Forum Moderators: phranque
Previously, I only disallowed spiders from technical pages, privacy policy pop-ups, etc., not from real content pages.
I realize that spiders are allowed to scan any page, but are not supossed to use the results of disallowed pages or folders in an index.
Am doing this because this eCommerce site got too broad in subject matter and the site's intended theme became "diluted". This may be a temporary change until that dilution is fixed. Or, if it works to increase ranking, we may keep it, so as to continue to offer more pages of somewhat related content.
Anyone see any problem with this approach?
That is, is it better to limit the amount of content the spiders see, in an effort to tighten the theme? Or is it better to have more pages of not vry tightly related content, even if that dilutes the theme?
Note that there is a standardized text linked navigation column on every content page, such that every content page links to every other content page, including the index page and a site map page.
Thanks...
In my experience the more focused my themes the better my results.
Yes, I'm counting on that. Let me warn others to think long and hard before trying what I think may have been the error of my ways.
This site's traffic has been growing more or less steadily, but slower than expected, for 2 years - but with a month or two of downturns every 6 months or so (why is that?).
I've tried lot's of things. It's a niche market, where the major key words are not everyday words. So, (thinking to bring in more traffic) I began to create pages and to optimize for keywords that were not directly related to the product or the problem it solves. At one point, I was trying to optimize for 12 main keys.
Think "drain cleaner" and "plugged drains" as the true product and problem (just examples) and I started to wander into "maintenance supplies" and "home owners".
I think the result has been a loss of focus and a lowering of Sales Conversion Rate, compared to what they could have been.
Do I have data to prove any of this? Well, some, but its not unambigous. The results are pretty clear, but the causes are not.
Monthly Sales Conversion Rate is down some (maybe 2.5% from 3.5%), but there could be other reasons. Traffic continues to grow, but not at the best monthly rate we had nearer the beginning of the effort. Now maybe -1% to +8% Vs +6% to +12% earlier. But there are alternate possibilities here to, which I won't go into, plus the general trend toward SEO getting tougher for small sites like this, with microscopic SEO budgets (most of my revenue from this client comes from a sales commission I get) and no way to buy placements except the new Google AdWords Select (which is helping).
Bottom line? I recommend focusing very sharply on a very few very well considered keys.
