How should I handle alternate pages with canonical tags?

[chaletboutique]

 

Our Google Search Console data is showing over 12K Alternate pages with proper canonical tag. I have a small website with about 500 products. I have contacted Shopify for help and they told me I have to put some code to dismiss some

of the urls in the robots.txt file. I did that but I am unsure if I put the code in the correct place as when our site was re-crawled the issue remained. I have read the Help article for this issue provided in the Google Search Console, but the instructions are outdated. I also contacted their help community and they said ‘

Looks like robots.txt is intended to be 'dynamic'. There must be some 'editor' for canging the 'groups' rules, etc. Using that editor, rather than the raw theme file seems better. All rules in one place. 

Honestly I would still say it's dangerous to try to fix "Alternate page with proper canonical tag"

On a quest to 'fix everything', often results in making things worse. 

The list is unlikely (although not impossible) to have any real issues that need fixing.’

I have attached what I did. Can I get some advice on if to fix this or leave it? 

[ilanadavis]

Hey @chaletboutique 

You can usually ignore the "Alternate page with proper canonical tag" and Google says there is often no action required directly in their docs.

This is Google's official docs on Search Console's Page Indexing Report: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7440203

This article discusses the common Page Indexing Issues in Search Console with applicable specifics for Shopify stores. https://www.ilanadavis.com/blogs/articles/when-to-ignore-search-console-indexing-issues-for-shopify-...

I would remove the code you added and not worry about the notice in Search Console.

[chaletboutique]

Our media firm said to add the disallow code to our robots.txt because there are so many entries it can make it harder to see things that you need to see in that list. We are a relatively small site, and we have over 12 thousand Alternate pages with proper canonical tags. How do I know if there are issues within these? 

[ilanadavis]

If your media firm is telling you to fix something that rarely is an issue with Shopify stores let alone a rare issue in Google in general, I'd question their experience with Shopify and SEO.

Nonetheless, I'll answer your question. Do a rough scan through the links in Search Console to see if anything jumps out at you. You can show up to 1000 links, giving you a rough idea of the types of URLs in your report.

I'd bet most of these are collection-aware product URLs where you include the collection in your product URL. (e.g. domain.com/collections/collection-name/products/product-name). Given that you have 500 products and nearly 12k URLs in this report, I'd wager this is most of your URLs.

Collection-aware product pages are expected to be in here if you haven't removed your collection-aware URLs. There are risks associated so please read the article before making changes. If you remove your collection-aware URLs, many of those links will drop off over time.

As mentioned in my first article, you may see ?pr_prod_strat= or ?variant= which are all correct and should have an alternative canonical URL (e.g. the main product URL). So there is nothing you need to do here.

You said in your first post "On a quest to 'fix everything', often results in making things worse." which is more often the biggest concern I have with agencies who recommend this. There is most likely nothing wrong here and trying to fix them is most likely a wild goose chase that will provide no value in the end.

[Swaggerlikeme]

So true regarding the quest to fix everything. 

I have the same issue 18.2 k pages not indexed (for 10 reasons) and 1.9k pages indexed. 

After browsing through the list of pages on google search console i found that there are quite a few like the following:

 https://swaggerlikeme.com/en-us/products/staple-pigeon-logo-sweatsuit-set-heather-gray?pr_prod_strat...

is there a need to fix these ?

I also offer multiple currencies so i get duplicate urls with "en-us" like so: https://swaggerlikeme.com/en-us/products/alpha-industries-l-2b-loose-baggy-fit-flight-jacket-vintage...

are there any fixes needed for these or is it not really affecting my site ranking on google. 

Which of these reasons should be prioritized and how to fix them is the question. 

thanks

RJ

[ilanadavis]

Hey @Swaggerlikeme 

For URLs like ?pr_prod_strat=... these are Shopify's tracking parameters for when someone clicks on your recommended products under You may also like. You can see this yourself. Find any product and scroll down to the You may also like section and select a different product. Then in the URL, you'll see ?pr_prod_strat=... has been added to the URL.

Those URLs don't get indexed because they aren't helpful for customers searching for your site in Google. So Search Console is basically saying we see these URLs but we're going to ignore them because you're telling Google (via your canonical settings) to only index the real product URLs.

Similar situation with duplicate URLs for your multiple currencies. Google recognizes that these are essentially the same product and can see that you have location-specific language and currency (en-us) in your URL. There is nothing you need to do.

If you read through the article I mentioned in my initial response and below, you'll see most of the non-issues in this report are just Google's way of telling you what they found.

https://www.ilanadavis.com/blogs/articles/when-to-ignore-search-console-indexing-issues-for-shopify-...

There is nothing you need to do nor should you do anything. Really!! You have a million other things to worry about with your business and this shouldn't be one of them. Focus on the areas that will make an impact on your sales, this isn't it.

[Swaggerlikeme]

Thank you soo much for your response. I read the article you shared and i have found that i deleted a whole bunch of out of stock items and now have this 404 issue growing. How do you suggest i work around this, as im not even sure where to redirect them as the item is sold out. 

[ilanadavis]

Sold out and you plan to get them back, or sold out and never selling again?

Selling again:

They shouldn't even be removed. If you plan to sell the product again, keep the product page live and simply mark it as out of stock.

Never selling again:

404 pages work exactly the way they are meant to for SEO. Their downfall is that it's a bad customer experience, not that it's bad for SEO. People use a shortcut to say 404s are bad for SEO, but when a page is deleted, the 404 error is a way to tell Google the page no longer exists.

The notices you see about a 404 error, are Google's way of saying "Hey this page broke, do you have another page you want us to use instead (e.g. redirect)? If not, no problem, we'll remove this page from indexing when the time is right."

You can decide if you want to redirect those 404 error pages to any other page, including your homepage, though it's best if there is a good alternative. If you don't redirect, customers will and should land on a 404 page. Consider editing your 404 page to show other products so that it's not a complete dead end.

[mvende]

Tks a lot @ilanadavis This article helped me a lot. 

[KieranR]

Yeah 💯 what Illanadavis is saying here. 

Too often Search Console and third party audit tools like SEMrush spit out scary looking list of technical warnings and other noise that your site has "50 things broken" or only has an "SEO score" of 40/100.

Most of that stuff is just noise, sometimes things are legit. But someone needs to know or learn the correct context before jumping to actions.

SEO is like winning a car race. Even if you fix all the little dashboard lights on the banged up 20 year old Toyota Corolla, that won't make you win. Find the actual SEO levers and pull those.