keyword cannibalization issues

[moonshark]

Hi

This is my first post, hopefully someone can help me as I am having a nightmare with my site. I am struggling to rank and I think I have an issue with keyword cannibalization.

When I did a quick check, with "orlando villas" being one of the big keywords I would like to target, Google has 140 results for this ("orlando villas" site:villaagogo.com). I have 141 pages on the site. So this is an absolute fail!

When I tried a less used keyword phrase on the site, "highlands reserve" site:villaagogo.com I got 15 results back, which is a bit better. However, when I went on each page that was indexed and searched for "highlands reserve", 9 of those links did not even have that keyword on the page. When I viewed the page source, the only place the keyword was showing was here: <option value="Highlands-Reserve">Highlands Reserve</option> which is set within the filters.

Below are the pages that are indexed, but do not have the keyword on the page

https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/sandy-ridge
https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/emerald-island-resort
https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/cumbrian-lakes
https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/calabay-parc
https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/cumbrian-lakes
https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/formosa-garden-estates
https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/providence
https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/davenport-lakes
https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/solterra-resort

If anyone could help me understand why the above are ranking for this, would an <option> value really be enough to rank? If so, any ideas how to prevent google from basically using this keyword and all the others listed in the filters?

Sorry, I know this is a long one. I have spent hours and hours reading blogs and trying to improve this and I have always had an issue with too many pages ranking for keywords I am wanting to attract.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Community]

The keyphrase in the URL, In the breadcrumb of the page, in the structure directory , mentioned on titles of the listed properties. Those are all mentions of said keyword.

I would say your biggest problem is thin or duplicated content because there is very little weight or anything unique when you view any of those pages.

http://www.siteliner.com/villaagogo.com?siteliner=site-duplicate&siteliner-sort=match_percentage

You're looking at nearly a 50% duplicate content match on each page,

 

[Community]

Sorry Just re-read your initial post and realised you were talking about "highlands reserve", phrase. Yes the options field is most likely where that is coming from, along with being linked to from other pages which also have that options filter and so has a relation to it.

But the above comment about duplicate and thin content still stands

 

[moonshark]

Hi

Yeah, I have used that site. All of the community landing pages that have homes listed, like:

https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/emerald-island-resort
https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/highlands-reserve

These homes are also listed on https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/ so, they are duplicated content

Would it be best to no-index,follow the community pages (/emerald-island-resort, /highlands-reserve etc) so there are not loads of pages that have the same stuff and just have the main https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/ that google indexes?

Or would it be better to have a canonical link on all community pages back to https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/

Another method I thought was maybe to have https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/ filterable, so a URL would be https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/?=highlands-reserve, https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/?=emerald-island etc, but I guess this would be the same issue as wouldn't google count each of these as a different page, basically like I have it now?

Most of these community pages are there to help the user drill down to the community they are wanting, I do not think many get much google traffic by searching for the community only in a normal organic search, in fact I can more or less guarantee that the main traffic won't be from those searches.

What do you think? I would really appreciate your thoughts on this

 

[moonshark]

Sorry Just re-read your initial post and realised you were talking about "highlands reserve", phrase. Yes the options field is most likely where that is coming from, along with being linked to from other pages which also have that options filter and so has a relation to it.

But the above comment about duplicate and thin content still stands

No worries, yeah, any ideas on that one that would be great, as if I know where Google is seeing these keywords I can then try and fix the absolute mess my site currently is in

 

[Community]

Looking in more detail, rather than just Siteliner, the landing pages individually I can see you've made the effort to create unique descriptions and content on each page. I'm just not sure there is enough of it to make that distinguishable difference between the pages, with headers, footers and the listings, it makes up a significant amount of the page which could be considered duplicate or indeed thin.

You've made the parent category the canonical for those pages, so you are essentially telling search engines those child categories should be treated as if they were the parent. I think there could be some confusion there as to what you want to happen. You've attempted to make each page unique, but your telling Google it should be considered the same page as the parent.

I think you need to decide whether you can make page truly unique and useful to the user like a localised landing page, or whether you should focus on just making an awesome Orlando villa page, maybe sectioned content which then leads to a filtration of the listings and redirecting all the below URL's to the primary Orlando villa page.

If your categorised pages currently get very little traffic, I'd be tempted to combine, refine and make things simpler, then as your traffic grows and your seeing success start enhancing in areas after that.

Couple of other things

1. I would perhaps start implementing Next/prev canonical tags on the categorised / broken down pages such as the sectioned Orlando pages :

https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/sandy-ridge
https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/emerald-island-resort
https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/cumbrian-lakes
https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/calabay-parc
https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/cumbrian-lakes
https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/formosa-garden-estates
https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/providence
https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/davenport-lakes
https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/solterra-resort

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663744?hl=en

2. You've got a whole bunch of 404 links through out the site, see attached document

3. https:// villaagogo.com/useful-links ( bottom link is broken )

 

[moonshark]

Hi

Thanks for this. I really appreciate it.

1) I have set up the next and previous pagination on the main page which shows 90% of the homes, the others are in other towns, if you see here:

view-source:https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas

The landing pages of the homes get zero traffic, and to be honest, if I arrived on a page with just 2-3 homes on I would probably go back and not spend any longer on it.

I have a page which I have all the community info on, a map (which I am going to improve), https:// villaagogo.com/orlando-villa-communities - this basically has more info on. I could potentially move this into a landing page for each big community, https:// villaagogo.com/orlando-villa-communities/highlands-reserve and then have lots of content, images, video etc and the link to the main villa page with highlands-reserve already defined on the link.

