Manchester DM - How eCommerce Faceted Navigation can either Supercharge or Sabotage SEO

Faceted navigation is one of the biggest technical SEO headaches in eCommerce. Handled well, it can unlock serious growth.

Watch the replay run on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwXT7ZOhQCE

Handled badly, it’ll quietly waste crawl budget, dilute signals and bury your most valuable pages. This talk cuts through the noise. I walk through real-world strategies, platform limitations, server log analysis, and how to take control without relying on perfect CMS setups.

This isn’t theory. It’s practical guidance for SEOs dealing with hundreds of filter combinations, index bloat and legacy crawl issues.

Indexable Facets – Opening up faceted URLs to indexing can drive serious search growth, but it needs control. This deck breaks down the when, why and how of making facet URLs indexable without causing crawl chaos.

I cover key signals to look for, how to choose the right facets, and smart ways to deploy content without a full CMS rebuild. Think search volume, conversion potential, knowing your site inside out, and making Googlebot work for you, not against you.

Transcript

1. How eCommerce Faceted Navigation can either Supercharge or Sabotage SEO Chris Lever
2. I started in SEO in 2011
3. Around the same time as Panda & Penguin SEO Autophagy
4. This is Matt Cutts
5. Too old and didn’t care who was number one the charts
6. This was the Currency back then
8. Faceted Navigation
9. “Faceted navigation, when done well, can help customers find what they are looking for quicker and in a more satisfying way. This is good for business and for the bottom line. After all, customers can’t buy what they can’t find.” Jim Kalbach
10. “Faceted navigation, such as filtering by color or price range, can be helpful for your visitors, but it's often not search-friendly since it creates many combinations of URLs with duplicative content.” Google
11. Faceted navigation is useful, but uncontrolled URLs can quietly
12. “Faceted navigation is useful, but uncontrolled URLs can quietly wreck your SEO ”
13. Facet One Sabotage SEO
14. How eCommerce Faceted Navigation can Sabotage SEO
15. How many livelihoods can I wreck today?
16. When does this happen?
17. Googlebot doubles bandwidth consumption overnight
18. “Algorithm refreshes or algorithm updates on the horizon”
19. Googlebot got greedy and discovered +7 million URLs This is called Crawl Bloat
20. Uncontrolled facets can quietly cost you 100k+ impressions a day.
21. “Facets left wide open? Say goodbye to hundreds of thousands of impressions.”
22. Who said the facets were open?
23. How did we end up in this mess?
24. Let’s start with Robots.txt
25. Robots.txt is not a shield Blocking in robots.txt stops crawl, but not indexing. This is called Index Bloat
26. Noindex still wastes Crawl Budget
27. Noindex still wastes Crawl Budget
28. Googlebot doesn’t always respect canonical tags Still wastes Crawl Budget
29. Googlebot doesn’t fully respect nofollow
30. Googlebot, uh, finds a way.
31. Popular Methods 1, Robots.txt Disallow 2, Nofollow 3, Noindex 4, Noindex, Nofollow 5, Canonical Tags 6, Blend of above
32. There’s no one-size-fits-all for facets
33. Messages like this don’t help?
34. Cleaning up the crawl & index bloat
35. Temporary drop Disallow rule, add noindex, nofollow to the page. Pattern-based blocking in robots.txt after the first query parameter. Index Bloat Crawl Bloat
36. Server Access Logs = Entry Points
37. Googlebot doesn’t browse like a user - it hits a URL, stores the links, and crawls them randomly. Look for early clusters in your logs to trace where the mess began. Use GSC to determine the date.
38. What works when all else has failed? Sh*t Happens - Stay Calm Find the offending entry points via the the server access logs and serve a 410 “Gone” response code to Googlebot (only). I only suggest it as a controlled, last-resort tactic.
39. Facet Two Supercharge SEO
40. How eCommerce Faceted Navigation can Supercharge SEO
41. Indexable Facets
42. “Indexable facets are filters worth indexing — they match demand with content.”
43. Search Volume Search Trends Knowing the Website Conversion Potential
44. Indexable Facets Knowing the Website
47. Indexable Facets Search Volume
48. Indexable facets
50. Indexable Facets Search Trends
51. Indexable facets
52. Indexable Facets Conversion Potential
53. Testing Adoption
54. Total (indexable) facet clicks for 2024 = 41,470 Conversion rate = 3% AOV = £62 41,470 × 3% = 1,244 orders (rounded) 1,244 orders × £62 = £77,128 THE ABOVE IS AN EXAMPLE
55. Indexable Facets Hints & Tips
56. Create a watertight business case
57. Create a standalone XML Sitemap
58. Less work for the client Merchandising is already done No need to tag up and categorise all the SKUs
59. Watch out for too many facets being indexed
60. Controlled Environment Open up the indexable facets (only) Keep everything else controlled and unindexable. /paint/?colour=red
61. Controlled Environment /paint/?colour=red&finish=gloss&sort=z-a /paint/?colour=yellow /paint/?colour=red Indexable Unindexable Not shortlisted Shortlisted Deep filtering
62. Controlled Environment Beyond the indexable facets Noindex, nofollow Or Pattern-match robots.txt disallow directive /paint/?colour=red&finish=gloss&sort=z-a
63. Controlled Environment Every facet is Nofollow Use internal linking and standalone XML Sitemaps for signposting and passing pagerank.
64. Include a 100-150 word description Give your indexable facet pages a reason to exist. A short block of content helps differentiate the page, reinforces relevance, and supports ranking. It gives Google context without disrupting UX.
65. Proving the concept works If you can’t add it in the CMS, inject it using GTM or a Cloudflare Worker. Quick, easy, effective.
66. https://speakerdeck.com/chrisleverseo