Posted by Jerrod Hauser
For people who work on an enterprise site for e-commerce or listings, there is most likely some sort of faceted infrastructure in place. Having these navigation options in place means helping users to filter through results with great ease. However, faceted navigation structure is actually a nightmare for people who take care of SEO. This situation can lead to many #URLs that are both live and can be indexed when they should not be able to do so. Faceted navigation can actually cause this to happen.
Description of Faceted Navigation
Faceted navigation is a way to filter and sort web page results by indexing specific attributes that, in general, are not actually related. For example, a laptop might meet the qualifications for processor type, screen resolution, and sound card type. Because these qualities are unique, a problem might arise for #SEO. First and foremost, it can pull up a lot of content that is duplicated. It can also send Google incorrect signals due to consuming too much of crawl budget. It also causes link equity to be diluted by passing onto pages that should not be part of the index in the first place.
No-Index Option
The first step to fixing these errors with #faceted #navigation lie in the fact that a decision needs to be made on which sites need to be part of the index and which ones need to be removed from it. One of the first options is to use the no-index tag. This tag has only one purpose: to remove certain, specific pages in a given index. However, this process also consumes a great deal of crawl budget on pages in the long run. Considering the fact that these pages also receive link equity, they can be a waste as there is no real benefit to be gained.
Canonicalization
A canonical tag might also be the answer to this situation. It will inform #Google that it belongs to a collection of similar pages, so it should be given preferred credit. These tags have one goal: to be a solution for duplicate content. In the long run, it can also consolidate equity as it takes the page with this given tag and marks it as being the most important. Even though this tag is a better option, it can still eat up a lot of crawl space.
An Ideal Setup
There is not actually a perfect solution to this situation. To find the best setup possible, a combination of all the combined solutions is the best option. It should work for most sites, but these solutions rely on the fact that all sites are set up differently from one another. It looks specifically at how URLs are structured, too. One question needs to be asked above all: what matters more, crawl budget or link equity? Answering this question will mean defining which solutions will make the best impact. Some other things to consider are category and subcategory. These categories usually only allow versions with one facet to be indexed, so it can really narrow down what is the most important aspect to focus on.
Conclusion
Faceted navigation can be a pain to fix, but it is a solution that can be dealt with. There are logical solutions, and each one depends on how an URL is established. Starting with clarifying whether or not to prioritize link equity or crawl budget is the first step in the right direction.
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