Hello everyone! Here is the dilemma. The company website that I am working on is an auction company. They have a huge catalog of items that have been sold in the past. Basically what I need to do is create the best way to sort this index so that it would be good for google and be user-friendly. And of coarse redesign that ugly index!! What we have right now is an index that sorts by Auction Date -> then by lot ranges. For example: We have a May 2009 Online Auction... then under this we have lots 1-25, 26-50, 51-75, etc... you can view it here: http://www.aspireauctions.com/auction100/catalog.html I have an idea how to make this better and a backup idea if google doesn't like my first one. MY FIRST SOLUTION: Create a system of tags and sub categories. Basically each lot (item) would have tags added to it. For example a gold french watch (of coarse with a different title) would have the tags: watch, gold, french. An italian painting showing a portrait would have the tags: painting, portrait, italian. Then after the tags have been implemented. Create a system of sub categories like a bread crumb trail navigation type of system. For example Categories -> Paintings -> Style -> Portrait. Here is something I put together to show you what I mean. http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/7880/auctionindexsearch5.jpg All these would be html links so google would be able to visit them. The thing I'm afraid of is that google may find some duplicate content on some pages because for example the painting will be found under Categories -> Paintings -> Style -> Portrait but at the same time can be found in Categories -> Paintings -> Country of Origin -> Italian If a number of items show up like that can google think this is duplicate content? Also since items can be found in different links, which page would show up in a google search? If google doesn't like that, I do have a backup idea, but I would love to know if an index with a navigation like that would work properly. This might be confusing so if you don't understand something I can elaborate just ask please, I really need as much help as I can get!
Make sure your navigations are seo friendly. Try making a sitemap on your site, it will help google crawl you better.
thanks for the reply but yes that's what I am trying to figure out. If this style is seo friendly. I know it would be user-friendly but seo friendly? I don't know.. I need your guy's help with that!
If you render the same content at multiple URLs because it is associate with multiple tags then yes you will have created duplicate content in Google's eyes. This is the same problem that large ecommerce sites battle with since typically a particular item may have multiple ways in which they can be navigated to and multiple URLs. For example the Sony Bravia HDTV Model 123 page may get rendered under: http://www.example.com/sony/tvs/hdtv/sony-bravia-model-123.html http://www.example.com/electronics/tvs/hdtv/sony-bravia-model-123.html http://www.example.com/hdtv/sony-bravia-model-123.html depending on how you navigated to it. One solution is to pick one of the URLs for a given page as the preferred URL (canonical URL) you want ranked (e.g. http://www.example.com/sony/tvs/hdtv/sony-bravia-model-123.html). You then render all versions the page with <link rel="canonical" href="TheCanonicalURLYouWantRanked"> (eg. <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/sony/tvs/hdtv/sony-bravia-model-123.html"> in the <head> regardless of which URL is used to render the page. This will transfer credit for inbound links to all URLs for that page to the Canonical URL.
thanks canonical that really helped out. How deep does google index? Right now, to get to the index page you need to go homepage -> past auctions -> index -> categories ithe lots that need to be indexed are basically going to be 4 or 5 links deep. How will it work?