SEO issue, need second opinion

[mrkidd85]

I am the content manager for a property rental firm. Hypothetically lets say its a letting agent. I recently took a look at the website and have come across a bit of an issue that I need a second opinion on.

Basically, we have the homepage -> regions -> towns -> properties in the heirachy, however, quite a lot of the towns pages aren't indexed by Google as they only have a list of properties and no real content. I don't like this, and have advised that instead of noindexing the pages, losing some link juice in the process, if a town page has really thin content, then add a rel="canonical" tag to the regions page.

I feel that noindexing will kind of mess up the internal link structure and could be causing ranking issues.

I'm a specialist in off site SEO and am not as confident in my on site, so I would like a second opinion on this to make sure I'm giving the right advice.

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[mrkidd85]

Can I just add that eventually I will be adding content to the town pages, so this would be a stop gap until it's done.

 

[WikiWill]

I wouldn't be worrying too much about content light listing pages personally. It's something that Google is used to seeing and still provides value for the user so it won't negatively affect rankings. Just try and get content on their as soon as possible.

 

[mrkidd85]

Thanks pal. So would you agree that noindexing the pages is a bad idea?

 

[WikiWill]

It's like all things in SEO there's more than one way to skin a cat, but I wouldn't see the point of noindexing them. If there's properties listed on there you'll want Google to index them surely? Content will boost the pages, but you see loads of property listing sites that rank without additional content on there that can still rank.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Try and cross link the local pages to get some link juice flowing between pages. If theya re not being indexed it is more likely this and not light content

 

[neils3]

I'd agree with WikiWill, I wouldn't worry about this too much. Main thing is you're not trying to rank those listing pages anyway at the moment.

 

[Chelios]

Cross link from other pages on the site. Don't waste your time adding canonical tags and certainly don't noindex them. Are you in the position to improve the content of the pages at all?

 

[justinaldridge]

Definitely don't noindex the pages or canonical them back to the area pages.

It is odd that Google hasn't indexed them. It will still index low value pages. Are they well linked to internally?

Also, as you said you are an off site specialist I assume you mean you're a link builder in which case point some external links to these pages and that should certainly help to get them indexed and ranking.

 

[david64]

My goal would be to get some content on there. Don't know exactly what your site is like, but I would be looking at mashing together statistics as to house prices, as compared to the region, country; school stats; crime; whatever you can get hold of.

Indexing a load of chaff can have a serious affect on rankings. A site I run was sand-bagged for about 2 months, until I deleted around 200-300k pages. At that time as a new site, with thin content, Google didn't want to know. After it recovered and several months, I indexed about 200,000 more thin pages and traffic decreased by about 50% percent. Now 10s of millions of words and 3K links later, I was able to increase traffic by about 33% by adding 90 million+ pages (multi-lingual) with no content.

This is also interesting:

https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-strategy/

 

[webgeek]

The regions are not canonical for the cities. The regions are a much larger entity and the canonical tag is the equivalent of saying, 'look on the region page for information about this city' which is NOT what that region page is going to do.

You need to strengthen the value of the city pages via internal linking using existing regions and properties and you need to to strengthen them via backlinks. A social media post, external article, heck even a free listing on a very popular classifieds site, or possibly a blog comment or reference mentioning you in a post, would give you enough link juice to push the pages into the index, assuming you've got some content on those pages.

If you know you've got thin content issues, then don't canonical them back to pollute some other page(s). Instead, fix the thin content issue by spending some time/money on content writing.

I've seen this done on a massive autoparts site by a former/current member here and the effect was astounding. You wouldn't think it's easy to write 500, 1000 or 2000 words about coil over shocks for an Audi, then another 500-2000 words about coil over shocks for a Vauxhall, but then again - no one said that dominating the market was going to be easy.

Get a writer or three, pony up the cash, get thin content made into remarkable content with some juicy pics and quit looking for an SEO shortcut.

 

[webgeek]

Now 10s of millions of words and 3K links later, I was able to increase traffic by about 33% by adding 90 million+ pages (multi-lingual) with no content.

Sounds like a high risk approach to me. Nearly 100 million pages added with no content? WTF value are your bringing to the table if you aren't including content, unless of course it's a rate my pic site (but even then the content would be the pics you got added, not borrowed).