Optimize filters and facets for SEO

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Filters and facets are web elements that help us sort and filter elements from a set of web items . Filters allow us to refine results, ignoring those that do not interest us, while facets allow us to reorder elements based on our preferred criteria (price, novelty, etc.). Their main function is UX , in the sense of facilitating user navigation until they find what they want, without having to get lost in a sea of ​​pagination .

Generally, links are placed on the left and facets at the top , although this is not always the case, as sometimes we prefer to leave the side for sidebar elements , such as links to other categories or promotions.

seo filters and facets

At the SEO level , filters and facets pose many problems . They usually generate parameterized URLs that cannot be positioned , and they also consume a lot of crawling resources for Google bots. They can cause endless problems with duplicate content or thin content . So, how can we deal with these situations?

1. Block by Robots.txt
block robots txt filters

This way Google will not even enter those URLs , saving crawling resources and being able to invest them in those that really interest us.

Caution: If we already have many parameterized URLs and we want to stop this oman whatsapp data process, we must first remove them from the SERP , and then block them, because if we block them Google will not be able to access them, not even to remove them.


2. Canonicalize to the clean category URL
canonical filters

In this way, although Google can access these URLs, it should not index them since we indicate that the correct one is the main one . But be careful, this is optional for Google and it will not always follow it. In addition, Google spiders will waste a lot of time crawling URLs that you yourself later indicate are not valuable, instead of investing their time in crawling other URLs that are more interesting at the SEO level.


3. Do not link them
This is complex, delicate and not always technically possible. What we suggest here is that the filtering and faceting action can be preserved, but that they do not include a link as such . If we do not link them, we preserve the PageRank. The website can be laid out or the links can be obfuscated, so that Google does not detect them as links. Or the link can be kept but set as nofollow. In any case, these are technically complex implementations and we have no guarantees that Google will process them as we expect, unless we have a good IT team and tracking and monitoring resources, as well as log records and Google Search Console up to date.

4. Not having
As we saw in the post about pagination, the best way to avoid SEO problems caused by filters and facets is to do without them. For very large websites, this will be practically impossible, but we could guide the user through a complex network of categories and subcategories , until reaching lists of products that are not very extensive and optimized for SEO. This solution is very tempting for SEOs, but it deprives the user of a very useful and appreciated functionality. If we put the user at the center, we should avoid this path.

Conclusions
Filters and facets are the opposite of what happens with pagination. In this case, users want them, but they pose problems for SEOs. Consequently, in a modern SEO scenario where the user and their experience are the center, we cannot do without filters and facets on medium and large websites. From there, in this post we have reviewed the different techniques that allow us to deal with them at the implementation level: blocking them by robots.txt, canonicalizing URLs, or eliminating or obfuscating internal links. With all the implementations having imperfections, blocking by robots.txt is undoubtedly the simplest, cleanest way and perfectly complies with Google's recommendations . So if it is technically feasible, it would always be our recommendation.