes the decision very difficult.

I don't know what to do anymore.

[Pjman]

@ichthyous

I have used the canonical solution you have stated. I have had mixed success with it. If I have two highly related topics and canonical one to the other, it seems to give that page a boost. If the pages are loosely associated, I see limited boost, if any at all.

[ichthyous]

But the fact that some of those products are still attracting some sales, makes the decision very difficult.

I sometimes keep the old page and update the product, better than starting a new page. Otherwise, if the pages are similar I am adding the canonical url to the newer item. If you still have sales for those items I would update the pages with more text, not delete them.