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OSC & Internal Linking SEO: Let's Have a Discussion!


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Hello,

 

I've been reading on SEO trying to get an understanding of as much as possible. Internal linking has grabbed my attention lately. For those unfamiliar with internal linking, it's linking of one page to another on the same website. In order for the linkage to be effective, there must be some relationship shared between pages linked together. Internal linking is also one of the more than 200 ranking signals considered by Google. This practice is for three reasons according to Moz: site navigation, establish information hierarchy and help spread ranking power around the website.

 

I don't know about anyone else but from experience, the links in the header and footer receive the most internal links. Which leaves the body of the product page and category pages lacking in authority. I know you're thinking, "Isn't that the job of the breadcrumb?". My opinion is the breadcrumb helps but the only effect it has is displaying the trail in the serps. I'm unsure if it does anything otherwise. That's the purpose of this thread: For shop owners to weigh in and share their practices as well as their opinions.

 

Internal Linking hasn't been discussed in detail in this community, if at all. So here's an open platform for shop owners and coders to participate and help move OSCommerce a step further. Maybe a module or few can be developed from a healthy discussion. We all know @@burt and others are eager about advancement of OSC. There's gotta be a solution to help spread the "link juice" from the index page to the the category and product pages. Who knows? It's worth a try.

 

Here's my questions to OSC community:

 

(1) What are your experiences and practices with internal linking?

(2) If you've done anything with internal linking, what did you do and how you did it?

(3) What effects did it have on your over SEO efforts and search engine rankings?

 

Remember no serious questions or comments are dumb!

 

Let's have a healthy discussion and move OSC forward.

 

Suggested reading:

 

Moz: https://moz.com/learn/seo/internal-link

 

Quick Sprout: https://www.quicksprout.com/university/how-to-get-more-engine-traffic-with-internal-linking/

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"...I don't know about anyone else but from experience, the links in the header and footer receive the most internal links. Which leaves the body of the product page and category pages lacking in authority. I know you're thinking, "Isn't that the job of the breadcrumb?". My opinion is the breadcrumb helps but the only effect it has is displaying the trail in the serps. I'm unsure if it does anything otherwise..."

 

Links in the header and footer are typically contact us / about us type pages. These pages should carry a meta noindex tag, as they are pages that don't really have content. Note - noindex and not nofollow. There's no real need to use nofollow, because if a link is not trustworthy it might be best to just remove that link from the webpage. Also linking out to relevant webpages is seen as good practice, and can increase your performance in the SERPS.

 

Breadcrumbs do a great job of spreading link juice around the site, and should not be touched.

 

The subject of internal linking and on-page optimization carries huge value in the webmaster's effort to position their site on the web and should not be underestimated.

 

Another tip I can give is to use the information in webmaster tools to help shape your site. There is a section there under Search Traffic called internal links. Think of it this way: If your home page has 1000 internal  links to it, and one of your product pages only has 2 internal links to it, then relative to the home page that product page is pretty unimportant. And in fact that page will most likely drop out of the index and/or perform poorly in the index. Its not only the number of links that is important. For the product page mentioned above, if one of the 2 pages happens to be an important page like the homepage, then the product can still do well in the SERPs.

 

This is typical of osCommerce in the beginning stages of building a site - the product pages are starved of link juice. Especially a site with many products.  But this is not a negative for osCommerce that should be attempted to be solved with code. Rather the webmaster must understand how linking works and then he can improve his SEO by himself.  With time products are sold and modules kick in - bestsellers module, also purchased module, featured products module etc. These modules all help to spread link juice around the site.

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@@Hotclutch, thanks for your comments. I'll try the nofollow/noindex to the pages in the header and footer. You've brought up interesting points about the breadcrumb. I wouldn't dare touch it. I didn't realize what it done besides a cosmetic effect in the serps. The reason I mentioned the breadcrumb in the way that I did was it appears that more product pages and categories should appear in the serps that are related to each other.

 

I look in the Google Search Console everyday. That's what compelled me to look further into internal linking, the lack of product and category pages after 6 months.

 

My domain is fairly new so I can understand why some things aren't relevant yet. 

 

So I have a question. In your opinion, what can be done to show a relationship among the index, product and category pages? Maybe a link in the body of the product page such as "More in this category" or "Related categories" or "More by manufacturer" would help. Some of the larger etailers have such links.

 

Last, I don't feel there's a problem to solve. I do feel internal linking can be improved to show a relationship between the homepage, product and category pages. Maybe I was misleading when I said "solution" in my original post.

