Thread: Search Engine Product Pages

Hello,

We have been doing some updating to make our website to make it more search engine friendly for better organic search results. We are already doing ppc, and have a substantial back link network of high quality websites. We have gone through all the steps available in admin on an individual product level we could find.

Our individual product pages do not do very well in rankings for google. I have been comparing directly with a few of our competitors who do very well to try to see some differences. After looking through as much as I could handle of webmaster help posted at google I saw they recommended looking at the cached pages to see what is being viewed by google. I did this for the top ranking competitors and for our products to compare.

When I look at our product pages the entire content area is missing from the cached pages, where the top placing competitors have all information including the content. I know there pages are dynamically created through a db, so I don't understand why our content area would be missing and theres are not.

Here is an example of a cached page from our website:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.co...www.google.com

Here is an example of a cached page form a top ranking competitor:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.co...www.google.com

Do you have any ideas or advice for me? If this is the information being read by google it is no wonder why our product pages would be horrible rated. It is not getting any of our content, or related products, etc?

Thanks
James

Your skin & xmlpackage don't make it very easy for google to see the content.

As an example - using the product page above, if you view the source, you'll see that the actual content doesn't appear until after 3800 lines of code - nearly half a megabyte.

Also - you don't have a single H1 tag on your page.


Here's how google sees the top of that page (i.e. with styles disabled) : http://i.imgur.com/R4Pfo.png (shrunk to 50%).
& here's how google sees the entire page : http://i.imgur.com/6gobz.png (shrunk to 8% - yes - there is text all the way down that red line you see on the left - about 600 lines...).

Because of your table based layout - google has to wade through everything in your header (including a broken reference to facebooklike.xml.config), the search bar, the adverts for facebook, mexico & first touch. Then it has to work it's way through that massive, massive left nav followed by a couple more ads - before it can get to the main content.

The first pieces of indexable content on the page (& probably every page) are

1. (!XmlPackage Name="facebooklike.xml.config"!)
2. Shopping Cart (0)
3. Search:
4. | Login
5. Soccer Stop on Facebook
6. Click Here
7. Mexico Clearance
8. SS - $9.95
9. LS - $11.95
10. Click Here
11. FirstTouch Team Ordering Online Coming Soon!
    SOCCERSTOP.COM provides Soccer Shoes, Soccer Jerseys, Soccer Cleats, Soccer Balls, Soccer Gear, and other Soccer Equipment
12. Soccer Stop Home
13. About Us
14. Locations
15. Join the Club
16. Team Uniforms
17. etc. etc. etc.

& then it goes on through the rest of your mammoth left nav.....


You also specify in your header that the document is XHTML 1.0 Transitional - but if you try to validate it, there are 71 errors & 9 warnings.


To give an idea of what's possible - here's a page from 3M Select as viewed by google : http://i.imgur.com/63bi2.png.

Note that the very first thing on the page (the first piece of indexable content) is the breadcrumb - followed swiftly by a nice big H1 of the product name.

1. You are here → Home → Health Care and Hygiene → Skin Health → 3M™ Ultrathon™ Insect Repellent Lotion - 60ml
2. 3M™ Ultrathon™ Insect Repellent Lotion - 60ml

I also spotted that you have your css referenced in your body instead of in the header...


So - My recommendation is that you recode your skin & your xmlpackages.


TTFN

BFG



EDIT : For reference, your competitor has relevant content starting on line 403 of the code - as opposed to your 3800. Also - your competitor has a nice H1 : <h1 class=productpage>Nike Mercurial SuperFly II FG - Bright Cactus</h1> : on line 455.