This document provides tips on optimizing facet navigation for ecommerce websites to target long-tail keywords and drive more traffic and sales. It recommends using keyword research to identify relevant facets, optimizing facet URLs and landing pages with long-tail terms, and linking to facet pages to build their authority and reduce reliance on other marketing channels. Done correctly, facet navigation optimization can help websites better serve consumer intent, improve the user experience and conversion rates, and open up new backlink opportunities.
2. Optimise your facet navigation for undiscovered ecommerce success
Focus on mid and long-tail keywords to
leverage your facet taxonomy.
This will help to fulfil consumer intent, secure additional
web conversions and boost your revenue stream whilst
streamlining your marketing spend.
Executive summary
3. Optimise your facet navigation for undiscovered ecommerce success
The role of facet
navigation
4. Optimise your facet navigation for undiscovered ecommerce success
Optimising them can:
• Leverage consumer demands
• Improve UX by offering more relevant search results
• Direct PageRank to targeted URLs
• Drive conversions and revenue
• Provide new backlink opportunities
Facet navigations can…
help consumers discover products
intuitively
5. Optimise your facet navigation for undiscovered ecommerce success
For example, I’m choosing a wedding dress
I might tailor my search by…
FabricNecklineSleeveColour
Long sleeve LaceScoopWhite
6. Optimise your facet navigation for undiscovered ecommerce success
DA and backlinks alone
do not guarantee
success
Ran
k
URL Root
TF
URL
TF
1
www.davidbridal.com/long-
sleeve-wedding-dresses
67 30
2
www.maggiesottero.com/sl
eeve-wedding-dresses
62 30
3
shop.nordstrom.com/c/wed
ding-dresses
82 64
Optimised category page
Optimised category page
Non-optimised category page
13. BrasMyla
Silk BrasMyla 32C BrasMylaSilk Bras32C
Home
Bras Nightwear Sportswear
Silk Bras 32C Bras
Silk Bras32CMyla
14. Optimise your facet navigation for undiscovered ecommerce success
Facet combinations should
reflect common queries
which collectively provide
notable search estimates
Harness data from:
• Keyword research tools
• SERPs
• Competitors
• Search Console
• Analytics
• PPC (if applicable)
• Merchandising Team
This will help to determine which keywords and
URLs are driving the highest number of visits and
conversions.
Keyword Avg. Monthly Searches Competition
lace bralette 9.9k High
lace bra 4.4k High
black lace bralette 3.6k High
white lace bralette 2.4k High
black lace bra 1.3k High
white strapless bra 1.3k High
white lace bra 1k High
black lace bralette top 1k High
white push up bra 720 High
white strapless push up bra 260 High
white padded sports bra 170 High
white push up bralette 140 High
15. Optimise your facet navigation for undiscovered ecommerce success
Use this free scraper
extension to quickly find
category opportunities
from competitor websites
Here’s how it’s done….
• Go to a category page.
• Right-click the mouse next to the
information you want to scrape.
• Then click ‘scrape similar’.
• The information is then displayed within
the scraper interface and can be either
copied to your clipboard or exported to a
Google doc.
• You can extract other content by adding
new columns using XPath or JQuery.
16. Optimise your facet navigation for undiscovered ecommerce success
Grouping into meaningful sub-topics
will provide session and revenue
estimations Quantify the size of the prize
17. Optimise your facet navigation for undiscovered ecommerce success
Dig deeper into broader terms around
offers, customer ratings and price to
establish relevancy
18. Optimise your facet navigation for undiscovered ecommerce success
Technical steps
19. Optimise your facet navigation for undiscovered ecommerce success
• Don’t open the entire system - determine which facets to leverage in each category
to prevent crawl inefficiencies and link equity dilution.
• Avoid thin/doorway pages by comparing against your product offering – there’s no
point creating a new listings page for a very small range of eligible products. Aim to
have a min. 10 products in each PLP.
• Cannibalisation issues
1). Arrange selected facets by value and significance - e.g. “size” is very important for
some electrical goods like TVs, laptops and cameras but is less so for beauty
accessories or vacuum cleaners.
2). Make page content unique and relevant.
3). Identify where multiples co-exist and exhibit good search volumes. For example, it’s
reasonable for someone to simultaneously look for several colour combinations.
Facet optimisation adds
a massive layer of
complexity
but it’s worth it if we mitigate
against the potential issues
20. Optimise your facet navigation for undiscovered ecommerce success
“White cotton t-shirt”
“Cotton white t-shirt”
Follow the sequence in which adjectives and
facets are predominately selected
21. Optimise your facet navigation for undiscovered ecommerce success
Minimise development resources
Help to pre-define the URL
logic for each subcategory
facet
Recommended Facet URL
Logic
22. Optimise your facet navigation for undiscovered ecommerce success
• Deal with irrelevant combinations
1). Canonicalise all unnecessary facets to their parent page (hint not directive).
