Am I doing anything wrong with the strategy?

Hi..
We have entered more than 50-60 tags to each of our service pages and we have made one tags page on our site here,
http://tinyurl.com/3gact3y
Where all those tags are listed. This is just for Google.

Earlier, we had 148 URLs submitted in Google webmaster Tools Sitemap and all 148 were indexed.
Now after we had tags yesterday setup, its 4986 links in the sitemap .

So, is it something, Google is going to hate or Am I fine ?

Let me know.

 

Ok...I think this strategy got killed with the Panda update. Looking at your source code you have tons of links trying to rank for these keyword "tags". Then when I go to a tag page you have your WP "All in One SEO" plugin no indexing your tag pages. I don't really understand that...but IMHO i think that you are trying to do too much...way too many links per page (even though they are internal) and google is seeing it as a link farm.

-chris

 

The sitemap has all the tags page included.

Or how about, if I remove this tags page and just let it stay in the sitemap ?

I dont show the tags on pages at all, so bots should not hate it.

Am I right ?

 

Ok...yea...you have your tag pages within your sitemap but then you have the robots set to noindex but follow the link. Don't put your pages in the sitemap if you don't want them indexed. Also...why do you have a canonical from the page to the same page??? Too much going on...too many plugins...too many inline css...too much stuff :-S

PROBLEM (no index the tag pages)

-chris

 

Our main target is pages only.
So, we need pages to be indexed and yes, all pages are indexed and well ranked as well.

I just did this tags idea, so that any search term can lead to our site.
Getting my idea ?

Not sure about the canonical. Please explain.

And we are just using 3-5 plugins, which are necessary and not more.

Ok, let me know, what change, shall I do on the robots.txt

Also, shall I remove this from the robots.txt , Disallow: /tag ?

 

Yea...you are trying to rank for keywords by creating a lot of internal linking...the tags are your keywords...I understand what your goal is. Honestly with this many links on a page (even though they are internal) you aren't getting much juice from it...not unless its a PR 8 with that many links. So, I feel the strategy is a bit of an uphill battle...well almost a hopeless battle. I am getting 4,921 internal links on that page...and the page doesn't have a noindex but yet is not indexed by Google...I would bet it is being seen as a spam page...it isn't your sitemap...its a feed.

Also with the canonical...you don't have pages off the tag pages to warrant a canonical...say /tag/1-page-checkout/#blahblah which gives the credit back to the /tag/1-page-checkout/ page. Thats what the canonicals are used for.

I see your site, you don't need my help...you are ranking for a good 78 competitive word phrases. But honestly your tactics for those words are much different than your internal linking strategy presented here. You are ranking for those other pages because you are getting some good links like those from extensions.joomla and your own site joomlahackers. Your structure and strategy is fairly strong...I wouldn't try to expand my keywords in this manner as you are risking your site being classified as a link farm.

If you want to continue to try this then just change the all-in-one plugin to allow indexing of your tags.

-chris

 

OK, few more questions :

1. Do I need to do any changes in my robots.txt ?

2. Shall I disable CANONICALs from ALL IN ONE SEO Configuration Page ?

3. My Use noindex for Tag Archives: is currently CHECKED. Shall I uncheck it ?


Any other measures to take ?

 

I never submit to Google
I build backlinks and get crawled ... naturally ...

 

OK, I dont know, how to build quality links.

We only did directory submissions a bit.

 

@ISStores..
Dont forget to reply to my above query.

 

Sorry QubeSys I haven't been on here in a while but here:

1. Do I need to do any changes in my robots.txt ?
Don't worry about your robots.txt if you are going to change 2 and 3

2. Shall I disable CANONICALs from ALL IN ONE SEO Configuration Page ?
The canonicals really won't affect rankings at all so either way you are fine. I wouldn't have them unless I were using them though...just my opinion.

3. My Use noindex for Tag Archives: is currently CHECKED. Shall I uncheck it ?
When you create tag pages you are creating anchor text links for specific keywords to an internal tag page. If you are not trying to rank that tag page for that keyword then your tags are useless (except you are creating more internal links but with no true direction). So if you want to try to rank your tag pages for their keyword then uncheck it and get them indexed. If not there is no reason to even have the tags.

-chris

 

Ok here is the doubt :
Lets say, I keep the tags page as NOINDEX.

Then google wont index those pages, right ?

While my aim is, anything the user searches, my link should come up and then when they click, they will reach tags page and click on the article which is listed there.

If I keep it noindex, then its better not to use tags even.

I guess, Im correct, but I will wait for your opinion.


And I just checked my Google Webmaster Tools.
All of my 5660 links have been indexed. Means my tags page are now on search results for sure.

 

Yea...if you want your tag pages to rank then turn them to index, which I see they are now If they are not indexed they will never show in Google. The only page I question is the /index/ page because there are so many links off that page...it is almost like an html sitemap...so I guess it should be fine. I also see that this /index/ page is now also indexed by Google. So you have been making some changes

I think you have it now.

Hey I use magento quite often so I may be talking to you about some plugins or dev work.

-chris

 

If you have NOINDEX for tag pages, you should not have those tag pages in sitemap. You should remove those tag pages from xml sitemap plugin setting panel and rebuild sitemap.

So many tags will make your websites full of duplicate content. Most of the pages will automatically be dropped by Google for being duplicate content. If your site is small then tags can help you upto some extent but overdoing may harm in some or other way.

 

Yes, I removed the index page from the site frontend. But I guess, I need to restrict that page from robots.txt , since I dont want that page to get indexed. That will look like link spam.

And yes, you can contact us on our site anytime for any of your magento projects or development or design works. We would love to build a relationship

Yes, but rhey are not contents, but just tags and links, which should not harm, I guess. So, duplicate content issue should not be there.
Tags are used for such things by gurus, who want to target most of the keywords.

 

He has his tag pages set to index,follow now. I don't think the tag pages would result in duplicate content as the tag pages meta titles change and there is very little content for google to pick up the duplication. Although it is a thought...try taking off the anchor text tag in the list if it is the current tag. This will do two things...it will remove a link to itself and slightly change the page. One other thing I would do to really change the page is add a little dynamic content pulling the first use of the keyword on the page into bold and possibly dynamically changing the text to use the keyword that is in the title of that tag page.

 

Ok, I will think about that customization this week and will do, if we get time.

Thanks again.

 

For example on your tag/magento-checkout/ make the content read:

One Step Checkout has proved to be the fastest and easiest <bold>magento checkout</bold> to increase the sales in no time. It not only reduces the cart-abandonment rate, but at the same time this magento checkout option, sticks the customer to the checkout screen and makes …

 

And your call to action is the h2 title...it took me a second to figure out that his is where you want me to click. Just a thought that could possibly result in more conversions.

-chris

 

Sorry dint get you.

You want me to make them h1 tags ?