Solved How to solve orphan pages on a job board
-
Working on a website that has a job board, and over 4000 active job ads. All of these ads are listed on a single "job board" page, and don’t obviously all load at the same time.
They are not linked to from anywhere else, so all tools are listing all of these job ad pages as orphans.
How much of a red flag are these orphan pages? Do sites like Indeed have this same issue? Their job ads are completely dynamic, how are these pages then indexed?
We use Google’s Search API to handle any expired jobs, so they are not the issue. It’s the active, but orphaned pages we are looking to solve. The site is hosted on WordPress.
What is the best way to solve this issue? Just create a job category page and link to each individual job ad from there? Any simpler and perhaps more obvious solutions? What does the website structure need to be like for the problem to be solved? Would appreciate any advice you can share!
-
@cyrus-shepard-0 Thanks so much for your input! The categorization option was what we were thinking about as well, but not sure if the client will be ready to invest the time. Will definitely suggest it to them.
Not majorly concerned about the jobs being found via Google search as individual posts, it's more about avoiding the orphans, as I'm sure they will be seen as a red flag.
Also, yes, the job posts are covered in a sitemap, you are correct.
-
@michael_m Seems like you have a number of options.
Can you categorize the jobs into more specific types (e.g. region, job type, etc.) and then add them to more category-specific "job board" pages? Even if you had duplication across job boards, seems like you'd get better crawl + indexation coverage. Anything to create a more clear crawling path to those pages. Even 20-50 job categories (or other sort/filter features) might provide benefit, and those category pages probably have a better chance of ranking on their own.
Cross-linking from similar/related jobs might also be a good option to explore. Much how we link to related questions here in the Q&A.
Orphaned pages aren't always a problem, as long as the pages are getting indexed and ranked. I imagine the search volume is pretty low for some of those jobs, but Google's sitemap indexation report is going to be your friend here.
Hope that helps!
Are the job postings covered in a sitemap? As SEO tools are finding them as orphaned, I assume they are discovering the pages via sitemaps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
URL structure for same product in multiple categories?
Hello everyone ! I am building an ecom store using wordpress. I have assigned multiple categories to the same product. What should be the URL structure when users are navigating with different product categories? Categories Assigned: tshirt, blue, striped
Technical SEO | | Dingos
Product Name: blue-striped-tshirt Option 01: Matching site navigation breadcrumb to product url URL - ecomstore.com/tshirt/blue-striped-tshirt
Breadcrumb - home/tshirt/blue-striped-tshirt URL - ecomstore.com/blue/blue-striped-tshirt (canonical to 1 product page)
Breadcrumb - home/color/blue/blue-striped-tshirt URL - ecomstore.com/striped/blue-striped-tshirt (canonical to 1 product page)
Breadcrumb - home/type/striped/blue-striped-tshirt Option 02: Same product urls and different breadcrumbs based on user site navigation URL - ecomstore.com/tshirt/blue-striped-tshirt
Breadcrumb - home/tshirt/blue-striped-tshirt URL - ecomstore.com/tshirt/blue-striped-tshirt (url same as 1 product page)
Breadcrumb - home/color/blue/blue-striped-tshirt URL - ecomstore.com/tshirt/blue-striped-tshirt (url same as 1 product page)
Breadcrumb - home/type/striped/blue-striped-tshirt I have decided to got with Option 01 so that the product in each category can be ranked according to each category keyword. Which option is the best according to your experience or is there any other best practice?0 -
Optimization expert suggesting we add Canonical tag to every page on site
Hi guys, We're currently launching a new page, and we have an optimization and technical SEO expert (highly rated on Upwork, very intelligent, has solved complicated issues in the past and improved our Core Web Vitals greatly) suggesting we put canonical tags on every page of site, pointing to itself (other than the case of where canonicals should point to other page, we have those listed separately. Do you guys see a benefit to this? Could it harm us? He says large retailers do this, couldn't quite glean the benefit from it though. Current site ranks well and isn't set up like this. Any insight would be much appreciated! Thanks!
Technical SEO | | CitimarineMoz0 -
301 Redirects from example.com to store.example.com and then removing store.example.com subdomain
Hi I'm trying to wrap my head around the best approach for migrating our website. We're migrating from our example.com (joomla) site to our existing store.example.com (shopify) site... with the plan to finish the redirects/migration then remove the subdomain from shopify and use example.com moving forward. I've never done this and asking here to see if any harm will come from re-directing example.com URLs to store.example.com URL's then changing the store.example.com URL's to example.com. Right now my plan would run like this: redirect example.com URL's to store.example.com remove subdomain on store.example.com use example.com moving forward. wonder what happens next? Is there going to be any issues here, possible harm to the URL's?
Technical SEO | | Minarets0 -
Why is my inner pages ranking higher than main page?
Hi everyone, for some reason lately i have discovered that Google is ranking my inner pages higher than the main subfolder page. www.domain.com/subfolder --> Target page to be ranked
Technical SEO | | davidboh
www.domain.com/subfolder/aboutus ---> page that is currently ranking Also in the SERP most of the time, it is showing both links in this manner. www.domain.com/subfolder/aboutus
-----------www.domain.com/subfolder Thanks in advance.1 -
Avg Page Load Time (sec) Comppared to site average - what does it mean?
Hi All, In google analytic In Site Speed -> Page Timings we have two columns a) Page Views & b) Avg Load Time (sec) compared to site average. Now in "b" column I am able to below % one in green and another in brown so what does it mean? Can anyone please explain me? Image attached Thanks! bNbBA
Reporting & Analytics | | amu1230 -
Crawl errors for pages that no longer exist
Hey folks, I've been working on a site recently where I took a bunch of old, outdated pages down. In the Google Search Console "Crawl Errors" section, I've started seeing a bunch of "Not Found" errors for those pages. That makes perfect sense. The thing that I'm confused about is that the "Linked From" list only shows a sitemap that I ALSO took down. Alternatively, some of them list other old, removed pages in the "Linked From" list. Is there a reason that Google is trying to inform me that pages/sitemaps that don't exist are somehow still linking to other pages that don't exist? And is this ultimately something I should be concerned about? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | BrianAlpert780 -
Magic UVs - PPC landing pages delivering organic traffic by magic...
I have checked and double checked this. GA is showing over the last couple of weeks mysite.com/ppc/landingpage1 as a landing page for organic traffic, where it shouldn't. Main facts: The entire /ppc/ folder is blocked from the googlebot, and doesn't appear on any internal site maps. As far as I can tell, these pages have never been cached for the main index. I cannot recreate any of the organic searches myself (i.e. typing in keywords that triggered the traffic, even the almost unique long-tail ones). We just don't appear in the organic listings with these pages. The analytics and adwords accounts are linked. We are not paying for this mystery traffic through our PPC - these keywords are not appearing in our AdWords account (though other keywords / traffic are). The traffic is real - we have received phone calls from these pages, tracked to the visits recorded as organic These pages should only receive PPC traffic. They are receiving organic traffic also, but I can't recreate it. Can anyone suggest what's going on? I'm concerned about duplicate content issues and also skewing the analysis of the PPC campaign. Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | RobPell0 -
How Can a Page Have More Unique Pageviews than Total Pageviews?
The question and the attached image say it all... how is this possible? 2v1uo8w.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | glennfriesen0