4.04 - "Sorting by" options

1 - Findings & Impacts

Definition: sorting allows the user to rank the displayed products by popularity, price, alphabetical order and more.

Relying on the optimization of sorting navigation is ideal for dynamically covering a very large number of queries rather than using other pages outside the user's exploration path that would not be highlighted for search engines.

This type of navigation also makes it possible to reduce the level of depth of a page by making it easier to highlight the listed products.

WARNING: Sorting can generate many parameters that can duplicate your existing pages at the expense of your strategic pages.

2 - Recommendations

Rule 1: Accessibility of sorting options

For bots, plan according for the accessibility and inaccessibility of your sorts.

Accessibility of sorting options

A sorting option is accessible when there is a visible link to its URL in the source code (<a href>)

Inaccessibility of sorting options

Making the sorting option inaccessible consists of removing the combination URL from the source code. Several solutions exist to implement that, including the use of AJAX.

Recommended solution: link encryption

This solution consists in not displaying the URLs in clear/plain text in the source code to prevent search engine spiders from following it and indexing it. The target URL is first encoded on the server side and then reconstructed on the client (browser) side using JavaScript code. Example of a bot's vision:

If JavaScript is enabled (user view), a script will decode the ID of the <span> tag and rebuilds the link by replacing the <span> tag with <a>

The Javascript file used to decode the link will have to be blocked by robots.txt via the disallow command in order that Google does not try to decode your links.

Rule 2: Generic Rule

By default, your listing page should always present the newer products in order to favour content freshness explored by Google's bots and help index the URLs of new products.

You should consider making the following sorting options accessible:

• "from low to high prices" in order to rank your pages for terms related to "inexpensive/cheap xxxx"
• "Best / by popularity" in order to rank your pages for terms related to "best xxxx"

For example, if the user is on the "xbox games" category and sort the products by price "low to high", you will have a page with the following title "cheap xbox one games" that will allow you to rank on the SERPs and have users find you

Sorting by popularity

TITLE: Best Console games | CDkeys

H1: Best Console Games

URL: cdkeys.com/best-console-games

Meta Description: Write an enticing text within 155 characters

For example:

NINTENDO -> SWITCH GAMES -> select by popularity

Title: Best Nintendo Switch Games | CDkeys

URL: cdkeys.com/best-nintendo-switch-games

H1: Best Nintendo Switch games