Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Query string parameters always bad for SEO?
-
I've recently put some query string parameters into links leading to a 'request a quote' form which auto-fill the 'product' field with the name of the product that is on the referring product page.
E.g.
Red Bicycle product page >>> Link to RFQ form contains '?productname=Red-Bicycle' >>>> form's product field's default value becomes 'Red-Bicycle'
I know url parameters can lead to keyword cannibalisation and duplicate content, we use sub-domains for our language changer. BUT for something like this, am I potentially damaging our SEO?
Appreciate I've not explained this very well. We're using Kentico by the way, so K# macros are a possibility (I use a simple one to fill the form's Default Field).
-
No, I would make sure it's the best use case for you. Sometimes you can store this data in a cookie. But there are still great ways for just SEO that can help you with making sure that it won't hurt. Usually the best way is still having a canonical tag on the page that matches with the page that the content is originally from.
-
Hi Martijn,
Thanks for the reply. Am I going about this completely the wrong way? Would you recommend using local storage instead?
All the best,
Michael
-
Well it would depend on how you set up the data. In the end you can transfer the data from one page to the other in multiple ways (local data storage, cookies, POST). So in most cases you wouldn't even need a parameter like this so you can keep your URLs as clean as possible.
-
Thanks!
I've defined it in Google Search Console and asked it to not be crawled.
It isn't actually for tracking, simply to auto-fill a form for the customer, hopefully to enhance conversions (we sell quite wordy and complex products, some people visit the form, get in a muddle and prefer to ring us than complete the form).
If I was to 301 it back to the original URL, wouldn't that immediately move the user to a URL without the query string?
-
Hi,
Parameters are definitely not always a bad thing, if you use them for filtering or pagination they have a great use case. Also for tracking purposes which I think is what you're talking about here it would be fine. But you probably want to put some support in place to make sure you don't mess up your SEO. You have a few ways of doing that:
- Define the URL parameters in Google Search Console, read more about it here.
- In some cases if it's just for tracking purposes but would trigger an actual pageview or 200 status code. Then it might be good to implement a canonical URL that would link back to the original page.
- Robots.txt, way more aggressive but if you don't want search engines to look at the pages at all you can exclude the parameters through the robots.txt. I would advise against using this if you don't have great SEO knowledge.
Hope this was useful!
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Should I canonicalize URLs with no query params even though query params are always automatically appended?
There's a section of my client's website that presents quarterly government financial data. Users can filter results to see different years and quarters of financial info. If a user navigates to those pages, the URLs automatically append the latest query parameters. It's not a redirect...when I asked a developer what the mechanism was for this happening, he said "magic." He honestly didn't know how to describe it. So my question is, is it ok to canonicalize the URL without any query parameters, knowing that the user will always be served a page that does have query parameters? I need to figure out how to manage all of the various versions of these URLs.
Technical SEO | | LeahH0 -
Are on-site content carousel bad for SEO?
Hi, I didn't find an answer to my question in the Forum. I attached an example of content carousel, this is what I'm talking about. I understand that Google has no problem anymore with tabbed contents and accordeons (collapsible contents). But now I'm wondering about textual carousels. I'm not talking about an image slider, I'm talking about texts. Is text carousel harder to read for Google than plain text or tabs? Of course, i'm not talking about a carousel using Flash. Let's say the code is proper... Thanks for your help. spfra5
Technical SEO | | Alviau0 -
SEO - New URL structure
Hi, Currently we have the following url structure for all pages, regardless of the hierarchy: domain.co.uk/page, such as domain/blog name. Can you, please confirm the following: 1. What is the benefit of organising the pages as a hierarchy, i.e. domain/features/feature-name or domain/industries/industry-name or domain/blog/blog name etc. 2. This will create too many 301s - what is Google's tolerance of redirects? Is it worth for us changing the url structure or would you only recommend to add breadcrumbs? Many thanks Katarina
Technical SEO | | Katarina-Borovska1 -
How do you build your pre-sales seo audit
Hello Moz community, I'd like to know if you build "pre-sales seo audit" when selling your services to a prospect. I think the main idea of a pre-sales audit is to show your prospect that you understand his industry (trends & competition) understand the opportunities know the roadblocks on his website If so, i'd be interested in discussing the information you put into your pre-sales audit and how you organise it. If you know ressources i should read as regards to mini seo audit / pre-sales seo audit just paste the link 🙂 Thanks for your answers
Technical SEO | | Sindicic_Alexis0 -
Are links in menus to external sites bad for SEO?
We're building a blog on a subdomain of the main site. The main site is on Shopify and the blog will be on wordpress. I'd like to keep the user experience as simple as possible so I'd like to make the blog look exactly like the main Shopify site. This means having a menu in the blog that duplicates the Shopify menu. So is it bad for SEO to have someone click on the 'about us' button in the blog subdomain (blog.mainsite.com) which takes you to the 'about us page' on the main shopify website (mainsite.com)?
Technical SEO | | acs1110 -
Do rss feeds help seo?
If we put relevant RSS feeds on a site, will it help the SEO value? Years ago, I shied away from RSS feeds because they slowed the site down and I didn't like relying on them. However, the past couple years, the Internet has become better, especially in Alaska.
Technical SEO | | manintights280 -
Is link cloaking bad?
I have a couple of affiliate gaming sites and have been cloaking the links, the reason I do this is to stop have so many external links on my sites. In the robot.txt I tell the bots not to index my cloaked links. Is this bad, or doesnt it really matter? Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | jwdesign0 -
How to handle sitemap with pages using query strings?
Hi, I'm working to optimize a site that currently has about 5K pages listed in the sitemap. There are not in face this many pages. Part of the problem is that one of the pages is a tool where each sort and filter button produces a query string URL. It seems to me inefficient to have so many items listed that are all really the same page. Not to mention wanting to avoid any duplicate content or low quality issues. How have you found it best to handle this? Should I just noindex each of the links? Canonical links? Should I manually remove the pages from the sitemap? Should I continue as is? Thanks a ton for any input you have!
Technical SEO | | 5225Marketing0