 

Your comments are valuable.

"...I don't know about anyone else but from experience, the links in the header and footer receive the most internal links. Which leaves the body of the product page and category pages lacking in authority. I know you're thinking, "Isn't that the job of the breadcrumb?". My opinion is the breadcrumb helps but the only effect it has is displaying the trail in the serps. I'm unsure if it does anything otherwise..."

 

Links in the header and footer are typically contact us / about us type pages. These pages should carry a meta noindex tag, as they are pages that don't really have content. Note - noindex and not nofollow. There's no real need to use nofollow, because if a link is not trustworthy it might be best to just remove that link from the webpage. Also linking out to relevant webpages is seen as good practice, and can increase your performance in the SERPS.

 

Breadcrumbs do a great job of spreading link juice around the site, and should not be touched.

 

The subject of internal linking and on-page optimization carries huge value in the webmaster's effort to position their site on the web and should not be underestimated.

 

Another tip I can give is to use the information in webmaster tools to help shape your site. There is a section there under Search Traffic called internal links. Think of it this way: If your home page has 1000 internal  links to it, and one of your product pages only has 2 internal links to it, then relative to the home page that product page is pretty unimportant. And in fact that page will most likely drop out of the index and/or perform poorly in the index. Its not only the number of links that is important. For the product page mentioned above, if one of the 2 pages happens to be an important page like the homepage, then the product can still do well in the SERPs.

 

This is typical of osCommerce in the beginning stages of building a site - the product pages are starved of link juice. Especially a site with many products.  But this is not a negative for osCommerce that should be attempted to be solved with code. Rather the webmaster must understand how linking works and then he can improve his SEO by himself.  With time products are sold and modules kick in - bestsellers module, also purchased module, featured products module etc. These modules all help to spread link juice around the site.

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So I have a question. In your opinion, what can be done to show a relationship among the index, product and category pages? Maybe a link in the body of the product page such as "More in this category" or "Related categories" or "More by manufacturer" would help. Some of the larger etailers have such links.

 

 

There are various ways you can go about improving your internal link profile. A rule of thumb is to try to have every page within 2-3 clicks away from the homepage. i.e from the homepage, you must be able to navigate to any page within 3 clicks. So you want to avoid putting down many categories and burying your products deep.

 

As stated before, in a new osCommerce the products are starved of link juice. One add-on that addresses this is Jack MCS' All Products SEO. However if you understand how linking works you will be able to achieve the same effect without the need for creating additional pages. Actually the new products module works in a similar fashion to All Products SEO. Where All Products SEO is better is with the use of filters, whereas the new products module only has pagination links to spread link juice around. My suggestion to improve the new products module would be to add the option of filtering eg. by category. I think there might be an add-on for that, not sure.

 

Another mistake I see people make is to use rel="canonical" incorrectly, specifically wrt to pagination, and this starves products even more of link juice.

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When I first started my site i was advised on these forums a long time ago, to add a few addons that would help. I added all products seo as already mentioned, featured products on the front page as well as the new products, and also a cross sell addon on the product pages, but make sure the products were linked in some way ie a plastic kit and the glue required to make it.

 

Apart from these addons I cant think of anything else I have done except try to link different pages, where relevant, within the product description ie I have a kit of parts where links are placed to the individual products within that kit to allow people to easily find the place to buy more. I do have help pages where there are links back to the products also.

 

I do have the manufacturers info box on the site as this has a link to other products from the manufacturer which may also help, but I have no idea whether it does.

 

I used to use another addon from Jack, which placed links to the category and other places on the product pages but never added it to the new BS site but cant remember what it was called now. It may have been his sitemap addon, which I only use the sitemap page now. Whether there is, or was, a benefit to not having the other links on the pages I have never tested.

 

I do have products more than 3 clicks from the home page just to make it easier for customers to find the products they want.

 

Apart from those addons the site is pretty much as it came.

REMEMBER BACKUP, BACKUP AND BACKUP

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My simplistic thought based on not having any in-depth knowledge goes like this;

 

Think of a nice sponge-cake where;

 

A. index page is at the first layer

B. category|manufacturer pages at the second layer below

C. product pages at third layer below

 

A should link to B (with a hint of C)

B should link to both A and C.

C should link to B

 

C is interesting, as there is no correlation between C (product) and A (index).

B is interesting, as it has a direct correlation to C (products) by way of product list

A is of little interest - just another "info" page if you look objectively.  It is just that the info is about your products.

