SEO Sitemap question

[chandrika]

On my site, each product page is in 3 places, under merchant name, brand name, and category. This is just for usability.

I am wondering with regard SEO for creating a sitemap, whether I should list all urls, that would include effectively the same content on 3 different urls.

site.com/merchant/product.html
site.com/brand/product.html
sitemap.com/category/product.html

I can limit my sitemap from doing that and just list each product page in one section such as
sitemap.com/category/product.html however I am not sure whether it would be a good thing to list the product page in all its 3 places, for the backlinks and also the keywords in the urls, or whether it would incur a duplicate content penalty and so be a waste of time?

[incrediblehelp]

Can you list an example of the pages?

[brandrocker]

each product page is in 3 places...

Beware of duplicate content issue. Use robots.txt to restrict access of GoogleBots. See this video to get more information:
Make Wordpress Search Engine Friendly

[chandrika]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Can you list an example of the pages?

Hi Incredihelp,
An example at findallsorts.com would be
/shopUK/c/flowers/product/100-Tulips-Special-flowers.html
/shopUK/product/100-Tulips-Special-flowers.html

Looking again there are only 2 places rather than 3 where the products can be reached by spiders.

If I did block spiders from reaching one instance of the page, I wonder which would be better, I am thinking that the category one, although better keyword wise, is a deeper link and I am not sure if that has an effect one how a page is ranked also?

But if it wouldnt hurt to have both spidered then I will do that.

I was just worried about duplicate content having for each product 2 identical pages on the same site.

[amar]

Prioritize which page is better from SEO point of view like which page is nearer to home page.

Example: if you have two pages yourdomain.com/folder1/a.html and yourdomain.com/folder1/subfolder1/b.html, in this case i always suggest to go with a.html as it is nearer to home page.

[incrediblehelp]

Are you linking internal to both examples?

[chandrika]

Yes I do link internally to both examples, as like I say, it is for usability. So all pages can be reached.

The products are in separate databases, one is just all of them that can be searched entirely, the others are all category specific so that each category can list its sub categories and products independently.

I am sure there would have been other ways to do this, but this was a specific script I wanted to use that compared prices and this was the only way to do it.
As they are linked internally that way I guess they may get spidered anyway, although there are so many 1000s of pages I was doubting many SE would go that deep unless sitemapped.

Thanks Amar for the tip about which pages to list if I choose, which I think I will, I had an idea that being closer to the home page might make a difference, but wasnt too sure, as this is the case it would make sense to sitemap the ones that are not in the categories, as the category ones, although having an extra keyword as in the category name, are much deeper in the site in category and sub category folders.

Thanks

[incrediblehelp]

Since your linking to both, then both will be crawled. Your serving the same page twice and the SE's will "try" to distinguish which is the correct one. Which versions are you finding get more traffic? Once you establish which ones seem to get ranked more and get the most traffic attempt to block the spiders from the other version.

[luigip]

Originally Posted by amar

Prioritize which page is better from SEO point of view like which page is nearer to home page.

Example: if you have two pages yourdomain.com/folder1/a.html and yourdomain.com/folder1/subfolder1/b.html, in this case i always suggest to go with a.html as it is nearer to home page.

I don´t agree with you. It depends on the internal linkdepth and on the external links each site has.

So follow incrediblehelp´s advice:

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

... Once you establish which ones seem to get ranked more and get the most traffic attempt to block the spiders from the other version.

[brandrocker]

An example at findallsorts.com would be
/shopUK/c/flowers/product/100-Tulips-Special-flowers.html
/shopUK/product/100-Tulips-Special-flowers.html

---- It depends on internal linking as well, so, difficult to comment.

...the others are all category specific so that each category can list its sub categories and products independently...

--- if it leads to a pyramid like structure ( as suggested by Matt, Google Engineer ), it will be helpful for your visitors as well as for the search engine crawlers, unless it is too much nested.

You may rely on Incrediblehelp's opinion in this regard.

[chandrika]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Since your linking to both, then both will be crawled. Your serving the same page twice and the SE's will "try" to distinguish which is the correct one. Which versions are you finding get more traffic? Once you establish which ones seem to get ranked more and get the most traffic attempt to block the spiders from the other version.

Thanks, I appreciate all the advice here, and will keep an eye on the stats for a while to see which gets more traffic.

With regard the pyramid like structure mentioned in this thread, i think there is one big pyramid at the root section of the site containing everything, surrounded by lots of small category pyramids that each contains a part copy of the large central structure, its a valley of the Kings case, rather than a classic Giza Necropolis example lol

i love analogies, dont get me started..but hope it still counts as a pyramid structure somewhat, and also hope it unearths me some treasure... (oh stop already!)

Thanks again, I will keep an eye on the stats for a while and see what happens.