So, what is the best way to basically tell Google, ignore this page, the https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas is the main one? No index all of these, disallow in the robots file?

2) I have looked at that 404 file, the top one which is 404ing,
https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/florida-keys-villas/villa-sombrero-ocean-side-home-in-the-perfect-florida-keys. I cannot see anywhere this is linked from. It says this is the parent page:
https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas?page=10, but the link on this page goes to the correct URL.

I have done a run on screaming frog and there are no 404 pages showing. I have blocked loads (mainly the villa landing pages) and sometimes the owners but no real content on and it was killing the site for duplicated content.

Thanks for much for helping me with this. You're a star!

 

[Community]

Take a look at http://sitebulb.com, That's the crawler I was using to get basic info ( such as the 404 ) but as with sitebulb and screaming frog etc there could always be misreadings or false positives. But between them ( and SEO powersuites website crawler ) they can often come up with things which goes undetected.

In regards to your community info, Yes that is the best way to go in my opinion, a page which gives value.

With the old URL's, I would 301 redirect back to the main parent category , remove them from the sitemap and let Google deal with them on next visit. That way any existing value / authority of those child pages gets thrown back into the mix. You could also recycle those unique paragraphs of text on those child categories if unique.

Quite an interesting little project, its clear you've been doing your homework and your internal linking and blog pages is pretty good. I think it is just a matter of refining, cutting down on thin pages and giving the site a structure of sorts. Prioritise content from the homepage and let the hierarchy of lesser important pages influcence internal linking and navigation.

 

[moonshark]

Thanks for this.. yeah it's just me building this. I won't make any money out of it, just a nice project.

So, are those 404 urls coming from somewhere? There's loads, it'll take ages to 404 those. Ahh. Nightmare.

i def think no index the community pages will be on the way to fixing this.

Can text inside an <option> be classed as a link as that is where the only place highlands reserve is.

 

[Community]

Thanks for this.. yeah it's just me building this. I won't make any money out of it, just a nice project.

So, are those 404 urls coming from somewhere? There's loads, it'll take ages to 404 those. Ahh. Nightmare.

i def think no index the community pages will be on the way to fixing this.

Can text inside an <option> be classed as a link as that is where the only place highlands reserve is.

They certainly exist yes, if you look on https://villaagogo.com/florida-villas?page=10

You will see that although the listing title is going to the correct link, the "visit home" button goes to a 404.

The <option> wouldnt nessarily be considered a link, but could be a navigational property and to be honest just having the phrase / terminology within the source would be enough to see it found when searching specific phrases on a site.

 

[moonshark]

Hi

I have had a busy day doing work on my site. I have done the following, hopefully you can let me know if this is OK:

1) Used SiteBulb to find redirects and fixed these.
2) No indexed all of the community pages except highlands reserve as I want to test this out to see if it helps.
3) I have removed the canonical tags on all of the pages that have no index in.
4) I have updated the sitemap to only have the pages I want.

I have one question though if you do not mind helping me with, you have been brillint so far. On the sitemap, would I include all of the paginated pages

https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas
https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas?page=2
https:// villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas?page=3
and so on?

Does it also matter where in the sitemap these are? Is it best to have the ones I want to rank as the top choices first?

This is my sitemap: https:// villaagogo.com/sitemap.xml and this is my robots file https:// villaagogo.com/robots.txt, does all of that look fine to you?

Would I need to go through site:villaagogo.com and remove each URL from the index that is currently on or just let it do this naturally? I am in no massive rush, but be nice if it was sorted in a week or so?

Thanks

 

[Community]

Hey,

Glad you started to work through things

If you are giving paginated pages a next/previous , which you are.......then they should really be allowed to be crawled, there is nothing wrong with paginated pages provided they are marked up as such and they provide quick reference for google to access deeper content.

Whether you included them in the sitemap, I generally allow paginated pages .

Your robots.txt looks ok, I would personally use "Sitemap:" or "sitemap:" instead of "SITEMAP:" I have no idea if it makes a difference but being nothing with keeping things in uniform :

https://developers.google.com/search/reference/robots_txt#sitemap

Your sitemap looks fine, although I'd fix the last modified dates on the posts which say they were written in 1970, It could be giving confusing messages as to when it was updated or added, considering the content is saying it was added in June 2018.

 

[moonshark]

Ha, god knows how that date appeared in the sitemap. I have made those changes you mentioned, thanks for picking up on this.

I have looked in my google console and under indexability, I have 56 warnings. It is saying 'Indexed, though blocked by robots.txt'. When I clicked on the links it is listing the URL just redirects to my 404 page, so I would be unable to put the no index tag in.

Have you ever come across this? See the attached screenshot showing this. There is a link which is taking me to this page: https:// support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7440203#indexed_though_blocked_by_robots_txt

You have been amazing help me with this, I appreciate it so much!

I should be getting the URLs changing in the next month or 2 as well, the developer I am working with is changing URLs like this:

https:// villaagogo.com/villas/florida-villas/orlando-villas/calabay-parc/beautiful-3-bed-villa-on-calabay-parc-orlando-near-disney-universal

to

https:// villaagogo.com/orlando/calabay-parc/beautiful-3-bed-villa-on-calabay-parc-orlando-near-disney-universal

She is removing the /villas at the root of the URL as I have never liked it like that as all the landing page of the communities and towns are not using the /villas/ folder. I am removing '-villas' in each folder and removing 'Florida' as I will only ever be doing Florida, so just shortening it down, this should hopefully make a difference so it does not look as spammy.