 

I'm not 100% sure what I'm saying.  Just throwing ideas out there...

I would like some cake.

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I have not found the golden bullet yet, but the one page that consistently is found more than other pages is an article page where links to different products and categories are spread throughout the content of the article.

KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON

I do not use the responsive bootstrap version since i coded my responsive version earlier, but i have bought every 28d of code package to support burts effort and keep this forum alive (albeit more like on life support).

So if you are still here ? What are you waiting for ?!

 

Find the most frequent unique errors to fix:

grep "PHP" php_error_log.txt | sed "s/^.* PHP/PHP/g" |grep "line" |sort | uniq -c | sort -r > counterrors.txt

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@@Hotclutch, I agree with you that product pages should be 2-3 clicks away from the homepage. So a goal would be to somehow link the product page back to the homepage.

 

Thinking of the breadcrumb trail in comparison to a real life trail. When you're traveling a real life trail you eventually come to the end. What do you do at that point? Most trails you just turn around and go the opposite direction along the same path. The traditional breadcrumb trail does exactly that. So an internal linking scheme that directly link the product page back to the homepage is ideal without going back through the category tiers.

 

Now you've raised another interesting point by mentioning the All Products add-on. It's great for user experience also with the filtering capabilities. I've used it in the past but with over 100k products the queries can work a server overtime. 

 

I'm not sure I understand your comment about the use of canonical.

 

Thanks for helping this discussion go in the right direction.

There are various ways you can go about improving your internal link profile. A rule of thumb is to try to have every page within 2-3 clicks away from the homepage. i.e from the homepage, you must be able to navigate to any page within 3 clicks. So you want to avoid putting down many categories and burying your products deep.

 

As stated before, in a new osCommerce the products are starved of link juice. One add-on that addresses this is Jack MCS' All Products SEO. However if you understand how linking works you will be able to achieve the same effect without the need for creating additional pages. Actually the new products module works in a similar fashion to All Products SEO. Where All Products SEO is better is with the use of filters, whereas the new products module only has pagination links to spread link juice around. My suggestion to improve the new products module would be to add the option of filtering eg. by category. I think there might be an add-on for that, not sure.

 

Another mistake I see people make is to use rel="canonical" incorrectly, specifically wrt to pagination, and this starves products even more of link juice.

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I'm not sure I understand your comment about the use of canonical.

 

Some people believe that paginated pages are duplicate content of the first page in the series, and then apply the <meta rel="canonical"> tag on them, which is not correct.

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@@14steve14 I think you may be correct about the sitemap add-on but I'll look deeper into it when I have time. 

 

Thanks for helping with this discussion.

 

 

I used to use another addon from Jack, which placed links to the category and other places on the product pages but never added it to the new BS site but cant remember what it was called now. It may have been his sitemap addon, which I only use the sitemap page now. Whether there is, or was, a benefit to not having the other links on the pages I have never tested.
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I have not found the golden bullet yet, but the one page that consistently is found more than other pages is an article page where links to different products and categories are spread throughout the content of the article.

That's interesting. Maybe we're on to something. The code to article pages may be the golden bullet.

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Some people believe that paginated pages are duplicate content of the first page in the series, and then apply the <meta rel="canonical"> tag on them, which is not correct.

Ok now I understand. Thank you

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I have not found the golden bullet yet, but the one page that consistently is found more than other pages is an article page where links to different products and categories are spread throughout the content of the article.

 

Most likely a strong external link to that particular page is causing it to perform well in the SERPs.

 

Instead of Sitemap SEO I would recommend using the related products module, its another way of providing link juice to products.

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@@burt

 

I follow what you're saying. The index page isn't interesting and it's primarily an info page. However, look at it this way. The categories are originated from the index page so that may be where it gets its prominence. It's the workhorse of the site's navigation power. With the categories being generated by the index page, then it's only right that the product pages get a direct link back to the homepage. The index page has a lot of ranking power.

 

I can almost guarantee that if the category functions were removed from index.php and re-coded to operate independently, the homepage will lose momentum quickly. I don't have proof but in theory if purpose is reduced or eliminated then the subject's importance goes as well.

 

Neil Patel and Brian Dean both advise of extracting the link juice of the index page and other high ranking pages by linking to them. But they also stress the importance of being certain all pages linked together are related in some way. The search engines are sophisticated enough to know when someone is gaming the system.

