Hi there,

I hope someone can help me. I am just learning about SEO, so bear with me. Please could someone tell me how far Google and other search engines drill down on your shop page? I have my store front and then I have sections with products within them. I would like to add sub-sections within those sections, but I don't know if this would be detrimental to my chances of being found by search engines. Is it advisable to have sub-sections in view of this? It would certainly improve navigation within my shop.

Thank you for all advice on this.

Hi Babs

I think you are asking if the spiders will "crawl" all your pages. -- Yes

That being said, the general feeling I have seen in posts is most site designers prefer to go with the 3 click rule, meaning three clicks and you are on the page to at least order so most did not have subsections.

I went with subsections http://www.cafepress.com/tracytrends so far but I am trying to create many entry ways into my site so perhaps the customer will still have only 3 clicks. It all depends on how they find me.

The good thing is you can always move your subsections later if you was to reduce your "tier" so to speak. The url stays the same so you will keep all your incoming links and google ranking for that page. So, really this is something you can fine tune as your shop grows and shows up in google.

~best
Tracy

(MOD EDIT: TO FIX LINK)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: RowdyJRT,

Babs raises an important question, which sadly has an answer. NO, all your shop pages will not be indexed by search engines. Search for some unique text on a particular page, quoted in the search dialog and all too often you will discover that that page has not been cached, has not been indexed. Shops are not web sites, they are only pages within the very VERY large Cafepress web site and the indexes only go so deep and then they seem to peter out.

There are ways to increase the chances of being indexed. Perhaps the most powerful way is to have an outside site that links in directly to the deeper pages of your shop. If your off-CP site is properly indexed and has a good site map Google is more likely to follow those links and is more likely to then index the pages that you link to. More likely is probably the best you can hope for however because those shop pages are still part of the Cafepress web site, already "well indexed" by Google.

BD

Hi Tracy and Dave,

Thank you very much for our replies. That's very helpful. Thank you for the link to your shop too, Tracy, I can see what you are saying now from your example.

I think having an outside site is going to be the answer here isn't it. I have a lot of work to do on that front. Oh well, small steps and all that :-)

Thanks again, best wishes,

I would imagine that most or all of it would be indexed unless it had the "no follow" attribute, which is unlikely. Just because you don't see it in the search right away doesn't mean that it won't be indexed, some of the deeper pages can take longer to show up.

To see if Google has indexed your site, type this into thier search:
site:www.cafepress.com/yourshop