Mastering Camunda Documentation SEO: Tips and Tricks

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Understanding SEO and Duplicate Content
3. Google's Canonicalization Process
4. Duplicate Content on Our Documentation Site
5. The Impact of No Index Tags
6. Steps Taken to Fix the Issue
7. The Results of our Efforts
8. Preventing Similar Issues in the Future
9. Differences in C8 Documentation
10. Conclusion

Introduction

👋 Hey friends! You may have noticed that the search results for the C7 documentation site have degraded significantly over the past couple of years. In this article, we're going to dive deep into the issue and discuss how we're working to fix it on the DX team.

Understanding SEO and Duplicate Content

🔍 To understand the issue better, we need to talk about SEO and duplicate content. The internet is filled with duplicate content, some maliciously scraped and posted without credit, while others are syndicated to reach larger audiences. However, Google's search engine handles duplicate content by choosing one page as the canonical source.

Google's Canonicalization Process

🔗 Google uses various signals, such as link popularity, to determine the canonical page. It looks at the overall story of how your content fits into the internet. However, when it comes to documentation sites like ours, the situation is a bit different. We have pages that remain unchanged across several versions, and sometimes they are duplicated between different versions.

Duplicate Content on Our Documentation Site

📄 For example, our C7 documentation may have a page about BPMN that has existed for many versions, with minor or no changes at all. This variation across versions could potentially confuse Google's bots and trigger their duplicate content alarm. The challenge lies in convincing Google to pick the latest version of our documentation as the canonical source.

The Impact of No Index Tags

🚫 In an attempt to prevent Google from choosing older versions as canonical, we added the "no index" tag to all our older pages, effectively telling Google not to index those versions. Unfortunately, this had an unintended consequence. While Google couldn't index those pages, it also meant that users couldn't find help topics on our site through Google search.

Steps Taken to Fix the Issue

🔧 We tried several approaches to fix this issue. We added versionless canonical links to redirect to the most recent version, as well as versioned canonical links for each newer version. We also requested Google to crawl specific URLs and implemented other measures to improve our search results. However, the results were not as successful as we had hoped.

The Results of our Efforts

📈 Despite our efforts, Google did not consistently recognize our chosen canonical page. This led to frustration and a lack of control over which URLs were considered canonical. However, over time, we noticed some improvements in search results, with fewer duplicate pages and a decline in user-selected canonical pages.

Preventing Similar Issues in the Future

🔮 Moving forward, our goal is to ensure that we don't encounter the same problem with C8. We need to address the self-referential canonical issue and refine the sitemap to include only the current version. While C8 documentation has its advantages over C7, we still need to make some adjustments to avoid any potential indexing issues.

Differences in C8 Documentation

🔄 C8 documentation is built on a different tool called Docusaurus. One out-of-the-box implementation in Docusaurus treats every page as self-canonical, which doesn't provide any helpful hints to Google. We need to correct this and also ensure that the sitemap only includes the current version.

Conclusion

🎉 In conclusion, our journey to fix the degraded search results for the C7 documentation site has been challenging. Although we haven't reached a perfect solution yet, we have observed improvements in the search results over time. We are committed to learning from this experience and applying our knowledge to prevent similar issues in the future. Stay tuned for further updates!

Highlights

• Understanding the impact of duplicate content on SEO
• Google's canonicalization process for determining the canonical source
• Challenges faced with duplicate content on our documentation site
• The unintended impact of no index tags on search results
• Steps taken to address the issue and improve search results
• The results of our efforts and observations over time
• Preventive measures to avoid similar problems in the future
• Differences in C8 documentation and potential adjustments needed
• Conclusion and commitment to ongoing improvements

FAQ

Q: Why did we add "no index" tags to our older pages? A: We added "no index" tags in an attempt to prevent Google from choosing older versions as the canonical source. However, this had the unintended consequence of making those pages unsearchable.

Q: Did our efforts to fix the search results yield positive results? A: While the results were not as successful as we had hoped, we did observe improvements in search results over time. We continue to work on refining our approach.

Q: Will similar issues occur with C8 documentation? A: Although C8 documentation has its advantages, such as not relying solely on Google for search, we still need to make adjustments to prevent any potential indexing issues. We are actively working on these improvements.

Q: Are there any conclusive solutions to prevent duplicate content issues? A: Addressing duplicate content is an ongoing challenge. While we have implemented various measures to tackle the issue, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Constant monitoring and adjustments are necessary to maintain optimal search results.