2). Dynamic search parameters should be defined with a ”noindex, nofollow” meta
robots tag and disallowed in the robots.txt file.
3). Define parameters with Search Console’s URL Parameter tool (hint not
directive – tell Googlebot the effect a parameter may have on a page and how it
should treat them).
Manage the
controllables
23. Optimise your facet navigation for undiscovered ecommerce success
Optimise your facet
URLs with long-tail
search terms
24. Optimise your facet navigation for undiscovered ecommerce success
• URL
• Page title
• Breadcrumbs
• H tags
• Content snippets
• Image ALT texts
• Product names
• FAQs (if applicable)
David’s Bridal
URL: http://www.davidsbridal.com/long-sleeve-wedding-dresses
Title: Long Sleeve Wedding Dresses & Gowns | David’s Bridal
25. Optimise your facet navigation for undiscovered ecommerce success
Provide accessibility
and build page
authority
26. Optimise your facet navigation for undiscovered ecommerce success
Cultivate link equity for each facet
URL
Don’t allow them to exist as orphan pages
with no PageRank
•Filter navigation on the CLP and PLPsOne feature per facet URL
•Create a ‘popular searches’ or ‘related searches’ option within your CLPsTwo or more features per facet URL
•Create relevant content with in-copy links. Use long-tail anchor textsBlog articles and/or style guides
•Get the biggest proportion of link equity
•Secure the highest click-through rates
Harness your mega menu
•Provide bots with have an accurate blueprint of how a website is structured
and what pages are open for crawl and indexationXML sitemap inclusion
•Automatically connect to them via href links so you’re not solely relying on
links from the main nav or copy linksHref links
•Strategic growth campaigns, #journorequests etc.• Backlinks
27. Optimise your facet navigation for undiscovered ecommerce success
In conclusion
• Pivot mid and long-tail search queries to
leverage consumer intent
• Guide visitors down the purchase funnel
and drive online sales
• Maximise UX
• Provide new backlink opportunities
• Reduce reliance on other marketing
channels – high resource / cost
Dangers
Opportunity
Actions
• Complex function to manage
• Link equity dilution
• Crawl and indexation issues
• Cannibalisation
• Thin content
• Keyword research
• Competitor analysis
• Facet selection and configuration
• Landing page optimisation
• Execute targeted outreach activity
28. Optimise your facet navigation for undiscovered ecommerce success
Vicky Golding (SEO Consultant, Builtvisible)
https://builtvisible.com/optimise-your-faceted-navigation-to-target-long-tail-
keywords
Maria Camanes (Senior SEO Consultant, Builtvisible)
https://builtvisible.com/faceted-navigation-seo-best-practices/
Maria Camanes (Senior SEO Consultant, Builtvisible)
https://builtvisible.com/ecommerce-quick-wins-you-can-implement-today-to-boost-
your-seo-performance/
Richard Baxter (Founder & Non-executive Director, Builtvisible)
https://builtvisible.com/solving-site-architecture-issues/
Additional reading
Industry giants aren’t necessarily going to win at the game.
Having a strong DA & a good range of high quality backlinks
David’s Bridal have optimised category pages with unique and relevant content for ‘long sleeve wedding dresses’
Open as phases - 1 facet navigation
Greater than the sum of its parts
Bear in mind that if a person wants to buy a new bra and has very specific requirements then landing on these articles instead of a closely- related product category page is likely to cause friction to the user’s experience.
So we need to consider where articles and guides can be utilised and where facet navigation comes into play
But because there can a huge number of possible combinations (which only increases with the size of your ecomm site) we have to manage the flood gates
Open as phases - 1 facets then 2 facet
KWR tool – keyword planner & answer the public
Analytics – URLs sessions and conversions
Merchandise Team – popular products that sell
Type, COLOUR & MATERIAL
Product filters should not be indexed - used to sort or narrow page content - rather than actually changing it and offering unique value (duplicate results)
5* insurance cover
Zen generation – interested in low price points ’under £20’ may be legit and should be indexable
Product offering - periodically change (product discontinuation/collection launches/collaborations with other brands)
Products can have five or more distinguishable features but in English we typically use no more than four adjectives to describe something.
Defining parameters – under ‘legacy tools and reports’
Defining parameters - won’t work for Bing or Yahoo user-agents
optimised category pages with unique and relevant content for ‘long sleeve wedding dresses’
Open as phases - 1 facet navigation
UX on site navigation and serving mor relevant research results