Thoughts on Woocommerce and panda

[helloworld]

i don't know why I haven't thought of this earlier, but it occurred to me during my sleep that woocommerce may slowly deteriorate a sites search rankings with panda algorithm.

This is because Woocommerce created pages for all products. Seems fair enough, right? But thinking about a small online shop that woocommerce might be used for a e-retailer, they might just decide that he/she should use the short code and place all products on the one page.

To put this in context, I had a look at a site that is running woocommerce and I searched a product page and this page was indexed in it's own right. Although, while the content is 1 off it is rather lacking in depth...i.e. it's a product description. However the page that is part of the top menu, which displays product a, b & c meets other on page factors for instance word count.

So thinking out aloud here, this is a perfect example of where rel canonical should be used. Pointing non linked product page, to bigger page. Would you also 301 this page and or/no index?
Thoughts?

 

[findtim]

i woudn't be scared of WOO, keep it clean, don't spam google with tags etc and you should be fine
rel canonical / 301 / no index i can't see an problems if you are just being honest in producing a trustworthy product site
i have 3 number one ranking woo sites and the have STUCK for yearssssssssssssssssss , they have been through panda and penguin without problems.
IMO you should just produce good product content and nice clean backlinks that are relative, i personally think google is now use to many products being duplicate across many sites selling eg: ipad, imini, ipad air which have alllllllll duplicate content so google has had to adapt to that as they will NEVER be able to discount ANY website for it so it has to be universal in its algorithm
not to change the subject but its an interesting pint to see that google has been reverting MANY of its past changes to search in response to "human" activity

 

[helloworld]

Cheers Tim. I'm not scared of woo. I am just saying/asking generally stand a lone product pages are relatively thin. But a multiple page with rel canos pointing to it could solve that problem ?

 

[findtim]

Cheers Tim. I'm not scared of woo. I am just saying/asking generally stand a lone product pages are relatively thin. But a multiple page with rel canos pointing to it could solve that problem ?

are you saying a page with multiple products?
if so and if they are the same genre eg: blue nappies, pink nappies then a page like that with good content will work.
a page with blue nappies, mobile phone, re t-shirt may not do so well IMO
otherwise stick to 1 page i product with a nice informative URL
tim

 

[petermeadit]

Hey helloworld, good topic and a great question. I see what you mean about Panda issues, as some clients will have a tendency to create thin content.

To my way of thinking the best solution to this issue would be to have individual product pages with some quality content like well written descriptions and a range of photos and reviews etc. on each individual product page.
There is no problems having a a list of products on one page, but have that link through to the individual items where they can then Add to Cart.

But if you are stuck with a scenario where all the products on a single page with an Add to Cart. Then yeah it might be hard for a search engine to index a product effectively. You could try rel canonical and 301 or yeah no index certain page etc. But first think I would do is make sure there is decent content for each product/item, and then have an individual page for each of them.

Otherwise I am not sure how each item will be properly indexed, I mean how can the SE decide the relevance of the page/item relationship.

Is this kind of what you were asking?

 

[helloworld]

Cheers for your thoughts. I'm not sure the products need to be indexed individually. That is not the strategy that have taken for this site (products are self branded and it's small local set up).

An example of this is

Main page (top menu item)
header: Radio Systems (example keyword)
{main content/keywords}
Product 1 Radio System XXE
Product 2 Radio System XXD
Product 3 Radio System XXG

Testimonials

 

[findtim]

don't forget the UX as well, this will also determine when you DO get the customer to the page if they convert or not, sometimes to many options hinders purchases.
look at this product

http://www.richmondflorist.com.au/product/red-roses-in-pot/

NOTE: everything is selected as no http://screencast.com/t/rxjCxPsg
we have found this way the purchase can proceed quickly , i dislike sites that need you to do to much work, but we find we still have a good rate of upsales
tim

 

[petermeadit]

So you have outlined the page structure here
----------------
Main page (top menu item)
header: Radio Systems (example keyword)
{main content/keywords}
Product 1 Radio System XXE
Product 2 Radio System XXD
Product 3 Radio System XXG
---------------

The potential problem I see here is the of Products. You have shown 3 products here which would be fine, but if there are a dozen or so more, then it would be hard to optimise for each specific product name and details.

 

[johno69]

Build your website for your users not for Google.

 

[helloworld]

Yeah there is literally 3 products per section here, Peter so not an issue.

Build your website for your users not for Google.

In context, this makes no sense. I need Google to bring the users to buy the products. I am actually optimising for a specific keyword term. I don't want the product pages diluting or being penalised for being thin. Thanks tho

 

[findtim]

johno69 is correct, and you have 2 sorts of users, ones that have done research and are just wanting to BUY NOW, then you have the ones researching.
if you provide both types of information which is catering to the purchaser you are actually catering to google at the same time.
whats different is if you cater to the user BETTER then your competitors, then you have a better chance of a sale, if you look like you are the " center of influence" the " LEADER" in the marketplace then your conversion rate should go up.
that's not from stats, that's from my bank account
tim

 

[petermeadit]

Agree thin content is an issue for Google and the users.
Kinda hard to know what to say for your site, unless I could see it. But first response that comes to mind is yeah, make it not thin. I mean do whatever you need to do, if that is to change the design to separeate pages, or if it is to just add more quality content, pictures, descriptions etc. on the original page, then that is what is needed.
Is it worth redesigning or separating one url into three maybe, if that will give the chance of both users and Goolge getting a clearer picture of what the page is about?
Also your internal linking will help reinforce the importance of pages within the site.
HTH