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Good to use disallow or noindex for these?
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Hello everyone,
I am reaching out to seek your expert advice on a few technical SEO aspects related to my website. I highly value your expertise in this field and would greatly appreciate your insights.
Below are the specific areas I would like to discuss:a. Double and Triple filter pages:
I have identified certain URLs on my website that have a canonical tag pointing to the main /quick-ship page. These URLs are as follows:
https://www.interiorsecrets.com.au/collections/lounge-chairs/quick-ship+black
https://www.interiorsecrets.com.au/collections/lounge-chairs/quick-ship+black+fabricConsidering the need to optimize my crawl budget, I would like to seek your advice on whether it would be advisable to disallow or noindex these pages. My understanding is that by disallowing or noindexing these URLs, search engines can avoid wasting resources on crawling and indexing duplicate or filtered content. I would greatly appreciate your guidance on this matter.
b. Page URLs with parameters:
I have noticed that some of my page URLs include parameters such as ?variant and ?limit. Although these URLs already have canonical tags in place, I would like to understand whether it is still recommended to disallow or noindex them to further conserve crawl budget. My understanding is that by doing so, search engines can prevent the unnecessary expenditure of resources on indexing redundant variations of the same content. I would be grateful for your expert opinion on this matter.
Additionally, I would be delighted if you could provide any suggestions regarding internal linking strategies tailored to my website's structure and content. Any insights or recommendations you can offer would be highly valuable to me.
Thank you in advance for your time and expertise in addressing these concerns. I genuinely appreciate your assistance. If you require any further information or clarification, please let me know. I look forward to hearing from you.
Cheers!
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@williamhuynh You're correct to pay attention to parameters in your URLs, as they can have an impact on how search engines crawl and index your site. It's crucial, however, to handle them strategically.
Using canonical tags on these pages is already a good move. It signals to search engines which version of the page should be treated as the main one. Canonicalization helps avoid potential duplicate content issues and makes your website easier to understand from a search engine's perspective.
However, I'd be careful to disallow these pages or use a "noindex" tag. Disallowing these URLs in your robots.txt file might seem like a good way to save the crawl budget, but it can have unintended side effects. When you disallow a URL, it means that search engines can't access it at all, which could impact the crawling and indexing of your main (canonical) pages. This is especially true if these parameterized URLs have unique backlinks or user engagement signals that could be beneficial for your canonical URLs.
As for the "noindex" approach, this tells search engines not to include the page in their index. However, if these pages have valuable backlinks or user engagement signals, you might be missing out on some SEO value by not indexing them.
In my opinion, if your website is large and you're genuinely concerned about the crawl budget, a more suitable approach might be to use Google Search Console's URL Parameters tool. This tool lets you inform Google how to handle specific URL parameters.
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