SEO Case Study

There’s an online advertising business at www.taka8.com, there’s a URL for a city at www.taka8.com/auckland, and there’s a lot of adverts listed underneath that city at www.taka8.com/auckland/ad1, www.taka8.com/auckland/ad2, www. taka8.com/auckland/ad3, etc. All these URLs are already indexed by Google.

Now, after using the command “site:www.taka8.com/Auckland” to query the google website, the google result shows one record, which is www.taka8.com/auckland, and many other related URLs such as www.taka8.com/auckland/ad1, www. taka8.com/auckland/ad3, etc.. taka8.com/auckland/ad2 are not shown in the query result, may I ask why these URLs are not shown up? how to concentrate the URLs to just one main URLs to improve SEO performance?

Reasons Why URLs May Not Be Shown

1. Indexing Issues: Although the URLs are indexed by Google, there might be an issue where not all pages are being displayed for a particular query due to Google’s search algorithm, which sometimes prioritizes pages that are more relevant or authoritative.
2. Duplicate Content: If the adverts (ad1, ad2, ad3, etc.) have similar or duplicate content, Google may not show all of them in search results to avoid redundancy.
3. Canonicalization: If canonical tags are not properly set, Google might not recognize which version of the page to prioritize, leading to inconsistent indexing.
4. Internal Linking and Page Structure: Poor internal linking structure or insufficient content on certain pages might cause some URLs to be less visible in search results.

How to Consolidate URLs to Improve SEO Performance

1. Canonical Tags:
   • Use canonical tags to indicate the preferred version of a page. For example, if www.taka8.com/auckland is the main page, all sub-pages should have a canonical tag pointing to it.

   <link rel="canonical" href="https://www.taka8.com/auckland" />

2. 301 Redirects:
   • Implement 301 redirects from individual ad pages to the main city page if the individual pages are not necessary. This helps consolidate page authority and improves SEO.

   Redirect 301 /auckland/ad1 https://www.taka8.com/auckland
   Redirect 301 /auckland/ad2 https://www.taka8.com/auckland
   Redirect 301 /auckland/ad3 https://www.taka8.com/auckland

3. Robots.txt:
   • Update the robots.txt file to disallow indexing of the less important pages if they do not add significant value.

   User-agent: *
   Disallow: /auckland/ad1
   Disallow: /auckland/ad2
   Disallow: /auckland/ad3

4. Content Optimization:
   • Ensure that the main city page (www.taka8.com/auckland) is rich in content, well-optimized with keywords, and includes relevant information about the adverts.
5. Internal Linking:
   • Improve internal linking by linking from the main page to the important sub-pages and vice versa. Ensure the structure is clear and logical.
6. Sitemap:
   • Update the XML sitemap to reflect the changes and ensure it is submitted to Google Search Console. Highlight the main URLs and remove unnecessary sub-pages.

   <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
     <url>
       <loc>https://www.taka8.com/auckland</loc>
       <lastmod>2024-07-30</lastmod>
       <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
       <priority>1.00</priority>
     </url>
   </urlset>