Advanced Filter SEO: Overview
Advanced Filter SEO can be accessed from the Facet Navigation section of your Cloud MT menu, through the 'Advanced Filter SEO' button at the top of the page. It can also be accessed using this URL: https://cloudmt.citruslime.com/#/facet-navigation/seo
The Advanced Filter SEO page is split up in to the two following sections:
SEO Facet Navigation Setup
Typically, SEO agencies or content providers may ask you to update certain pages with some SEO rich content (think Page Title, Meta Description etc.). Whilst your navigation will contain links to all the key Find & Filter pages throughout your website, there may be times whereby you're asked to update content on pages that aren't present in your navigation, nor would they fit in anywhere. This is where Advanced Filter SEO comes in.
Hypothetically speaking, let's say you need to update the SEO content of a key brand for a particular product group. E.g.: /clothing/brand/jackets
You realise this specific URL can't be accessed through any link in your navigation and there isn't anywhere in particular you'd want it to appear either. This means to edit the content on this specific page, you'll need to head to Advanced Filter SEO and create the link in the same manner you would if it were a normal Facet Navigation option.
Simply hit the Add button:
Then, create the option as if you were adding it to your navigation, making sure you select the matching facets you need along with the relevant SEO content:
Once done, you'll see your changes pull through to that URL*:
* Please note, as Find & Filter pages cache these changes won't pull through immediately and may take a few minutes to appear.
Google Indexing Rules
By default, we block certain Find & Filter URLs from being indexed Google, this is dependent on what Facet is used in the URL. You can determine what Facets we block from the Google index by referring to the 'Blocked from the Google Index?' table on the Advanced Filter SEO page.
This has a traffic light system that works as follows:
NO : These Facets can be indexed in Google
NO : Any URL that contains ANY of these Facets will be blocked from the index
Now you may think "Why would I want to block ANY of my Find & Filter pages from being indexed?!"...
There's a very good reason for this: Duplicated page content.
What's the issue with duplicated page content?
Not every combination of a URL will return a unique set of page results. For example, let's say you only list In-Stock, Male, Adult Bikes on your website. In theory, any combination of these URLs would return the exact same product result set - that's 15 combinations in total.
This is problematic, Google might consider these pages of equal weight, which may lead to unwanted behaviour when it comes to what to index - imagine modifying the SEO content of one page just for Google to prioritise another one over it!
From the above example, the possible Facets could be:
- /adult Age Facet
- /instock Stock Level Facet
- /male Gender Facet
- /bikes Department Facet
However, the default settings from the Google Indexing Rules would mean that only the Department level Facet will be indexed, avoiding the risk of Google giving priority over the wrong page.
Can the default Google Index Rules be change?
If you, or your SEO agency, determine that you either need more facets blocked or indexing, then you can contact the Citrus-Lime Help Desk and request the changes. Each navigation option can have a specific Canonical URL set against it, though we recommend this feature is only used by SEO experts or those who understand them.