 

An ideal linking scheme would be like this    homepage <--> category pages <--> product pages (with link back to homepage).

 

Out the box, OSCommerce's info pages gets indexed first while category and product pages struggle. It would be great if the product pages and category pages get indexed first and have more ranking power. At this time it would be detrimental to place a nofollow/noindex tag on the index page.

 

I may receive negative feedback for this, but I think it's a good idea to extract some link juice from the index page by linking directly to it. By way of a simple "back to home" link/button OR a breadcrumb type linking system somewhere on the product page such as:

 

home >> category 1 >> category 2 >> category 3? >> product name 

 

That would be good for both user experience and showing the search engines there's some correlation. Hoping not to contradict @@Hotclutch comments on the breadcrumb spreading ranking power, but I do think the breadcrumb's function in spreading ranking power is somewhat limited. 

 

Thanks for your time.

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Some of the things we do to generate link power are:

 

  • Listing popular categories on the index page;
     
  • Listing the top products in each category (i.e. if a category is clicked on, the category page shows sub categories and a list of top selling products);
     
  • Canonical header tags;
     
  • Prev/Next canonical on category pages which have pagination;
     
  • Listing the top products on the index page;
     
  • A link to new products on the index page
     
  • Extensive cross linking of products through a 'Related Products' module;
     
  • Correct breadcrumb linking and anchor text

 

Note that links in heavily duplicated areas of pages such as boxes, headers, and columns don't carry as much weight with Google compared to links in the body of pages.

osCommerce user since 2003! :thumbsup:

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@@frankl 

 

Great points! Could you expand your thoughts on "Correct breadcrumb linking and anchor text"? I'm interested in the correct breadcrumb linking part.

 

A link to new products on the index page is a good one.

 

Also, what would you suggest to link top/popular categories and products on the index page? Are there modules that exist to assist with that?

 

I ask so many questions because you've came to the discussion with some very interesting pointers.

 

Thank you.

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@@frankl

 

Thank you. I'm a novice in many areas of SEO.

 

Are there modules that will show popular products and categories on the index?

 

That could be a big help in linking the index to internal pages. 

 

 

As I look at the reports in Google Search Console, the top pages with the most impressions are sitemap, login, contact us, shipping, reviews and conditions. Those pages have the exact same meta tags. That's the only connection I can make. 

 

Thanks again for sharing

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@@frankl

 

Thank you. I'm a novice in many areas of SEO.

 

Are there modules that will show popular products and categories on the index?

 

That could be a big help in linking the index to internal pages. 

 

 

As I look at the reports in Google Search Console, the top pages with the most impressions are sitemap, login, contact us, shipping, reviews and conditions. Those pages have the exact same meta tags. That's the only connection I can make. 

 

Thanks again for sharing

 

Why have they got the same meta tags as I thought every page needed different meta tags and they are so easy to change in the BS version.

REMEMBER BACKUP, BACKUP AND BACKUP

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Are there modules that will show popular products and categories on the index?

 

 

 

 

Not that I know of. I made my own. You can have them if you want :)

 

 

 

 

 

As I look at the reports in Google Search Console, the top pages with the most impressions are sitemap, login, contact us, shipping, reviews and conditions. Those pages have the exact same meta tags. That's the only connection I can make. 

 

 

 

 

 

What @@14steve14 said.

osCommerce user since 2003! :thumbsup:

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The general answer to this question, in my opinion, is that you should create as many internal links as possible. That's one of the features common to all of my SEO addons: Header Tags SEO, All Products SEO and Sitemap SEO.

 

I find a lot of shop owners are not aware of the number of links they have listed with the search engines. If you search them with

site:your domain name

it will return the number of links they have listed. It is not uncommon for a site that has been around for a year or so to have over a 1,000 links listed. I have one client that has over 12,000 links and the shop doesn't have a very large number of products. The reason for the large numbers is because the search engines count each link they find as separate, even if it is to the same place. So a link to a product in the new products module will count as one while a direct link to it, even if it is on the same page, will count as another. It is important to have a canonical tag for listings where products are shown over multiple pages for this reason.

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 I have one client that has over 12,000 links and the shop doesn't have a very large number of products. 

 

I am going to suggest that sites like these are incorrectly configured or are not configured at all. You can make a loose estimate of how many pages should be in the index. Add your homepage, number of category pages and total products together and that's the basic number of pages you need in the index. If you have a lot more URLs than that basic number in the index, then you could have inefficiency and possible pagerank spread.

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