Burning SEO Question..PLEASE HELP

VaibhaV KumaR · 04-08-2009, 07:26 PM

Hi Warriors,

I have a burning question troubling me since the time I added some new content and pages to my e-commerce store, can you guys/gals please help me find some answers?

Here it goes:

I have like 3000 product pages, for search engines, and around 250+ category pages. Now I have added another series of category+product pages (amounting to thousands of new pages) that allow the visitors to browse the products by product type instead of product model, will adding these new product pages negatively affect the ranks of the already existing product pages? Will the link juice get divided among the new pages thereby moving the ranking of older+newer product pages downwards?

Thanks,
VK

P.S Also, I'd be grateful if you won't mind giving me some tips on getting Google to re-cache some of my updated pages quickly. Already been month since I added new content to pages but still Google shows old pages, I tried submitting a new sitemap too.

ehicks727 · 04-08-2009, 08:56 PM

Large sites do funny things in the SERPs when you make changes. Sometimes when I make even a slight change I cringe waiting for the SERPs to re-index. I have several sites in the 4-6k page range... I know how you're feeling!

If I'm interpreting what you said correctly, you didn't add new content, just "paths" to the product pages? I find that anchor text of links tends to affect the SERPs drastically. I made a change to my home page once, which has links to deep pages, and when I changed the anchor text of the home page links, my home page replaced all the deep pages in the SERPs. That took about a month to reverse. So, if the new pages you created are just link pages, then be careful with your anchor text. You might have to make it more generic and forget the keywords, otherwise, the link pages will get indexed, not the deep pages.

I wouldn't consider myself an "expert" in large sites, but I've learned a lot in the last few years. Here's what I focus on these days... website "crawl" and internal linking strategy. Google it and read up on those two topics. Don't believe everything you read though. SEO on large sites is a different animal. People who don't work on large sites don't understand.

VaibhaV KumaR · 04-10-2009, 06:59 PM

Thanks for sharing your experiences ehicks727. I really appreciate it. Learned something new

Can you give me some more tips on internal linking? I have recently started adding new 250+ word product descriptions with context links pointing to individual product categories. Those are actually the updated pages I am waiting for Google to 're-cache'. I am always debating on nofollowing some of the links and currently I am just nofollowing the non-product pages like Contact Us, Privacy Policy, Shopping cart, etc. Is that good? Do you use the nofollow tag too?

Anymore warriors with large sites here?

Maybe we can get some good discussion goin on here between large site owners?

04-08-2009, 07:26 PM	#1
VaibhaV KumaR Certified SEO Expert War Room Member Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: India Posts: 41 Thanks: 4 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts	Burning SEO Question..PLEASE HELP Hi Warriors, I have a burning question troubling me since the time I added some new content and pages to my e-commerce store, can you guys/gals please help me find some answers? Here it goes: I have like 3000 product pages, for search engines, and around 250+ category pages. Now I have added another series of category+product pages (amounting to thousands of new pages) that allow the visitors to browse the products by product type instead of product model, will adding these new product pages negatively affect the ranks of the already existing product pages? Will the link juice get divided among the new pages thereby moving the ranking of older+newer product pages downwards? Thanks, VK P.S Also, I'd be grateful if you won't mind giving me some tips on getting Google to re-cache some of my updated pages quickly. Already been month since I added new content to pages but still Google shows old pages, I tried submitting a new sitemap too.

04-08-2009, 08:56 PM	#2
ehicks727 HyperActive Warrior Join Date: Mar 2009 Posts: 225 Thanks: 6 Thanked 27 Times in 27 Posts	Re: Burning SEO Question..PLEASE HELP Large sites do funny things in the SERPs when you make changes. Sometimes when I make even a slight change I cringe waiting for the SERPs to re-index. I have several sites in the 4-6k page range... I know how you're feeling! If I'm interpreting what you said correctly, you didn't add new content, just "paths" to the product pages? I find that anchor text of links tends to affect the SERPs drastically. I made a change to my home page once, which has links to deep pages, and when I changed the anchor text of the home page links, my home page replaced all the deep pages in the SERPs. That took about a month to reverse. So, if the new pages you created are just link pages, then be careful with your anchor text. You might have to make it more generic and forget the keywords, otherwise, the link pages will get indexed, not the deep pages. I wouldn't consider myself an "expert" in large sites, but I've learned a lot in the last few years. Here's what I focus on these days... website "crawl" and internal linking strategy. Google it and read up on those two topics. Don't believe everything you read though. SEO on large sites is a different animal. People who don't work on large sites don't understand.

04-10-2009, 06:59 PM	#3
VaibhaV KumaR Certified SEO Expert War Room Member Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: India Posts: 41 Thanks: 4 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts	Re: Burning SEO Question..PLEASE HELP Thanks for sharing your experiences ehicks727. I really appreciate it. Learned something new Can you give me some more tips on internal linking? I have recently started adding new 250+ word product descriptions with context links pointing to individual product categories. Those are actually the updated pages I am waiting for Google to 're-cache'. I am always debating on nofollowing some of the links and currently I am just nofollowing the non-product pages like Contact Us, Privacy Policy, Shopping cart, etc. Is that good? Do you use the nofollow tag too? Anymore warriors with large sites here? Maybe we can get some good discussion goin on here between large site owners?