In this corner...Title MMA

CANONICALIZATION

One of the first things on the SEO checklist is canonicalization. At first glance, Title MMA is looking pretty good: Typing in titlemma.com or, more important, links to titlemma.com, 301 redirects over to www.titlemma.com.

But don't stop there. Try pulling up an interior URL without the “www” and you get a far less friendly interaction: “Server Error in ‘/’ Application,” which returns a hard 404 response. While the root domain is the most important concern here, it's only the first round. But any links created to any interior URLs that don't include the “www” in this case will be wasted.

Human visitors may not realize what has happened and may just back out and go somewhere else; and search engines won't be able to crawl the site from those links and won't associate any real value to those links. Note that we don't want both versions to exist; in this instance, we want the “non-www” versions to 301 redirect to their “www” canonical versions.

DUPLICATION

This isn't the only canonical issue. The other one is often simply referred to as site duplication. Site (and content) duplication has been a big focus of the search engines, and it's an extremely common challenge to e-commerce Websites.

Title MMA is experiencing categorization duplication. Due to products being placed within different categories and sections of the site, whole subcategories of products and the products themselves are being duplicated across different URLs.

Timers for fights exist within both the Accessories category (http://www.titlemma.com/sf_76/c_9.aspx) and the Cages, Rings & Mats category (http://www.titlemma.com/sf_591/c_10.aspx).

But product level duplication is worse. Take the Everlast Pro Round Timer. You can find this product duplicated across at least four URLs:

• Accessories category: http://www.titlemma.com/sf_76/c_9/p_EVDGT.aspx

• Cages, Rings & Mats category: http://www.titlemma.com/sf_591/c_10/p_EVDGT.aspx

• New product listings: http://www.titlemma.com/sf_555/c_303/p_EVDGT.aspx

• Everlast brand section: http://www.titlemma.com/sf_267/c_11/p_EVDGT.aspx

And I have to imagine that some products might also be further duplicated within the “Sale” or “Specials” sections. Unfortunately, a search in Google for “everlast pro round timer” brings Title MMA in at the number 10 spot, but not for any of these URLs.

Instead, the “Write a Review” page shows up (http://www.titlemma.com/ProductReview.aspx?pID=EVDGT). Perhaps that isn't so surprising, since the review page is linked to from all of these duplicated versions, which might be making Google think that it is the more authoritative page.

The review page isn't that strong, though, aside from these links pointing to it. However, if the product page duplicates are consolidated to a single URL, that product page will not only probably be returned for searches instead of the review page, it will probably rank higher as well. It's okay for the products to exist in different categories, but don't create new URLs for them.

If that wasn't enough duplication already, Title MMA is also experiencing presentational duplication. This refers to anything used to affect the presentation of the page contents.

Most commonly, this refers to sorting functionality, such as sorting by price, brand, ratings, color, size or some other characteristic. Title MMA is actually okay in this instance, as the Sort By functionality is JavaScript powered. Even the Refine Your Search and Items Per Page functionalities don't create new URLs, that's okay too.

So where's the issue? Pagination. The pagination issue here is unique.

Pagination typically creates issues when combined with these other presentational functions when additional URLs are created, or simply leads to lower value pages that appear too similar to each other. But in this case, the pagination issue occurs at the product page level due to the page reference being added into the URL.

For instance, if the product above were to appear on the second page, it would have a “/pg_2/” injected between the “sf_76” and the “c_9.” Not only is this creating yet another URL duplication (potentially more, though, due to sorting functionality pushing products to different paginated pages), it is moving the product down an additional directory level.

LANDING THE WINNING BLOW

Like a fighter, a Website needs to be proficient in many areas. Just as no fight is won with a single move, no Web page wins in search results from a single move. But when it comes to critical strengths, the title tag is still one of the most powerful.

Unfortunately, Title MMA is a bit mixed in this arena. Forget optimal keyword phrasing at this point; in many cases, the subcategory sections simply duplicate the parent category titles.

The title tag is one of the strongest signals that any page can send to the search engines, and having duplicate title tags is like fighting with your hands tied behind your back — it isn't pretty.

If you could do only one thing, then making sure duplication of title tags is eliminated or at least greatly minimized would be it. (Okay, making sure the site is crawlable might be slightly more important, but the two really go hand in hand, or is that hand in glove?)

Otherwise, we send the initial signal to search engines that all of the pages with duplicate title tags are themselves duplicates. Then we rely on there being enough difference within the pages for the search engines to realize that they are in fact not duplicates. Still, we greatly reduce the pages' ability to rank competitively.

Title MMA carries many great brands and products that are very specific to its niche. But many of the keyword fights they are waging are way too broad and hyper competitive.

The site may be fighting a losing battle trying to go after broad brand and product terms like Adidas, Nike, apparel, footwear and gloves. Even fight related brands like Tapout, Throwdown and Everlast may be too much at this point in time.

Too broad a focus and hyper-competitive targets are all too common, though. Rather, Title MMA should turn to keyword research to identify more targeted, more relevant, and possibly less competitive variations that it could use to win.

Or if it's already winning for the keywords, Title MMA could possibly greatly improve its rankings for those terms. The company should take the existing terms and look for relevant modifiers, such as training gear, fight gear, martial arts gear, MMA clothing, and so on.